The Nommo are the primordial ancestral beings of the Dogon people of Mali, brought into being by the supreme creator Amma near the beginning of the world. As the tradition is commonly reported, they are twin, amphibious, water-dwelling beings, often described as part human and part fish or serpent, and as paired or hermaphroditic, embodying the completeness of twinned opposites, who descended or were sent to the earth and brought to it the ordered world of human life: they are credited with the gift of speech and of moisture, with the founding of the social order, and with the arts and crafts (weaving, smithing, cultivation) on which settled life depends.
Water is their element and their essence; they are bound up with rain, with the fertility of the land, and with the life-giving moisture without which the world would be barren. As the first ancestors and the bringers of order and the word, the Nommo occupy a central place in the account of creation, standing between the remote creator Amma and the human world he set in motion.