These are two Gurage gods (well one god and one goddess) whose praise poems I am lifting from "Gods and Heroes" (by William A Shack and Habte-Mariam Marcos, 1972). It is a collection of Gurage praise-chants. Bwaža is this permanently irate god who has an itchy thunderous palm. Damwamwit is the goddess of creation and death. She reminded me much of Ishtar (the goddess of procreation and war) in Ancient Mesopotamia, at least a less whimsical version. The Gurage worship three deities and the gods inhabiting these poems are: - Wak, the god of War, also known as the 'Sky god', - Damwamwit (also Maryam who is either one and the same or a separate entity goddess) and exclusively belongs to the realm of women, - The mighty Bwaža, the Thunder-god, who sits in the Gurage's conceptual hierarchy next to Yegzar, "their otiose supreme beings, associated with nature an inanimate objects". The prayer-chants are called waywat. The Heroes chants (secular praise) are...
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