Kingdoms, Rulers & ResistanceAkandocumented history
What a Stool Is
A stool is not furniture.
Any palace stool room; the Manhyia Palace Museum; the woodcarving village of Ahwiaa, outside Kumasi.
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What a Stool Is
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What a Stool Is
A stool is not furniture.
Every Akan person of standing has one, carved from a single piece of wood. It carries their soul while they live. When they die, if they lived well and led well, the stool is blackened — with soot and egg yolk and the blood of sacrifice — and it goes into the stool room with the blackened stools of the ancestors before them.
That room is the true seat of the state. On the ancestors' days, food and drink are brought there and the current chief speaks to the ones who held the office before him and asks their help with the office he now holds.
To be "enstooled" is to become chief. To be "destooled" is to be removed. When a chief dies, the announcement is that the stool has fallen. A vacant office is a vacant stool.
And the empty stool set out at a ceremony is not an empty chair. It means the one whose stool it is has been invited and is expected to be present, and everyone in the room behaves accordingly.
If you visit Ghana. Any palace stool room; the Manhyia Palace Museum; the woodcarving village of Ahwiaa, outside Kumasi.
Every Akan person of standing has one, carved from a single piece of wood. It carries their soul while they live. When they die, if they lived well and led well, the stool is blackened — with soot and egg yolk and the blood of sacrifice — and it goes into the stool room with the blackened stools of the ancestors before them.
That room is the true seat of the state. On the ancestors' days, food and drink are brought there and the current chief speaks to the ones who held the office before him and asks their help with the office he now holds.
To be "enstooled" is to become chief. To be "destooled" is to be removed. When a chief dies, the announcement is that the stool has fallen. A vacant office is a vacant stool.
And the empty stool set out at a ceremony is not an empty chair. It means the one whose stool it is has been invited and is expected to be present, and everyone in the room behaves accordingly.