Ekkpe or Egbo

EKKPE or EGBO, a secret society flourishing in southern Nigeria and the Calabar district, West Africa. Ekkpe (leopard in Ibibio) is a dual spirit, male and female, and only males can join, boys being initiated about the age of puberty. Members are bound to secrecy and heavy entrance fees are payable. The Egbo-men are ranked in seven or nine grades, for promotion to each of which fresh initiation ceremonies, fees and oaths are necessary. The society combines a cult, a freemasonry with po litical and law-enforcing aims. The society was used to recover debts from an outsider and to maintain the authority of the free-born over slaves. The cult turns on ancestor worship and includes fertility rites. There are esoteric secrets known only to the highest grade of initiate. The Egbo-house, an oblong build ing, usually stands in the middle of the villages. The walls are of clay elaborately painted inside and ornamented with clay figures in relief. Inside are wooden images, sometimes of an obscene nature, to which reverence is paid. At certain festivals in the year the Egbo-men wear black wooden masks with horns which it is death for any woman to look on.

See Mary H. Kingsley, West African Studies (1901) ; P. A. Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria (1926).

EK.RON,

an ancient city of Palestine (mod. `Akir) ; pop. 1,200; 5 m. from Ramleh, on the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway. Al though included by the Israelites in the territory of Judah and mentioned in Joshua xix. as a city of Dan, it was occupied by the Philistines in the days of Samuel, and was the nearest of the Pentapolis to Israelite territory. The sanctuary of Baal-Zebub was here, and the restoration of the ark to Israel was by the road up the Vale of Sorek to Beth-Shemesh, 12 m. away. According to Assyrian records, its king was forced by his subjects to side with Hezekiah, but regained his independence with the advance of Sinaherib. The town was ceded to the Maccabees (147 B.c.) ; and after the destruction of Jerusalem (A.D. 7o) many Jews estab lished themselves here. The neighbourhood is fertile, and in 1884 Baron Rothschild settled there a Jewish colony. (E. Ro.)