One of the great merits of this boor

matic approach to the subject of Bl,

Art.
Traditional African Art is profoundly
by many factors: religion and magic;
in omnipresent occult forces; ancestor wor^,
involving sacrifices; funeral rites; initiation cere¬
monies; masked dances for all important life
events; the power of secret societies; the
chief’s desire for prestige; the love of jewelry
and the pursuit of beauty in the most lowly of
objects. In this context, the artist who was
commissioned to create indispensable objects
only had a limited amount of freedom - but
with what results! A careful aesthetic analysis
shows the extent to which the problems have
been brilliantly resolved: happy inventions of
form, daring conceptualisation, evocative
figures. It is no accident that African Art has
had such a profound influence on Modern Art,
from Modigliani to Matisse, from Vlaminck to
Derain, via the Cubism of Picasso and Juan
Gris. *
This book is a major and complete new work
which reveals and explains the secrets and ori¬
gins of Black African Art.
More than 170 colour illustrations.
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/blackafricamasksOOOOmeye
BLACK Af RICA
MASKS
SCULPTURE
JEWELRY
BUCK AFRICA
MASKS
SCULPTURE
JEWELRY

LAURE
MEYER

TERRAIL
 Cover illustration

Large dance mask with

curved horns.
Gabon. Kwele. Painted
wood. H: 42 cm, L: 62
cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.

Previous page

Wooden Akua ba doll.

Ghana. Akan. Wood,
painted or stained black.
H: 44.5 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

Right

Male statuette.
Mali. Segou region.
Terracotta. H:44.3 cm,
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.

Editors: Jean-Claude Dubost and Jean-Frangois Gonthier

Art Director: Bernard Girodroux
Translation: Helen McPhail in association
with First Edition Translations Ltd, Cambridge, UK
Composition: Artegrafica, Paris
Filmsetting: Compo Rive Gauche, Paris
*. .•itcthpgraohycLitbo ServicesT;iZgmjpont,;Verona** •
• .*•».» • • . *• • ■ •*

© FINEST S.A./EDITIONS PIERRE TERKAJl. PARIS 1992

ISBN:•2-^7939;0$2.1K* : :
Printed in Italy

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publishers.
 Contents

9 Left
Introduction Drum.
Guinea. Baga. Hardwood
1.Terracotta, a survivor from the hidden past 15 and skin. Polychrome,
partly worn away, red,
white, blue, black. H: 172
II. Bronze and ivory, proud possessions of great kings 33 cm. Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.

III. Art from the Royal Courts of Cameroon 57

IV. Masks and dances bringing myths to life 73

V. Ancestral statues and representations of spirits 111

VI. Reliquaries to conciliate occult forces 131

VII. Large and small fetishes 141

VIII. Warriors and hunters 151

IX. The dignity of Black womanhood 163

X. Gold for decoration and ceremony 177

XI. The significance of beautiful objects 197

Map of ethnic groups 214

Index 216

Brief bibliography 219

Acknowledgements 223

Photo credits 224

I
 Introduction

Left
The preparation of a book on the arts of Black Africa
Wambele dance mask.
inevitably poses a delicate question of balance between
r Jortherr tvory Coast.
ethnology and aesthetics, two equally essential elements. Senufo region Bartoer-
Muel er /\rc' yes, Geneva.
An exclusively aesthetic approach to African arts would
exclude much of their significance and the full range of
their humanity, just as Europeans ignorant of the Bible’s
full narrative richness would lose much of the value and
beauty of the tympanum of a Norman cathedral or a
Renaissance Descent from the Cross. In Black Africa too,
in order to experience the full beauty of a work we must
understand its origins and its aims, its mythic sense for
the African who created it and for those who experienced it.
Without that understanding, the work is greatly diminished.
Although artists from the early 20th century - the
Fauves, the Cubists, Matisse, Vlaminck, Picasso and Juan
Gris - were the first to appreciate the beauty and interest
of certain "Negro Art” statuettes, without previous ethno¬
logical knowledge, how can we be sure that their view of
such works was comprehensive? Surely they were prima¬
rily seeking the solution to certain problems of dealing with
form. And, conversely, would notions of ethnology have
hindered their appreciation? Would not such knowledge
have given them more direct access to the work in its
deepest essentials and its totality?
 The opposite approach - stressing ethnological factors
at the expense of aesthetics - leads to an equally dimi¬
nished understanding of a creation, reducing it to the level
of an object even though it may have a religious purpose.
What justification can there be for denying values of
beauty in sculptures created on African soil? Should the
canons of European classical art be the only valid stan¬
dards? Certain African works of art must be acknowledged
for their value to all humanity’s artistic heritage, on equal
terms with other masterpieces which have enjoyed longer
fame.
The purpose of this book is therefore to provide some
basic principles of ethnology, in order to offer the non¬
specialist reader a potentially greater depth of feeling for
the beauty, power, delicacy or fearsome nature of certain
aspects of African art.
The works of art are not shown by geographical loca¬
tion, which has frequently and very successfully been
'done. They are evoked through different themes, providing
guidelines for consideration of specific traits of African
cultures. Art appears here as the final destination, the per¬
fect realisation of a certain moment in life. Each theme is
independent and should offer a better grasp of the specifi¬
cally African approach.
A full appreciation of African art requires a deliberate
effort from the European observer, a rejection of accusto¬
med styles of reasoning and a determination to see the
work of art through the eyes of the artist who created or
used it. This is particularly important with the most dange¬
Above
Mother and child. rous concept of all, that of “art”.
Zaire. Yombe. Wood.
Musee royal d"Afrique In fact, it should be clear that the European concept of
centrale, Tervuren.
“art” is alien to traditional African thought. “Art for art's
sake” was extremely rare in Africa, as it was in mediaeval
art. This did not prevent the flowering of beauty in Africa in
many domains, even if not under the heading of “art”, and
for purposes different from those of western art.
We may therefore seek an equivalent of the western
Right
understanding of art in African thinking. How does an Afri¬
Statue of a messenger.
Nigeria. Benin. Late can feel and express beauty in an object? Susan Vogel,
16th/early 17th century.
Brass. H: 60 cm. Museum Director of the New York Centre for African Art, attempted
fur Volkerkunde, Vienna.
(Photo: Musee Dapper). to reply to this question in Aesthetics of African Art.
Condensing the results of research carried out among
10
various ethnic groups, and many African languages, she
considers that the concepts of “beauty” and “good”
overlap to a large extent and cannot be disentangled. In
many cases the same word means both “beautiful” and
“good”. To an African this may be the equivalent of “well
made” or “pleasing to look at”, i.e. conforming to moral
precepts, useful and well suited to its purpose, functional,
conforming to tradition. In earlier times, classical Greece
experienced similar overlaps.
Figures created with this intention generally have a
religious aim-, to reanimate fundamental myths, to perpe¬
tuate ancestral memory or to work productively on super¬
natural forces or emanations from the spirit world.
Beneath the material appearance of the work of art,
beyond its aesthetic appeal, we should be aware that there
is almost always a philosophical dimension: the object
forms part of a ritual or a principle of life.
In Africa certain sectors of art are also dedicated to the
ruler’s glory. The important royal courts inspired a splendid
body of works deliberately created to enhance the prestige
of the sovereign; but ultimately this remains an art foun¬
ded on religion, because the king is believed to be divine.
This religious art has many implications in the areas of
morality and sociology. Using masks, it offers an assu¬
rance of social cohesion and hierarchy, respect for accep¬
ted laws and repression of unacceptable behaviour.
This very particular orientation of the arts in Africa
means that the human figure is the most frequently
represented image, the simplest way of representing the
supernatural in earthly form. Animals are present only to
the extent that they complete, modify or characterise hu¬
man behaviour. Landscape and plant life are virtually
unknown.
The African artist always worked to a commission from
the ruler, the officiating priest of a cult, a soothsayer, or the
members of a secret society. Fie was not permitted to
follow a wholly free and unfettered “inspiration”: he
worked within the framework of traditional norms and
programmes, but this framework always allowed for variety
for important creations.
The geographical range is equally great. Only a very
superficial view could lead to references to a single body
11
tilSS?
of African art, identifiable by certain immutable charac¬ Left

teristics- in fact every region of Africa has given birth to Female cup-bearer.
Zaire. Luba. Wood. H:
art forms unique to that region, derived from its own 45.5 cm. Attributed to the
Master of Bull. Musee
particular history and representing at any given moment a royal d’Afrique centrale,
Tervuren.
visible expression of trends and the collective cultural
psyche.
In every tribe plastic creativity is apparent in all daily
activity, far exceeding the traditional areas of statues and
masks and including decorated and carved objects, musi¬
cal instruments, weapons - not forgetting body-art, hair
arrangement and scarification. The ethnological “style” is
indeed the expression of a particular view of the world, un¬
spoken, unconscious and spontaneous, resulting in the
creation of an all-encompassing experience which was
lived, understood, appreciated or feared by all members of
the tribe.
It should also be noted that, even when limiting consi¬
deration to the nations of Africa, not all have been equally
creative. When surveying their productions in the plastic
arts, we turn most frequently to the peoples of western
and central Africa, north and south of the Equator from
Senegal to Zaire and Angola, although other populations
are not wholly excluded. Greater awareness of their cultu¬
res may enable us to appreciate their work better in future.
Unfortunately we can only look here at African work da¬
ting from before the middle of the 20th century. Political
and social upheavals occurring from that time onwards
have led to new ways of life which will require further
research before they can be fully understood.
 m-iT1
bS8
W- SP£! - pij|y|j
BBl&aG* SctEIIBS!
 Terracotta,
a survivor from
the hidden past

