information:classification, linguistic:translation
Foundation

Before the founding of Kongo, the region it would eventually control was under the control of several minor kingdoms, according to a tradition recorded in the mid-1580s. It named several former kingdoms, which were included in Kongo: Nsundi, Mpangu, and Mbata, along the Inkisi on the east; and Wandu south of them. Then Mpemba in the center, and Soyo and Mbamba on the seacoast south of the Congo River.

According to Kongo tradition in the seventeenth century, the kingdom's origin was in Vungu, a small polity which lay north of the Congo River, and which had extended its authority across the Congo to Mpemba Kasi, which was itself the northernmost territory of a larger kingdom called Mpemba whose capital was located about 150 miles south. A dynasty of rulers from this small polity built up its rule along the Kwilu Valley, or what was called Nsi a Kwilu and its elite are buried near its center. Traditions from the 17th century allude to this sacred burial ground. According to the missionary Girolamo da Montesarchio, an Italian Capuchin who visited the area from 1650 to 1652, the site was so holy that looking upon it was deadly. These rocks may be the rugged uplands of Lovo where there is extensive cave and rock art that dates from at least the fifteenth century.

At some point around 1375, Nimi a Nzima, ruler of Mpemba Kasi and Vungu, made an alliance with Nsaku Lau, the ruler of the neighboring Mbata Kingdom. Nimi a Nzima married Lukeni lua Nsanze (Luqueni Luansanze in the text), Nsaku Lau's daughter. This alliance guaranteed that each of the two allies would help ensure the succession of its ally's lineage in the other's territory. Mbata in turn was a former province of the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza whose capital lay farther east along the current border of Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo. Mbata may have been the senior partner in the original alliance, as he had the title of "Nkaka andi a Mwene Kongo," or grandfather of the king of Kongo.

Nimi a Nzima and Lukeni lua Nsanze's son Lukeni lua Nimi (circa 1380–1420) began the expansion that would found the Kingdom of Kongo. The name Nimi a Lukeni appeared in later oral traditions and some modern historians, notably Jean Cuvelier, popularized it. Lukeni lua Nimi, or Nimi a Lukeni, led expansion southward into lands ruled by Mpemba. He established a new base on the mountain Mongo dia Kongo and made alliances with the Mwene Mpangala, ruler of a market town then loyal to Mpemba and also with the Mwene Kabunga whose lands lay west of there of uncertain loyalty but the site of a famous shrine. Two centuries later the Mwene Kabunga's descendants still symbolically challenged the conquest in an annual celebration. He furthered this with a second more important alliance with Vunda, another of Mpemba's subordinate rulers. To cement this alliance, as with the one with Mbata, Lukeni lua Nimi allowed him to be an elector to the kingdom.

After the death of Nimi a Lukeni, the rulers that followed Lukeni claimed relation to his kanda, or lineage, and were known as the Kilukeni. The Kilukeni Kanda — or "house", as it was recorded in Portuguese language documents written in Kongo — ruled Kongo unopposed until 1567.