How would you translate the word 神祖?


I can't find the word in my dictionary, and Google Translate translates it as
'ancestor' but I'm not sure how accurate that is.

I'm trying to translate this sentence:

> この葛葉家の屋敷で働く使用人はほぼ全員が一族の **神祖** であった『お狐様』を讃えるために狐の面をつけている。

However I'm not exactly sure what 神祖 means.




神祖 is a rare word. There is only one instance of 神祖 in
[BCCWJ](http://pj.ninjal.ac.jp/corpus_center/bccwj/en/). So I won't be
surprised if Google Translate and small dictionaries did not recognize this.

That said, the meaning of this word should be fairly straightforward if you
know the meaning of each kanji.

  * **神** : god; godly
  * **祖** : ancestor; origin

So 神祖 refers to great/legendary ancestors in general. In this case it seems to
literally refer to godly/divine ancestors, though.




神祖 is a rare word. There is only one instance of 神祖 in
[BCCWJ](http://pj.ninjal.ac.jp/corpus_center/bccwj/en/). So I won't be
surprised if Google Translate and small dictionaries did not recognize this.

That said, the meaning of this word should be fairly straightforward if you
know the meaning of each kanji.

  * **神** : god; godly
  * **祖** : ancestor; origin

So 神祖 refers to great/legendary ancestors in general. In this case it seems to
literally refer to godly/divine ancestors, though.