Left
Africa’s earliest history is written in terracotta: the oldest
known figurines were modelled in clay. Their great age - 2. Head.
(Fragment.) Nigeria. Nok
up to two thousand years in some cases - is the result of Culture. Terracotta. H: 15
cm. Dated by
the material’s lack of importance; metals stirred the greed thermoluminescence as
late 1st century BC. Musee
of metal-casters who melted down metal objects for use in Barbier-Mueller, Geneva

fresh castings, and wood was prey to termites. Terracotta,

with its negligible value, was rarely re-used.
It had the further great advantage that it could be
moulded with bare hands and without tools. Firing bene¬
fited from the age-old skill of making utilitarian pottery.
Certain pieces were dried in the sun, others baked in the
ashes of an open hearth at about 300° Centigrade, while
still others were subjected to even higher temperatures to
produce a stronger material.

Discoveries at Nok

As far as we know at the present time, the clay figurines

discovered near the village of Nok in central Nigeria can
be dated between approximately 500 BC and 500 AD by
thermoluminescent testing.
They were discovered by chance in a tin mine in 1943.
An- employee at work found a clay head (fig.l), which he
 took home to make a scarecrow, a role which it played to
perfection for a year, in a field of yams! However, it was
noticed by the manager of the mine who bought it and
took it to the town of Jos. He showed it to a trainee civil
administrator, Bernard Fagg who was also an archaeo¬
logist. He immediately appreciated its significance and
asked all the miners to inform him of any fresh discove¬
ries, thereby acquiring more than 150 items. The subse¬
quent diggings directed by Bernard and Angela Fagg
proved particularly fruitful because the discoveries, spread
Above
1. Head of Jemaa. over a very large area, extended significantly beyond the
Niseria. Nok culture.
Terracotta. Dated by
initial site, but since archaeologists tend to name a style
thermoluminescence as after the site where the first important object is found,
510 BC (+/- 230). National
Museum, Lagos. (Photo: these works are still described as "Nok style”.
Dominique Genet.)
This was the head which The craftsmen working in and around Nok used the
first attracted Bernard
Fagg's attention, resulting same material for their modelled figurines as for their utili¬
in his discovery of the
Nok culture. tarian pottery, a coarse-grained clay. Some statues are as
tall as 1.20m, indicating excellent mastery of modelling
techniques and open-air firing. Because many statues are
hollow, the sculptor has taken care to maintain a uniform
thickness for the whole piece, and to avoid parts which
might burst during firing.
Such technical competence, like the stylistic mastery
shown in these works, indicates that Nok art may be the
end-point of an already well established artistic tradition.
There are no traces of fumbling or trials; the style’s cha¬
racteristics are already precise. The size of the eyes is the
first element to attract attention, sometimes formed as a
section of a circle and sometimes as a triangle below the
arc of the eyebrow counterbalancing the curve of the
lower eyelid. The pupil of the eye is deeply incised, as are
the nostrils, the ears and, where appropriate, the mouth
which has large thick lips, the upper lip sometimes
reaching almost to the base of the nose (fig.2). The ears

Above and right may sometimes be placed very far back. The overall
expression is extremely vivid, enhanced by the very
6. Terracotta head
portraying a dead royal detailed hairstyle which frequently consists of thick locks,
personage.
Nigeria. Kingdom of Ife. each designed to hold a feather (the fixing holes are still
13th-14th century. H: 17
cm. Formerly part of the visible).
Roger Bediat collection.
Musee Barbier-Mueller, There is no doubting the Nok residents’ love of personal
Geneva.
adornment and one statuette shows a small figure (fig.3)
literally crushed beneath its necklaces and bracelets.
16
 7 Commemorative
effigy.
Nigeria. Ife. Terracotta.
13th century, property of
the Oni of Ife.
This work shows
impressive skill even more
remarkable for the fact
that the firing was done in
ashes, at 300°C.

9 Head.
Nigeria. Discovered at
Igbo Laja, Owo.
Terracotta. 15th century
(approx.). H: 17.4 cm.
National Museum, Lagos.
(Photo: Dominique
Genet.)
The serenity of this head
points to the Ife tradition,
but it was probably made
4 Queen's head. at Owo. It has many
Nigeria. Found at Ita characteristics of Ife art:
Yemoo. Ife. Terracotta. parallel grooves on the
12th-13th century. H: 25 face, the upper eyelid
cm. Museum of Ife covering the lower eyelid,
3 Kneeling man Antiquities. (Photo: a slight indent in the
covered in jewellery. Dominique Genet.) This upper eyelid, the corners
Nigeria. Nok culture. head is not a complete of the mouth slightly
Terracotta. 500 BC-200 figure: it was part of a full- hollowed out and the
AD. National Museum, length statue, and the contours of the lips in
Lagos. (Photo: Dominique crown included a crest light relief.
Genet.) which has disappeared.
However, it remains one
of the most delicate
terracotta heads found at
Ife. The five layers of
beads on the crown
indicate that the figure
represented a queen.

18
 8 Crowned head of an
Oni.
Nigeria. Ife, Wunmonije
Compound, 12th-15th
century. Alloy of brass
and zinc. H: 24 cm.
Museum of Ife
Antiquities. (Photo:
Dominique Genet.)
This "bronze" head marks
the magnificent final stage
of Ife art. The delicate
5 Head with beaded
modelling of the features
cap.
is emphasised by the
Nigeria. Ife. Terracotta,
lines running up the face.
12th-15th century. H: 16
The rosette above the
cm. National Museum,
face proves that this was
Lagos. (Photo: Dominique
an Oni, possibly a female
Genet.) A hole in the
Oni. The top of the crown
beaded cap may indicate
is broken.
that it once held a crest or
an egret plume.

19
 Hundreds of quartz pearls have been found, together with
the tools with which they were made.
Although many heads look very lifelike in form - as does
the head which attracted Bernard Fagg’s attention - others
in contrast appear to have a strict geometric design, based
on spheres, cylinders or cones. The reason for such stylis¬
tic developments is unknown, although there can be no
question of lack of ability because the animal heads found
in Nok reveal that in this area the sculptors were capable
of producing perfectly realistic and lifelike works. Religious
constraints have been suggested. Frank Willett, former
Director of Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum and a great
connoisseur of African art, attributes these differences in
style to the fact that certain sculptors feared accusations
of sorcery if they created fully realistic human heads. We
may also agree with Mz Ekpo Eyo, former Director of Anti¬
quities in Nigeria, who suggests that certain animals were
represented with care because they had religious connota¬
tions for the people of their day. Further discoveries may
perhaps offer a solution.
Did the Nok artists work with wood? Probably, but none
has survived. There may be a distant echo of such works
in certain modern Yoruba creations, the Yoruba of Nigeria
being particularly artistically gifted. Their wood carvings,
11 Female statuette.
Mali. Jenne region. especially certain Gelede masks, have eyes with hollowed-
Terracotta. H: 39 cm.
Musee Barbier- out pupils, the same eyes which give such immediacy to
Mueller, Geneva.
This pregnant woman Nok heads.
with her hands on her
stomach appears to be The decline of Nok art can be seen in less accompli¬
giving birth to a snake. A
snake cult in the kingdom
shed terracotta figures from the 1st millennium AD. They
of Ghana was described
are of interest, none the less, because they show the
by the Arab writer Al
Bakri in the 11th century. continuation of a tradition whose legacy can be seen in Ife
art which produced some of Black Africa’s finest creations.

