Kimoya Amanirenas Kandake

Indaba

Long before Kinshasa, Kimoya was the Kandake of Kush, daughter of King Zola and Queen Nzinga, a queen with the spirit of the lioness in her blood. Then Lukula comes through the palace doorway with the news that changes everything, and her grief becomes a vow.

When Rome pushed south along the Nile, she did not negotiate. She went to war. She sent the warrior Mubutu into battle wearing the Masque de Sese Seko, a mask that channels the ancestral spirits and turns a man into a living legend.

Her armies destroyed the Roman garrisons at Syene, Philae and Elephantine. They captured a bronze statue of the emperor Augustus, blinded it, cut off its head and buried that head beneath the entrance of a temple, so that everyone who entered would walk over Rome.

Sword Ngulu in her hand and the Shield of Apedemak on her arm, Kimoya fights for her people in the past. In the future she becomes the Unified Mother of Africa, and the mother of Zaiire, the Prince of Kongo. This book is where her legend begins.

The history behind it is real. Amanirenas, Kandake of Kush, fought Rome in the 20s BC, and the bronze head of Augustus taken in those raids was found buried beneath temple steps at Meroë in 1910. Today it is known as the Meroë Head.