ABSTRACT
The text has an initiatory value; in order to provide a commentary on it in depth that people should require a complete understanding of Dogon culture. It has a religious and incantatory character, common in Dogon poetry, belonging in effect to a genre known as praise-poems; it would equally well qualify as a 'prayer', on the one hand, always have a poetic form, and, on the other, very often contain fragments of praise poems. This text bears the title of 'Praise-poem of Death' and describes the journey of the 'soul' after death. In Dogon ideas, at least on a subconscious level, death is a kind of 'climbing', a symbolic image which is possibly connected with the steep and difficult nature of the cliff paths. As for Amma, the God Creator, his name is to be found scattered throughout the text, since according to the Dogon he is 'neither man nor woman' and hence is above all oppositions.