The great art of Ife

Apart from a very limited discovery by the German

ethnologist Frobenius, in 1910, it was in 1938 that impor¬
tant works were properly discovered. These chance disco¬
veries, made during house-building work, were followed by
systematic digging between 1949 and 1963, the date
when the Oni (king) of Ife, aware of the cult nature of the
20
objects being unearthed, ordered work to cease “so as not
to disturb the bones of his ancestors”. In the meantime,
however, several sites had been explored in the city of Ife,
around the existing palace.
According to the Yoruba people’s myth of the origins of
Ife, their holy city, it was the place where the gods descen¬
ded from the skies to populate the world. The children of
the first great god, Odudua, created their own kingdoms,
and the kings of Ife are still considered semi-divine by
their subjects.
Examination by carbon-14 dating and thermolumines¬
cence makes it possible to place the “classic” peak of Ife
art between the 11th or 12th centuries AD and the 15th
century, while other works, of the 16th and 17th centuries,
are designated “post-classic”. Of the classic creations, it
was above all the royal heads which were retrieved from
the Ife soil. Made of terracotta, the majority appear to
represent the origins of this art. Others, some thirty in
number, are made of brass or copper castings, marking
the final stage of this tradition. In most cases the terracotta
heads are independent works, but some formed part of
life-size statues. They still bear a few traces of the paint
which originally covered them.
Given the physical beauty of the individuals repre¬
sented, and the delicacy of their features, it is often diffi¬
cult to distinguish between male and female. Very often
parallel lines cover the whole face, running from the chin
up towards the forehead and creating an exceptional
effect of harmony and serenity. Could these be royal por¬
trait pieces? Probably - but they are ceremonial portraits,
idealised and removed from the grip of everyday concerns
(figs.4 and 5).
10 Statuette.
Since clay is easily modelled it can be used to give the Mali. Jenne region.
Terracotta. H: 42.5 cm
faces a skin-like texture, animating the thick lips and Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.
almost making the nostrils flare. Unlike the Nok heads, Several snakes are coiled
here the pupil is not deeply marked; the gaze appears to over the body of this
man, who may be a
focus on the infinite, between lifelike and delicate eyelids reliquary figure linked
with the snake cult in the
(fig.6). Where hair is represented, it is always well cared Jenne region. The
meaning of the circles on
for and serves to complement the facial proportions (fig.7). the arms is unknown. The
characteristic protruding
The same characteristics can be seen in the bronze eyeballs hint at a state of
hallucination.
heads (fig.8) which are the peak of this tradition. Holes
around the neck show that they were designed to be fixed
21
Right
onto wooden bodies to take part in the secondary funeral
12 Statue of a ceremonies of the Oni. They embodied the intangible
horseman.
Mali. Niger Inland Delta. permanence of royalty beyond the grave.
National museum of
African Art, Washington. In addition to these portrait heads some highly abstract
human figurines were found at Ife, showing the face as a
cylinder pierced with two holes and a slit for the mouth.
This style, whose purpose is unclear, was
contemporaneous with the princely images. There were
also numerous realistic animal representations.
In the 16th century Ife experienced a decline in bronze
art, due to a shortage of metal as conquered vassal
kingdoms claimed their independence and refused to pay
tribute. Locally available terracotta posed no such
problems, but the style lost its earlier elegance.
Many characteristics of Ife art can be found at Owo,
another Yoruba city half way between Ife and Benin, which
appears to have taken over from Ife in the art of terracotta
during the 15th century. Apart from human heads of great
quality (fig.9), many representations of animals were
found at Owo, together with macabre themes, such as a
basket full of severed human heads, which distanced it
from the Ife spirit. Owo may have played an important part
in the 16th century in transmitting certain elements of Ife
art to Benin.
The perfection of the Ife creations, comparable to the
greatest achievements of Greece or Italy, inevitably
suggested to art historians a non-African origin for this
civilisation. The Mediterranean? Egypt? Frobenius
considered these as possibilities, but such hypotheses
have been rejected in the absence of persuasive
arguments, leaving Ife as the apogee, the purest form, of a
truly African culture.
fit *
 Right
Mysteries of the Niger Inland Delta
13 Male statuette.
Mali. Segou region.
Terracotta. H: 44.3 cm. Statues reaching the art market since 1970 have
Thermoluminescence
testing suggests a date astonished collectors and researchers, who are currently
between the 14th and
16th centuries. Musee trying to enlarge their knowledge of these powerful and
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva
austere works (fig. 10). They were discovered in the Niger
Inland Delta, that vast terrain subject to inundation lying
between the cities of Segou and Timbuktu in Mali. They
are often grouped together under the general description
of Jenne style, but this is not always accurate, since some
were found a long way from the town of Jenne. Only a
small proportion of these works come from official digs
which lifted them from the alluvial soil in which they were
buried. The remainder come from digs operated by people
living beside the River Niger, without any scientific
supervision.
Thermoluminescent analysis places these statues in
periods ranging from the llth-12th centuries for the ear¬
liest up to the 18th century for the most recent. The majo¬
rity probably date from the 14th and 15th centuries. These
statues portray individuals in crouching positions, above
all kneeling with their hands on their knees. The body is
sometimes covered with little balls of earth, evoking
pustules or the lesions of filariosis. There are snakes
everywhere, climbing up their backs or appearing out of
their orifices, noses and ears, and there is even one
woman apparently giving birth to a snake (fig. 11).
The frequent presence of these reptiles seems to
indicate the very ancient existence of an important snake
cult in the local population. The statues, whose link with
the snakes is difficult to specify, may represent royal an¬
cestors of the village who were subsequently deified. They
were hung on walls or set in niches in special sanctuaries
with their own guard and a ritual sacrificial dignitary. The
blood of the animal or human victim was poured over the
statue while the faithful, kneeling in the same position as
the god whom they venerated, identified themselves with
the deity. The importance of the wide and bulging eyes,
perhaps indicating a state of trance induced by halluci¬
14 Ancestor figure. natory drugs, is notable in these statues.
Chad. Sao. Terracotta.
H:20 cm. Musee de
A certain proportion of equestrian statues has been
I'Homme, Paris.
discovered among the productions of the Niger Inland
24
Above and left

17 Anthropomorphic
pot.
Zaire. Medje resion.
Mangbetu. Terracotta. H:
27.4 cm. American
Museum of Natural
History, New York.

27
 Delta. The horse, introduced into Africa during the second
millenium BC, was a rare creature of great prestige in the
15th century AD, a mark of particular luxury. Imbued with
very powerful symbolism, it indicated the pre-eminence of
an individual - a king, a warrior or a founding ancestor
(fig.12).
Traces of sacrifices and ritual burials of horses have
been discovered in digs in the Niger Inland Delta. Such
ceremonies, which may date from the Soninke empire
around the year 1000 AD, also appear in oral tradition,
through myth and legend, with mentions of sacrifices of
virgins, horses and pregnant mares, to seek the help of
15 Head.
Northern Cameroon. the gods.
Afade. Sao. Terracotta.
H:20.3 cm. Museum Other works of an entirely different style known as
d'Histoire Naturelle, La
Rochelle. Bankoni (fig.13), probably of the same period, found
further south in the Segou region, are linked with the
Jenne style statues of the Niger Inland Delta. They exhibit
a surprisingly smooth skin effect, contrasting with the
rough and heavily worked surface of the Jenne creations.
The modelling is supple and lightly defined, aiming at a
realistic effect.

Elsewhere, from Chad to Zaire

Beyond these great areas of terracotta work, many

other regions of Black Africa have proved rich in high-
quality works down the centuries, with figurines frequently
created for ancestor-worship. Only the most remarkable
are mentioned here.
In Chad the Sao people have left traces of a culture
which developed between the 10th and 16th centuries AD
- unless they are archaeological remains. They buried their
dead in coffin-jars set vertically into the ground and cove¬
red with inverted pottery. Their ancestor figurines (figs. 14
and 15), are lifelike despite their small size, and the
heads, with enormous lips, are animated with rare power.
Clothing is represented with care, and zigzag decoration
16 Commemorative plays a large part.
portrait of a dead
queen. The terracotta work discovered in Komaland in the
Ivory Coast. Anyi.
Terracotta. Musee de 1980s should probably also be ascribed to the 15th and
I’Homme, Paris.
16th centuries. As yet, very little is known about them but
28
19 Head.
Ghana. Akan. Ashanti,
17th century. Terracotta.
H: 16 cm. Private
collection.

