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Conversations with Ogotommeli (An Introduction to Dogon Religious ideas) – Professor Marcel Griaule

Ogotemmeli described the structure as a granary….

‘The whole thing’ he said ‘with its stairways is called the ‘Granary of the Master of Pure Earth’, It is divided into eight compartments, four below and four above.  The door opens to the north on the sixth stair.  It is as it were the mouth, and the granary is the belly, that is the interior of the world’………..

The four lower compartments in a Dogon granary are separated by two intersecting partitions, the junction of which forms a cup like depression in the earth big enough to hold a round jar.  This jar, containing grain or valuable objects is the centre of the whole building.  The door opens above these compartments, and is only just wide enough to admit the passage of a man’s body.

Above the door is the upper storey comprising four other compartments two of them in a line along the back wall and the other two along the side walls.  They form a sort of ledge round the three sides, leaving the space at the entry free so that if a man crouched on the top of the lower compartments his shoulders would be level with the balcony.

In the celestial granary these compartments had a numbered order.  The first was to the right of the entry on the lower floor; the second was the one on the right at the back, and so on round the building.  The fifth was on the upper floor on the right, and so on to the eighth, which was to the left on the upper floor.