Image: Sopona

Description: This is a statue of Shapona, the West African God of Smallpox. It is part of the CDC’s Global Health Odyssey (GHO) collection of artifacts. A uniquely carved wooden figure, it is adorned with layers of meaningful objects such as monkey skulls, cowrie shells, and nails. Donated in 1995 by Ilze and Rafe Henderson, it was created by a traditional healer who made approximately 50 Shaponas as commemorative objects for the CDC, WHO, and other public health experts attending a 1969 conference on smallpox eradication. Smallpox was thought to be a disease foisted upon humans due to Shapona’s “divine displeasure”, and formal worship of the God of Smallpox was highly controlled by specific priests in charge of shrines to the God. People believed that if angered, the priests themselves were capable of causing smallpox outbreaks through their intimate relationship with Shapona. Suspecting that the priests were deliberately spreading the viral disease, the British colonial rulers banned the worship of Shapona in 1907; however, worshiping the deity continued with the faithful paying homage to the God even after such activities were prohibited.
Title: Sopona
Credit:   This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #8003. Note: Not all PHIL images are public domain; be sure to check copyright status and credit authors and content providers. العربية | Deutsch | English | македонски | slovenščina | +/−
Author: James Gathany (photo), CDC/ Global Health Odyssey
Permission: "This image is in the public domain and thus free of any copyright restrictions. As a matter of courtesy we request that the content provider be credited and notified in any public or private usage of this image."
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No