29
Right
the power of their shaping cannot be ignored (fig. 163,
18 Two-headed vase.
page 174).
Zaire. Niangara region.
Mangbetu. Terracotta. H: Among the Anyi of the southern Ivory Coast, figurines of
24 cm. American Museum
of Natural History, New ancestors or dead rulers, moulded by old women who
York.
were professional mourners, display great expressive
quality, concentrated in a large head set on a neck
embellished with rings (fig. 16). Clothed and bejewelled,
such figures were placed on a platform over the tomb and
protected by a straw roof.
The terracotta creations of the Mangbetu of Zaire are on
the dividing line between pottery and carved figurine, but
their great elegance demands attention. The lower part
consists of a spherical vase decorated with spirals or
geometric motifs, with the neck shaped into a female head
with hair flared out to a fan shape, a style from the
beginning of this century (figs. 17 and 18). There is no
break in the shape. The marriage of a vessel and a female
representation appears entirely natural and harmonious
and the only surprising feature of these anthropomorphic
vases is their apparent uselessness. No ritual purpose has
yet been ascribed to them with certainty, and they were
not suitable for any practical purpose such as cooking or
drinking. They may rather be a symbol of power restricted
to dignitaries.
Created during a relatively short period in the late 19th
or early 20th century, these unusual Mangbetu works
mark one of the final stages in the very long tradition of
Black Africa’s terracotta.
’■IS
iligM
 5 :S -■jB^wjSaLflK^SSi}.'VV.' -?, V
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 Bronze and ivory,
proud possessions
of great kings

Left
1897 marked the end of both the great African
20 Commemorative
kingdom of Benin and the sumptuous art first developed
head of an Oba.
around the 15th century which was already decadent by Nigeria. Benin. Brass. H:
26.5 cm, D: 16 cm. Late
the 19th century. Based on bronze and ivory, it was desi¬ 16th century. Museum fur
Volkerkunde, Vienna.
gned to give the king, the Oba (fig.20), a setting to enhan¬ (Photo: Musee Dapper,
Paris.)
ce his prestige.
A lack of understanding, a clash of attitudes, and, finally,
several misunderstandings contributed to the catastrophe.
The British had settled on the Benin coast in the second half
of the 19th century, seeking to profit from the palm-oil trade;
but the Oba avoided all their proposals, always finding a way
to delay signing any treaty. To put an end to such evasions,
the young British assistant consul general James R. Phillips
decided that, despite everything, he would arrive unarmed
at the Oba's palace, escorted by nine fellow Britons and two
hundred black porters. The Oba agreed to let them in but
was disobeyed by his tribal chiefs, who sent their own peo¬
ple to massacre the little expedition. The Oba then realised
that war was inevitable. As a last resort he ordered multiple
human sacrifices to his ancestors in the palace, but this did
not prevent the arrival of a 1500-strong British expedition.
The city was captured on 18 February 1897.
On entering the town the Europeans discovered a
terrible spectacle: the Oba had fled and the city was full of
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22 View (restored) of
the city of Benin. mutilated sacrificial corpses. Two days later a fire consu¬
Illustrates Olfert Dapper’s med the final remains.
Description de I’Afrique
(1686), Musee Dapper The Oba returned on 5 August, however, and publicly
Archives, Paris.
showed his submission by rubbing his brow throe times on
the ground. After a final attempt to flee he died in exile
sixteen years later in Calabar. Since 1914 his descendants
have recovered a semblance of power, but despite unde¬
niable technical skill, bronze art lost its former royal inspi¬
ration and turned to a foreign clientele.
Not wishing to see its image tarnished in the eyes of the
world, the British government published a report in 1897
which set out the problems: Papers relating to the
34
Massacre of British Officials near Benin and the
consequent Punitive Expedition. As well as historical facts,
it contains a list of royal treasures discovered in the pala¬
ce: in bronze, numerous heads and statues, several hun¬
dred figured plaques, and some seats. In ivory, a large
number of carved tusks, bracelets, and above all two leo¬
pard statues.
At first the British were disappointed by the lack of
precious metals and puzzled by the style of the objects
they found. They appreciated their beauty without being
able to pinpoint their origin. At random, they suggested
Egypt or China.
These treasures, some 2400 objects, were dispersed
throughout the world and bought by the great museums of
Europe and the United States.
If the British had been familiar with the history of Benin
during preceding centuries they would have understood
better the meaning of their discoveries. Benin is in fact one
of the rare African countries whose past has been recor¬
ded in travellers’ accounts, and it is known that Portuguese
explorers and traders arrived there in 1485. Trade soon
flourished in three areas: slavery, ivory and pepper.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the period of the warrior
kings, the Benin sovereigns sought to reinforce their spiri¬
tual powers. They tried to give royalty sacred origins,
combining the concept of divine right with absolute power,
all emphasised by impressive ceremonies and court
etiquette.
Olfert Dapper, a 17th-century Dutch doctor, left a fa¬
mous picture of the city of Benin in his 1668 work Des¬
cription of Africa. This is not an eye-witness account, for
he was merely an armchair traveller, but he brought toge¬
ther many valuable personal accounts and produced the
first reference work on 17th-century Africa.
The book caused surprise with its description of the size
of this African city, perhaps 5 leagues in circumference, and
above all the queen’s palace, about 3 leagues round the
outside. The outside wall was 10 feet high, with several ga¬
tes 8 or 9 feet high and 5 feet wide (fig.21). Next, Dapper
was the first European to mention the wide galleries inside
the immense palace, resting on wooden pillars with brass
plaques showing scenes from contemporary military life.
35
Right Dapper also mentions the pomp surrounding the Oba’s
24 Commemorative appearances: “This prince appears once every year in
head of an Oba.
Niseria. Benin. Mid-19th public, on horseback, covered with royal ornaments, with
century. Brass (with
20.75% zinc), H: 54 cm. a suite of three or four hundred gentlemen [. . .] and a
Musee Picasso, Paris. This
head was acquired by troupe of musicians [. . .]. Tame leopards are led on
Picasso in 1944.
chains, with numerous dwarfs and deaf people who are
present to entertain the king” (fig.22). This parade was not
the only public ceremony, however. “And there is another
day when anyone may see the royal treasures made of
jasper, coral and other rare materials.”
In 1699 another Dutch traveller, David van Nyendael,
finally gave an eye-witness account. The city was much
smaller by then and, as he was no longer the head of the
army, the Oba's powers were diminished. Inside the pala¬
ce van Nyendael saw the altar of an ancestor with eleven
heads cast in brass and surmounted with decorated ele¬
phant tusks.
A final burst of energy in the 18th century allowed the
Oba Akenzua I to retrieve the situation and to instigate a
last artistic revival, but a decline was under way which was
to end in the massacre and collapse of 1897.

“Bronze” heads on ancestors’ altars

The objects found in the palace match the travellers'

descriptions exactly. First and foremost were the brass
Oba heads (fig.20), although they are generally described
as “bronze” (see chapter note). Originally placed on
ancestors’ altars as centrepieces for ceremonies and com¬
memorative sacrifices, they should be considered not as
portraits but as ritual items.
The surface of the faces, smooth and stretched and
their spare form reduced to a few significant elements,
gives an impression of harmonious spirit and youthful
energy - young but confident, the eyes fixed on the future
with all the self-assurance of power and all the dignity of
royalty. The king wears a high collar of coral beads and a
flat head-cover woven like a net of coral and enhanced by
agates set in relief. Symbols of sovereignty, these beads
were reserved for the Oba, the queen mother and a few
important dignitaries. They represented other beads
Right which, according to legend, had been stolen from the
21 Entrance to the palace of Olokun, the god of water. Every year they were
Royal Palace, Benin.
Nigeria. Benin. Brass. endowed with fresh vital energy through the blood of sacri¬
British Museum, London.
A python is visible on the ficial victims.
turret above the gate. The
pillars on each side of the In the 17th century the heads were made with thicker
gate are covered with
bronze plates bronze. The metal was used less sparingly because the
representing people set
vertically above each
Oba sold great numbers of slaves and received in exchan¬
other. ge “manillas” of brass brought in by Europeans. The base
of the heads was edged with a broad border sometimes
overlaid with small animals to provide a better balance and
a long elephant tusk, covered with carving representing
mythological themes and episodes of oral tradition, was
set on top of each head. Only a small circle of initiates
understood its meaning (fig.23).
In the middle of the 19th century the quality of the
bronze work declined. Lifeless features were set in mecha¬
nical reproductions of the models while secondary decora¬
tive elements proliferated, particularly curving “wings”
placed on either side of the face on the orders of Oba
Osemwede (1816-1848). (See fig.24.)
Queen mothers’ heads (fig. 162, page 172) followed a
similar pattern. Like the Oba they had the right to a net¬
work of beads, but their head-dress was conical, a “chic¬
ken’s beak”. Moreover, it was very frequently a bronze
cock (fig.25) which stood on their altars, where it figured
both as a protective spirit and as a spy on dynastic
plotting.

