Egungun

Egungun, in the broadest sense of the word, refers to all types of Yoruba masquerades or masked, costumed figures. When used in its more specific, common sense, "Egungun" refers to the Yoruba masquerades connected with ancestor reverence, or to the ancestors themselves as a collective force. The singular form, for an individual ancestor, is Egun.

Classification of Egungun types

The classification of Egun or Egungun types, which might appear to be a fairly straightforward task, is in fact an extremely complex problem involving the comprehension of indigenous taxonomies. The difficulties include: the problem of distinguishing between personal Egun names and generic terms for types; the problem of determining "sets" where one masquerader may be regarded as within several type categories simultaneously; the practice of "layering," in which a masquerader wears one costume type over another and changes these during performance; and the variety of criteria used to classify Egungun as well as the range of variations within type categories. Such factors demonstrate the complexity attending the analysis of indigenous taxonomies and the classification of masquerade types. These same difficulties arise in the definition and use of the term Egungun itself.