This post will be updated after I receive additional information from specialists of Luba culture and religion.

The Luba:

The Luba are a bantu-speaking people. Linguistic and archeological evidence trace early Luba people in the Upemba depression around the 6th or 7th Century (Ehret p. 262, Christine Saidi p.43), later forming what Ehret has called the Upemba kingdom, which later expanded into the Luba Empire, an association of kingdoms, that dominated commerce (iron, copper, salt, ivory) in the south-eastern savannas West of Lake Tanganika in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, trading both with the Portuguese on the Atlantic coast and with the Arabs on the Indian Ocean coast through intermediaries. It declined when Swahili-Arab ivory and slave traders cut trade routes and stopped Luba expansion. Luba territory was…