The Oba court revived

When the Benin creations became known in Europe, it

was possible to relate them to Dapper’s descriptions and
perceive the exact relationship between object and
description. A whole culture is thus preserved and visibly
brought to life.
Dapper mentioned “dwarfs”. They have been redisco¬
vered, and authors such as the German von Luschan, and
above all William Fagg, former curator of the British
Museum's Department of Ethnology, placed these statues
among Benin’s most remarkable antiquities, both in their
naturalistic spirit and in their perfect casting, producing a
 ma ;...'ii ■ I ^ ■L' : - • \ I: \,.
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 25 Cock.
Nigeria. Benin, 17th
century. Brass. H: 53 cm.
Museum fur Volkerkunde,
Vienna. (Photo, Musee
Dapper.) Simultaneously
realistic and stylised, this
highly expressive cock
was set on the
commemorative altar of a
queen mother.

40
smooth and plump surface similar to the best Oba heads.
What of the origin and date of such perfection? Ife or
Benin? Doubt persists, but the realistic style is certainly
the same as that of Benin.
The whole psychological world of these dwarfs can be
seen in their appearance. One (fig.26) seems appointed to
cheer up the Prince, for jokes must surely sparkle from
this sarcastic face, while the very slightly lifted heel indi¬
cates an imminent pirouette. The other dwarf (fig.27), with
its intelligent expression, is immobile and looks philoso¬
phical. Each one is in character.
Also established in their role, these Messengers (fig. 28
and page 11) are fully conscious of their importance and
richly dressed to represent their sovereign with due digni¬
ty. The man probably held an L-shaped bar of iron in his
hand, which would identify him as a messenger of the
king of Ife. The significance of the “cat’s whiskers” scarifi¬
cation is not clear: it may refer to the fur of certain felines,
or be the mark of a secret society.
The whole court, finally, appears on the thousand car¬
ved plaques covering the palace walls in Dapper's time.
Aids to the collective memory, designed as reminders of
the military campaigns and the conquests of these
important people, they could sometimes be “read” in
sequence. Cast in the 16th and 17th centuries, when lar¬
ge quantities of brass were available, they were taken
down after the fire in the royal palace at the end of the
17th century and never replaced. The British found them
“buried beneath the dust of centuries”, according to the
26 Statue of a court
official account. dwarf.
And yet, what a marvellous strip cartoon! Everything is Nigeria. Benin. Late
14th/early 15th century.
there. First the Oba, full length (fig.29), standing a head Brass. H: 59.5 cm.
Museum fur Volkerkunde,
taller than the dignitaries on his right and left and who Vienna. (Photo: Musee
Dapper.)
often support his arm symbolically. Clothes and weapons
are carefully detailed, and particularly the ceremonial
sword, the symbol of power. Smaller figures, of musicians,
complete the sovereign’s retinue, playing bells, castanets
or horns.

41
 Above

28 Statue of a
messenger.
Nigeria. Benin. Late
16th/early 17th century.
Brass. H: 60 cm. Museum
fur Volkerkunde, Vienna.
(Photo, Musee Dapper.)

Right

27 Statue of a court
dwarf.
Nigeria. Benin. 13th/15th
century. Brass. H: 59 cm.
Museum fur Volkerkunde,
Vienna. (Photo, Musee
Dapper.)

42
 Elsewhere the Bull sacrifice marking the funeral of an
Oba shows the priest and his aides carrying out their
duties (fig.30).
There is a surprising plaque showing a Horseman
(fig.31) in unusual clothing with a particularly interesting
head-dress. He has been described successively as the king
of a friendly neighbouring people, or even Oranmyan of
Ife, a mythical Yoruba ancestor who introduced horses to
Benin, but the mystery remains unsolved. The plaque
representing a European trader (fig.32) is happily easier to
interpret; his smooth beard and hair are unmistakeable,
like the brass manillas which the man brings to exchange
for the cargoes he will take away.
The very numererous images of dignitaries were not
portraits, but they certainly reminded contemporary
viewers of specific individuals whom, sadly, we cannot
identify. They have become simple archetypes.
Independently of their subjects, these plaques can be
seen to represent many diverse styles. There are stylised
frontal images (The Oba with his officials) but the
embarrassment of the bronze-caster can sometimes be
felt, when faced with a problem he cannot resolve (Sacri¬
fice of the bull). In such cases the craftsman juxtaposes
Above
contradictory points of view, as a modern artist would do.
31 Plaque showing a
horseman. Sometimes a search for movement and volume is appa¬
Nigeria. Benin. 17th
century. Brass. H: 35 cm. rent (Portrait of a horseman), involving assymetry and
L: 29 cm. Museum fur
Volkerkunde, Vienna. depth. Some influences may be European, derived from
(Photo: Musee Dapper.)
This mysterious horseman
the small devotional objects and pious images brought into
is unusual in its Benin by missionaries.
asymmetric style.
The background of the plaques is always covered with
scattered crosses set within circles or four-leaf clovers,
emblems which may refer to the creation of the world.
Similarly the rosettes placed in the corner of the plaques
may refer to the sun and to Olokun, the water god who
absorbs the light in the evening. This mythic element
Right defined by A. Duchateau, chief curator of the Black Africa
29 Plaque showing an department of the Museum fur Volkerkunde, eliminates
Oba with dignitaries
and musicians. any consideration of motifs as simple space-filling and
Nigeria. Benin. H: 38.5
cm. L: 39 cm. 17th relates them to the theme of the deification of the Oba as
century. Museum fur
Volkerkunde, Vienna. an intermediary between his people and the forces of the
(Photo: Musee Dapper.)
supernatural, of which he was seen as the earthly personi¬
fication.
44
 Animals of great significance

This emphasis on symbolism and repeated reference to

myths is also apparent in the numerous animal images on
all kinds of object. From their earliest days the people of
Black Africa remained very close to nature and created a
network of significant relationships with the animal world
which united myth, proverb and popular wisdom. These
animals were all part of the symbolism of the Oba’s power
as he reigned on earth and interceded with Olokun. Semi-
aquatic creatures are prominent, with crocodiles appea¬
ring as guardians of law and order. Snakes are every¬
where: as Olokun’s messenger and games-companion, the
snake appears on weapons and armour as well as vases
and even the tops of palace gates. The fish is the symbol
of peace and fertility. The sovereign is frequently repre¬
sented with catfish legs, perhaps because an Oba of
ancient times, whose legs were paralysed from the age of
25, disguised his disability by creating a myth that, on
pain of the most terrible fate, the Oba's legs should never
touch the ground. The union of the earth (the Oba) and
water (Olokun) is also personified by the frog which
embellishes a splendid pendant (fig.33).
As early as the Dapper period, birds appeared to watch
over the royal palace. They symbolised the opposition
between day and night, good and evil. One particular bird,
a priestly Ibis, continues his watch on a plaque (fig.34).
But the Leopard (fig.35) is, without doubt, the scul¬
ptor’s greatest and most frequently copied achievement.
In bronze or ivory, he appears everywhere; powerful, fier¬
ce, sharp-toothed, with curving crouch, velvet paws and
rich dappled coat, he symbolises the Oba wisely restrai¬
ning his limitless powers. Only the king or his hunters were
entitled to kill leopards, and strictly for sacrificial purposes.
30 Plaque showing a
bull sacrifice. Other leopards, captive and tamed, paraded every year in
Nigeria. Benin. Brass. H:
51 cm. British Museum, the Oba’s retinue, each one a proof of the ruler’s power,
London.
even over these lords of the forest.

46
 Mysterious origins

In their very perfection all these works - human or ani¬

mal silhouettes, in bronze or ivory - raise questions as to
the origins of this art. The finest creations date from the
earliest periods, the 16th and 17th centuries, while the
18th and particularly the 19th centuries show relative
degeneration.
The surviving 16th-century works appear to have
reached a state of perfection and a total mastery of techni¬
que. Where was the apprenticeship stage? Where are the
earlier attempts?
The existence of “lead bronzes” on the African conti¬
nent is very ancient. There are references from the 6th
century in Senegal and the 8th-9th centuries in Mauri¬
tania. But above all there are the many objects in bronze
cast by the lost wax process found in the village of Igbo-
Ukwu. Different specialists give dates between the 10th
and 15th centuries. They are strikingly complex and
delicately decorated, but their style is profoundly different 32 Plaque showing a
European surrounded
from that of Benin - in fact it resembles no other art, so by manillas.
Nigeria. Benin. Brass. H:
the Igbo-Ukwu finds are not generally regarded as 46 cm. W: 34 cm. Late
16th century. Museum fur
precursors of Benin art. Volkerkunde, Vienna.
(Photo: Musee Dapper.)
This is in contrast to the city of Ife some 200 kilometres The manillas were used
for bartering in the slave
away, where distinguished art developed between the 12th trade.
and 15th centuries. In 1968 the black chief Jacob Egha-
revba published the result of his research into Benin's
myths and traditions, concluding that the Benin dynasty
originated in Ife around the 14th century. He states that
dynastic difficulties resulted in the Benin inhabitants
(known as the Edo) begging the king of Ife to send a prin¬
ce to rule over Benin. In order to overcome local resis¬
tance and gain popular acceptance, the prince married an
Edo wife. Through his mother, the son of this first prince
thus had the right to govern the Edo despite his connec¬
tions with Ife. Subsequently all queen mothers were to
enjoy a position of privilege in Benin.

