At the founding, Anokye drove a sword into the ground at the place that would become Kumasi and said: this is the centre.
The sword site at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Bantama, Kumasi. It is there. You can stand over it.
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Okomfo Anokye's Sword
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Okomfo Anokye's Sword
At the founding, Anokye drove a sword into the ground at the place that would become Kumasi and said: this is the centre. And he said something more, which is why the sword is still there.
He bound the life of the nation to it. So long as the sword stayed in the earth, the Asante would stand. If it were ever drawn out, the nation would fall.
It has been in the ground for over three hundred years. It sits in an enclosure in the middle of a working teaching hospital — the modern city grew up around it and simply built past it. The blade is fixed at an angle; the visible portion is dark with age.
It has been pulled at. The most-repeated story is of a strongman, sometimes named as a boxer, who was brought or came to try and could not move it, and by some accounts did not survive the attempt. Ghanaians will tell you that heavy equipment has been tried. Whether that is true is beside the point of why they tell you.
Nobody in Kumasi is in any hurry to find out what happens if it comes out.
If you visit Ghana. The sword site at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Bantama, Kumasi. It is there. You can stand over it.
At the founding, Anokye drove a sword into the ground at the place that would become Kumasi and said: this is the centre. And he said something more, which is why the sword is still there.
He bound the life of the nation to it. So long as the sword stayed in the earth, the Asante would stand. If it were ever drawn out, the nation would fall.
It has been in the ground for over three hundred years. It sits in an enclosure in the middle of a working teaching hospital — the modern city grew up around it and simply built past it. The blade is fixed at an angle; the visible portion is dark with age.
It has been pulled at. The most-repeated story is of a strongman, sometimes named as a boxer, who was brought or came to try and could not move it, and by some accounts did not survive the attempt. Ghanaians will tell you that heavy equipment has been tried. Whether that is true is beside the point of why they tell you.
Nobody in Kumasi is in any hurry to find out what happens if it comes out.