Ananse Ntontan (spider’s web)
Ananse Ntontan, “spider’s web”, is the adinkra symbol of wisdom and creativity, after Ananse, the spider of Akan stories.
Meaning
Ananse Ntontan is an Akan symbol from Ghana, stamped on adinkra cloth. The design-tools table at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute gives its meaning as “Wisdom, creativity”. Ntontan is the word for a spider’s web: J. G. Christaller’s dictionary of the Asante and Fante language (1881) gives ntontan for “a spider’s web or net”.
Origin and history
The spider is Ananse, the hero of Akan folk tales. R. S. Rattray wrote in his Ashanti Proverbs (1916) that the spider came “easily first as the hero in most of their animal tales”, so much so that the Asante word for any story, anansesem, means “words about a spider”. “The spider is credited with being very wise,” he added, and he gave one story of it: the Spider gathered all the wisdom of the world in a gourd, tied it to his belly and was climbing a tree to put it at the top, when his son Ntikuma told him that with all the wisdom of the world he would have had the sense to tie the gourd to his back. The Spider threw it down in a temper. “It broke, and the wisdom it contained became scattered, and men came and picked up what each could carry away.”
Spiders elsewhere
Ananse is a figure of Akan story. In British and American folklore the spider has other meanings: see the spider in animal symbolism.
Read next
- Next in Adinkra symbolsHwe Mu DuaHwe Mu Dua, the “measuring stick”, is the adinkra symbol of examination and quality control.
- The spider in British and American folkloreSpider symbolismIn British and American folklore it is unlucky to kill a spider, and a small one on your clothes means money or a letter. In stories the spider is a weaver and a bringer: Arachne in Ovid, Spider Woman in Diné (Navajo) tradition, the Cherokee Water Spider who brought fire, and Anansi of the Gold Coast and Jamaica.
See also
Mate Masie, Gye Nyame, Nyame Dua, Nsoromma (star), Osram ne Nsoromma (moon and star), Sankofa.
Sources
- Adinkra Symbols (Culturally Situated Design Tools), Culturally Situated Design Tools (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with the National Science Foundation), “Adinkra: Symbols”, Culturally Situated Design Tools, table of symbols
- Ashanti Proverbs (R. S. Rattray 1916), R. Sutherland Rattray, Ashanti Proverbs (The Primitive Ethics of a Savage People) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916), Internet Archive (University of Toronto scan), No. 175 and note
- Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language (J. G. Christaller 1881), J. G. Christaller, A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language Called Tshi (Chwee, Twi) (Basel: Basel German Evangelical Missionary Society, 1881), Internet Archive (University of Toronto scan), entry huhua
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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