47
 According to tradition, when the first Oba died his head
was sent to Ife for burial, with Ife sending back a bronze
head for the ancestors’ altar. Towards the end of the 14th
century the king of Benin demanded from the king of Ife a
craftsman who could teach the art of bronze work to his
people. The Ife artist, Ighe-lgha or Ighea, found himself in
Benin among artists who were already well trained. Since
the 13th century they had known how to produce brass
and to work it by hammering or incising but had difficul¬
ties with the technique of casting. They also knew how to
make heads in wood or clay for the ancestral altars of their
noble families. From then on they were to transfer their
own ideas and aesthetics to bronze work. A bronze Head
dating from the 15th century, preserved in the Lagos
national museum and probably representing an Oba, is
clearly very similar to a terracotta Head of the same period
(also in the Lagos museum), discovered on Ighea’s
commemorative altar and therefore not representing an
Oba. This latter head is typical of Benin art and although
made of terracotta could not have any connection with Ife.
33 Pendant with frog in
relief.
Tradition again has it that there was a custom in Benin
Nigeria. Benin. Late 17th of decapitating vanquished kings and offering their heads
century. Brass. H: 12.5
cm. W:10.5 cm. Museum to the Oba, who would have replicas cast by his foundry
fur Volkerkunde, Vienna.
(Photo: Musee Dapper.) craftsmen. It might happen that the son of a rebel king
would none the less ascend the throne; to remind the son
of the risks of insubordination and of his father’s fate, the
Oba would send him the bronze portrait of his father. The
trophy heads from the early 16th century may therefore
represent records of the kings’ victories over their ene¬
mies.
The very beautiful and rare Head in the Barbier-Mueller
collection in Geneva (fig.36) dates from the first period of
the Benin kingdom, before 1550. It may either be the
head of a dead king destined for a commemorative altar -
Right
it is only 21 cm. high - or the head of a vanquished king.
34 Plaque showing a
mythological long- In either case it shows the perfection of the technical
beaked bird.
Brass. H: 41 cm. W: 17 casting attained by the Benin craftsmen and the elegant
cm. 17th century.
Museum fur Volkerkunde,
stylisation which raised their works far above the level of a
Vienna. (Photo: Musee simple realistic copy.
Dapper.)

48
 Craftsmen in bronze and ivory

The casting technique which Ighea passed on to the

Benin craftsmen is said to be that of lost wax (see chapter
note). Despite its difficulty it made possible the creation of
very delicate bronze works which were sometimes only 1
mm. thick - for in the 16th century it was imperative to be
sparing with this extremely rare metal. Subsequently, the
large quantities of alloy needed by the bronze founders
were supplied partly from tribute exacted from conquered
races and partly through trade with Europe.
Another body of remarkable craftsmen worked for the
Oba. These were the ivory workers, who often came from
the neighbouring city of Owo. They created the king’s
ceremonial regalia, which were masterpieces of refine¬
ment and technical skill, such as the Armband (fig.37)
made of two cylinders carved from a single tusk yet capa¬
ble of being turned separately. Then there was the Mask,
profoundly imbued with humanism (fig.38), which was an
attribute of the Oba at the height of his power. In 1897 the
British discovered a chest full of these ornaments in the
king’s chamber.
The symbolic significance of leopards has already been
noted, and they were represented by bronze and ivory
workers alike.
These two groups of skilled craftsmen were subject to
strict regulation. Bronze was reserved exclusively for the
Oba and his family, while ivory craftsmen worked primarily
but not exclusively for the king, for rich nobles were
allowed to commission their work. Whenever hunters killed
an elephant the Oba automatically received one tusk and
had first refusal to buy the other. Guilds of bronze and
ivory craftsmen were required to live in a particular part of
the city where they could be more easily supervised by
palace officials.
In Benin, bronze and ivory work has always been a
royal art - royal in its destination and royal in the great
prestige of its creations.

49
 Above and right

35 Leopards.
Niseria. Benin. 19th-
century copies of earlier
models.
Ivory. H: 81.5 cm. British
Museum, London. Lent by
H.M.The Queen,
These leopards were
placed beside the Oba
for public state
appearances. Each animal
is made from five tusks,
the eyes are made of
mirror and the spots are
copper discs.

50
 The technique of lost wax casting

Lost wax casting can be used for bronze or brass just as

easily as for gold.
1. For a small object, or a jewel, the craftsman prepares
a wax model of his work.
lb For a large hollow item the caster prepares a central
core from a mixture of clay and charcoal in the desired
shape and then applies wax over this core and carves the
surface in great detail.
2. The artist adds a wax extension to conduct the mol¬
ten metal.
3. The wax core is then covered with fine clay, powde¬
37 Armband with
double cylinders red and dampened, taking care to follow the shapes of the
carved with stylised
figures. surface design.
Nigeria. Benin. 18th
century. Ivory. H: 11.3 4. Using coarser clay mixed with kapok, the caster
cm. D: 9.5 cm. Museum
fur Volkerkunde, Vienna.
creates a mould of the whole work of art.
(Photo: Musee Dapper.) 5. The mould is heated; the wax melts, and is replaced
by molten metal which fills the empty space.
6. Once cool, the mould is broken to remove the work
of art. It can therefore only be used once.

Bronze or brass?

The alloy used for these castings was approximately 75

per cent copper, 20 per cent zinc, 1.5-2.0 per cent lead
and 0.80 per cent tin. Strictly speaking it was thus not
bronze but brass, but the name Benin “bronzes” is custo¬
marily used.

Geographical note

The modern state of Benin is not the same as old

Benin, which lay in what is now Nigeria
Right °

36 Head of a dead king

or conquered ruler.
Nigeria. Benin. Brass. H:
21 cm. First period, pre-
1550. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.
 Above and right

38 Mask.
Nigeria. Benin. Ivory. The
Metropolitan museum of
Art, New York.
The Oba probably wore
this ivory mask hanging at
his side for a ceremony
honouring his dead
mother, but the identity
of this portrait is
unknown. It is thought to
be a woman because in
Benin the number of
marks over the eyes is
three for men and four for
women. The crown of the
head is set with
Portuguese heads, which
suggest that it may
represent Idia, mother of
king Esigie, whose reign
covered the arrival of the
Portuguese in Benin.

54
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 Art from
the Royal Courts
of Cameroon

Left
Political power in Cameroon was divided into units of
39 Detail of a hut post.
varying size. Beside powerful kingdoms like those of the
Chieftainry of Bamali,
Bamoum and the Tikar, in the north-west of the country, Ndop plain, north-west
Cameroon. Carved wood.
called the Grassland, there were numerous smaller chief- (Photo: Louis Perrois.)
The characters are set
tainries. vertically above each
other. Note the
The very complex artistic styles did not necessarily individualistic style of
carvins with its elonsated
coincide with ethnological boundaries. Among the latter forms, as if drawn from
the solidity of the base.
the large Bamileke group, with its many subdivisions, was
pushed back onto the high plateaux of central Cameroon
by the rapidly expanding Bamoum at the turn of the cen¬
tury. All, however, developed a richly varied artistic pro¬
duction.
The chieftainries are like small nation-states whose
institutions are clearly defined but vary from one chief¬
tain ry to another. In general the chief, aided by his coun¬
sellors, governs the nation and has his orders carried out
by various secret societies or brotherhoods (the Bangwa
people’s Brotherhood of the Night is an example). These
involve princes, nobility, officials and palace guards. Each
brotherhood has its own masks and musical instruments.
Society everywhere is intensely hierarchical and subject
to powerful stratification, and art in the king’s palace
differs from village art. In the Grassland chieftainries the
chief, or king, known as the “Fon”, lives with his court in
 the capital which is thus a religious and cultural centre.
The compartment holding the skulls of the Fon’s ancestors
is inside the palace; possession of these skulls is essential
to legitimise his power, and periodically he worships them.
In Cameroon - as indeed elsewhere in Black Africa - the
cult of the dead plays an important role as the basis of
traditional religion. Even outside the palace the skulls of
the famous dead are preserved and receive propitiatory
offerings. The palace also has a compartment containing
the chieftainry’s treasure, which consists of statues of ear¬
lier kings, thrones, masks, and sacred musical instru¬
ments.
The Fon in each chieftainry has reached the peak of
the hierarchy of all the brotherhoods and with the magical
powers ascribed to him he is supposed to transform
41 Bafandji funeral himself into a panther, a buffalo, a python or an elephant.
masks used for Fon
funerals. His power is also based on military strength which enables
(Photo: Louis Perrois.)
him on occasion to annex a weaker neighbouring
chieftainry and to gain payment of a tribute which will help
to maintain the wealth of the court.
Art radiates out from the focal point of the royal palace,
although it must be remembered that Cameroon has
hundreds of chieftainries. Therefore, there is a wide
difference between the small principalities and the vast
contemporary kingdoms such as Dahomey or Benin with
their greatly superior financial means. Despite such
subdivisions Cameroon has long been a particularly fertile
artistic breeding-ground, one of Black Africa's great
centres of creativity.
Work in wood, metal or pottery was in the hands of
professionals who passed down trade secrets from father
to son and enjoyed general prestige. Sometimes the Fon
and the princes themselves deigned to take part in artistic
Right creativity, such as the Fon of Babanki’s wood carving or

