Yoruba TraditionSacred Site
Ile-Ife
The holiest city in Yoruba religion, where Obatala first descended from heaven and created land from the primordial waters. Known as 'the navel of the world' and the place where creation began. The city remains the spiritual center of Yoruba tradition, and its kings trace descent from the Orishas.
About Ile-Ife
Where the chain came down
Ile-Ife is the Yoruba city of origin: Oduduwa (or Obatala, in competing recensions) descends a chain, pours sand on the primordial water, and land spreads with a five-toed fowl. Ifa verses and Ife palace tradition keep the story; archaeology shows an early urban center of glass and brass. The Ooni's kingship claims descent from that descent. Do not flatten Obatala and Oduduwa into one agent; the corpus argues. Ife remains a living ritual city, not a closed myth.
On the map
Ile-Ife among other places of the Yoruba Tradition.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Ifa oral corpus / Ife origin recensions
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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