40 Royal statue. the Bamoum king Njoya’s invention of decorative fabric

Cameroon. Banswa. H: motifs.
102 cm. The Metropolitan
museum of Art, New Wood-working was often on a monumental scale, giving
York.
Some traditional royal scope for creating architectural elements, carved window-
attributes can be seen on
this statue - the royal frames or door-frames for the dwellings of chiefs or secret
necklace, the pipe in the
left hand and the sourd in societies (fig.39); among the Bamileke such carved
the right hand.
embellishments were marks of prestige reserved for the
nobility and the chief s wife can often be seen among
58
 these creations, full-face among mythically significant
animals. The tortoise is involved in ordeals; the spider is
essential to divining rituals; water creatu-res, caymans and
snakes are symbols of fertility; and above all the panther is
the royal beast. Humans and animals are juxtaposed as
they stand in horizontal or vertical rows.
Work on actual statues leant more towards the court, and
its desire for decoration and representation, than towards
religious rites. On his accession each Fon commissioned a
statue of himself as well as one of the wife who had given
him his first child, statues designed not for ancestor worship
but as commemorative portraits (fig.40). Standing, or seated
on a carved stool, the kings hold various accessories such
as a pipe or drinking horn, and brandish a cutlass or an
enemy skull. The forms are generous, the realism
dynamic, the figure solidly balanced with legs apart. The
queens, sometimes showing signs of pregnancy, stand
upright and carry a wine gourd or a bamboo flute.
The surface of statues and wooden objects is often
covered with glass beads or cowrie shells stitched onto
fabric fitted over the whole statue. This technique reflects
the Cameroon people’s great love of polychrome effects.

42 Statue from the Treasures of the Fons

chieftainry of
Mandankwe.
(Photo: Louis Perrois.) Each important Fon possessed a treasure which often
constituted a very fine collection and Louis Perrois,
Director of Research at ORSTOM (the French overseas
scientific and technical research Office), has visited the
area with his team to carry out an inventory of these un¬
known treasures.
In the Grassland of the north, the Fon of Bafandji
owned one of the most important treasures in terms of
beauty and antiquity, including in particular the Masks
(fig.41) which were used for the Fon’s funeral ceremonies.
Their tendency towards abstract detail indicated their
originality and, as Louis Perrois comments, “The facial
elements are taken separately and reassembled in a
symbolic manner as a reminder that the Fon belongs to
the Council of nine nobles”. The protuberances above the
face refer to the royal hat seen on some statues.
60
 The Fon of Mandankwe reigned over a small chieftainry
near the city of Bamenda. In his treasure a Royal beaded
statue (figs.42 and 43) represents a seated man whose
ceremonial head-dress and ritual vase, held in his right
hand, may indicate that he is a Fon.
The treasure of the Fon of Babungo, in the north-west
of the country, has thousands of items. This “collection”,
the most substantial in quantity, constitutes a true
“traditional folklore museum”, containing beaded thrones
with anthropomorphic seat-backs, masks, architectural
elements and containers, all designed to create a
prestigious setting round the Fon.
The Fon of Korn (fig.44) could be proud of possessing in
his palace at Laikom the most famous and beautiful of
Cameroon’s royal statues, the finest flowering of a remar¬
kable collection of objects of all kinds, from statues to
pipes. The three great statues at Laikom, representing the
Afo-a-Kom and two women, are doubly regal: created in
the reign of the 7th Fon of Korn (between 1865 and 1912),
these figures may be the work of the Fon himself and of
two princes. The male Statue (figs.45 and 46) is thought to
be the portait of the Fon Nkwain Nindu, who ruled between
1825 and 1840. Originally the statues of a queen mother
(fig.47) and the Fon’s wife were complemented by three
more figures representing a child and two servants. 43 Detail of the
Mandankwe statue.
Almost life size, these statues are in fact seat-backs (Photo: Louis Perrois.)
depicting the human form, traditional in Cameroon. They
symbolised the chieftainry’s prosperity and power, and
were presented to the people at the great annual dance
and at royal funerals. The Cameroon people’s love and
veneration for these works was intense, and was
particularly evident when the three statues, stolen in 1966,
were discovered in the United States and returned in
triumph to Laikom.
Full of dignity and ethereal serenity, these figures are
idealised portraits, well suited to endure down the
centuries as expressions of the highest peak of humanity.
They are among the masterpieces of Black African art.
Near Laikom the chieftainry of Oku produced the Ngon
Masks (fig.48) representing heads of princesses similar to
those of the Afo-a-Kom statues. Their surface is covered
with sheets of brass instead of beading.
61
44 The Fon of the Kom
chieftainry. The Bamoum and King Njoya
(Photo: Louis Perrois.)
The seated Fon is
surrounded by his
The Bamoum, a dynamic race who conquered their way
chieftainry's royal
treasure. On the risht of from the north two or three centuries ago, pushed the
the photo are the three
famous statues Bamileke back into the mountains to the west and settled in
represents the Afo-a-
Kom and two women. the high plains. From their capital Foumban they organised
On the left are other
statues of earlier kings and a strong and unified kingdom, even occasionally conquering
sacred musical
instruments (bells and others. Bamoum art tends towards dramatisation, power and
Songs).
sumptuous luxury and although it lacks the refinement of the
best Bamileke works, it inspired some very fine creations.
The Bamoum were fortunate to be led by King Njoya. a
man of exceptional intelligence and a great lover of art. His
long reign - from 1886 to 1933 - fostered a great spread of
creativity.
 In his contacts with cultures other than his own, Njoya
benefited from the best that they could offer without losing
his Bamoum identity. Having converted first to Islam, he
became a Christian in 1902, during the German colonial
occupation; in 1915, with the departure of the Germans,
he became a Moslem once more, reverting again to
Christianity under the influence of French Protestant mis¬
sionaries. These shifts resulted in the creation of a new
religion, founded by Njoya on the basis of his own synthe¬
sis of the Bible and the Koran.
Having understood the importance of writing, he com¬
missioned his scribes to develop a script suitable for a
transcription of the tonally based Bamoum language.
Finally, he founded the first truly African museum, the
Foumban Museum, which contains statues and objects
from the royal collection as well as other items assembled
on his orders: statues, masks, weapons, war trophies, sa¬
cred symbols of power and the insignia of secret societies.
Now fully catalogued, the Foumban Museum helps to
perpetuate the tradition of Bamoum art.
Although there is unfortunately no statue of Njoya to
accompany the Afo-a-Kom figurines, German photogra¬
phers who were in Foumban before 1915 collected a
substantial body of material on the royal family which is
now preserved in the Museum of African art in Washing¬
ton. The sophisticated life of a large court early in the 20th
century can be seen and appreciated here, with its combi¬
nation of ancestral traditions and the best of European
influences.
Washington is also now the home of a beaded statue,
almost certainly the commemorative Effigy of a member of
the court (fig.49), which dates from around 1908.
According to the latest research, it was created on the
orders of King Njoya to commemorate the death of
Captain Glauning, a German colonial officer who died in
battle against the Tiv in 1908. By using elongated blue
beads the artist skilfully emphasised the blue linear
pattern on a white background. The stylised face is very
45 Statue of the Afo-a-
expressive. Kom of Laikom.
(Photo: Louis Perrois.)
Another small Bamoum Beaded statue in the Musee de This wooden statue,
almost completely
I’Homme in Paris (fig.50) is unfortunately less well covered with beads, is a
throne-fisure.
documented.
63
 Right
Pipes and state seats
47 Detail of female
figure, possibly a
queen mother. Among the Bamileke, as with the Bamoum, the official
Part of the Laikom chief's
treasure (Afo-a-Kom). seat is a symbol of power and social rank and the throne
(Photo: Louis Perrois.)
was made on the accession of a new chief, at the same
time as the royal statue. The seat is placed on a figure,
which may be an animal or a woman, and the back is
made up of statues of one or two figures.
King Njoya’s throne, which is preserved in the Museum
fur Volkerkunde in Berlin, was presented to Germany by
the king himself. It is completely covered with beads, pre¬
dominantly in tones of blue, brown and black, enhanced
with white cowries. Several two-headed snakes, symbols of
royal power, help to support the seat.
The king also had his Travelling throne (fig.51), without
a back. A series of figures of servants act as caryatids for
this stool, holding each other’s shoulders in a sequence
which matches that on the step of the great throne; their
faces, covered with sheets of copper, are similar to the
njah masks which were used for certain festivities. Around
the cowrie-encrusted seat, the edging with its triangle
decoration is a reference to the royal leopard with its
spotted fur.
In the court, the members of the royal family, officials,
and the grand initiates of the brotherhoods each had the
right to a seat indicating their social rank. Despite its luxu¬
rious appearance, a great Seat with back (fig.52) does not
appear to have been destined for King Njoya but for the
queen mother, the second most important person in the
state. The royal symbol of the two-headed snake appears
on the base of the seat as well as on its back.
Pipes existed in endless variety (figs.53 and 54). Very
48 Ngon mask
From the chieftainry on fine brass pipes were often made by the Tikar, using the
the slopes of Mount Oku.
Head of a princess in lost wax process - they were specialists in the arts of
wood, plated with old
brass. (Photo: Louis metal-working. The majority of the pipes were, however,
Perrois.)
made of clay at Bamessing, the chief centre for pottery.
This art was reserved exclusively for men.
Both the size and the decoration of the pipe were
regulated by a strict code, according to the fortunate
owner’s rank and wealth: a simple geometric motif for an
ordinary citizen, a human feature for high officials or
members of the royal family, and an animal motif if the
64
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 owner belonged to a secret society or had totemic links
with the animal represented. Among the Bamoum, King
Njoya often gave terracotta or brass pipes as wedding
presents; the bowls had very complex decoration and the
stems were encrusted with polychrome beads. The motif
on the carved portion was most frequently a human head
with puffed-out cheeks and rows of six-legged spiders,
insects of mythic significance.
Some pipes were too large to use, and were therefore
simply prestige objects. Only the other, smaller pipes,
known as “travel pipes”, were ever actually used.
To the seats and the pipes should be added a long list
of luxury objects, such as fly-whisks and drinking-horns,
which were designed to confirm the prestige of chiefs or
kings. Preserved in chiefs’ treasuries, in the Foumban
museum or in the great museums of the United States
and Europe, they all offer glimpses of the high level of
54 Chiefs pipe. artistic creativity in Cameroon in the past.
Cameroon Grassland.
Bamoum. Clay, with
beaded pipe. Total
length: 110 cm. Museum
of Ethnography, Antwerp.

66
 IllfSlj

53 Brass pipe with

elephant’s head.
Cameroon. Bamoum.
Museum Rietberg, Zurich.

67
 Far right

46 Detail of a head of
the great statue of the
Fon Nkwain-Nindu
(1825-1850), Afo-a-
Kom.
Chieftainry of Laikom.
North-west Cameroon.
Note the antique tubular
beads and the metallic
facial covering. (Photo:
Louis Perrois.)

Left

49 Commemorative
polychrome statue.
Cameroon. Bamoum.
1908 (approx). Wood,
copper, glass beads and
cowries. Museum of
African Art, Washington
DC.

Right

50 Beaded statue.
Cameroon. Bamoum.
Beads, cowries and
fabric. H: 35 cm. Musee
de I’Homme, Paris.
1

51 Large seat.
Cameroon. Bamoum.
Given by king Njoya to a
German officer, c.1905.
Wood, cowries, beads
and leaves of hammered
copper. H: 57 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

Right

52 Seat with back.

Cameroon. Bamoum.
Wood, beads, cowries
and plates of hammered
copper. H: 120 cm.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.
ilft'
iSMiw
 Masks and dances
bringing myths
to life

Left
Imprisoned in a show-case or nailed to the wall like an
owl over a barn door, the mask is a dead object. It was an 56 Do mask.
Ivory Coast. Bondoukou
essential basis for a fabric or raffia costume, inseparable resion. Wood, blue and
white oilpaint, thread and
from the music, rhythms, chanting, sacrifice and the full fabric. H: 28.8 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
ritual which accompanied it and brought it to life. Immobi¬ The masks of the Do
secret society were used
le and solitary, deprived of the elements which frequently by Moslem worshippers
for feasts markins the end
raised it to a different level of meaning, its significance is of Ramadan and for
dignitaries’ funerals. This
lost. mask combines a calao
But what is its meaning? What is its aim? The world of bird’s beak and a human
face. The dancer
the mask is as complex, widespread and convoluted as performs alone at the end
of the ceremony, with the
the equatorial forest, but a few guiding elements may be community hoping that
propitious impulses
distinguished. With Marie-Noel Verger-Fevre, research emanating from the calao
will have a lasting effect.
assistant in the Black Africa department of the Musee de
I’Homme in Paris, we can look at the arrival of the Gbah
(chimpanzee) mask in an Ivory Coast village: “He is
brought in on a sort of litter [. . .]. He jumps off suddenly
and performs a wild dance [. . .]. He throws himself
roughly onto one of his acolytes, knocking him to the floor,
and appears to disembowel him, puts a piece of fruit in his
mouth and departs, leaving him for dead. Soon after, the
man reawakens and performs a triumphal dance with his
companions”. Next comes the interpretation of the scene:
“The mask mimed the scene which in the past saved the
male villagers’ ancestors who were about to be massacred
 by their enemies [ . After consuming the fruit left by the
chimpanzee, they were plunged into hypnotic sleep and
considered dead by their enemies. Since then this clan has
not eaten any chimpanzees and does not kill them.”.
Thus the mask perpetuates and regularly revives the
historic tale which it portrays. History is often fixed by
myth: the mask brings life to the tribe’s founding myths,
and to the myths of everyday life. It locates them within
the real experience of the living.
More generally, it may be said that the mask is the
personification of a spirit, of a supernatural creature
intervening in village life. It stands at the junction of the
sacred and the profane, making the next world visible and
regulating individual existence, and in this setting every¬
thing becomes possible. Given visual expression by the
mask, the spirit can defend an unwritten moral code, trac¬

Above and right king down and punishing those who do not conform to
accepted laws.
57 Nimba mask.
Guinea. Baga. Hardwood, Such displays involving masks enable laws to be
upholstery nails and small
French coins. H: 135 cm. passed from generation to generation without being written
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva. down. These laws are personified, given redoubtable
This is the largest of the
African masks. It was repressive powers and intensified through the transfiguring
placed on the head of
the dancer whose body masks as they move into a supernatural world which
was concealed beneath a
fibre robe. Two holes cut
endows them with an even greater constraining force. In
between the breasts addition, the laws are made attractive, integrated into the
enabled him to see. An
image of fertility, the collective unconscious, and more readily accepted.
Nimba appeared at the
time of the rice harvest. Whatever the form of the mask, it differs profoundly
from the carved statuette. Even if an artist works in both
fields at the same time, his style is different. The mask be¬
longs to a separate world and does not always reflect the
style of ethnic figurines and, although the sculptor was
bound to conform with tradition for each category of mask,
the mask frequently displays surprising combinations of
form. Unlike statues, the mask very often unites human
and animal elements to create a hybrid incorporating into
the human elements not only an animal form but above all
its vital force, so that the mask links the dancer to
everything living in the world (figs.55, 56 and p.8)
Finally, as a creation independent of man, the mask
rarely depicts humans: in fact it is deliberately different from
them. It is this difference which constitutes its strength.
The intervention of masks marks all the significant
74
 moments in African life, and three stages in particular:
fertility rites, initiation into adult life and funerals. This is
not an exclusive list, however, and, depending on the cus¬
toms of each ethnic group, masks may appear in the most
varied situations.

Fertility rites

These masks tend to be found in regions sufficiently far

from the Equator for the rhythm of the seasons to allow
significant crop cultivation. Fertility rites belong to the end
of the harvest, as in the cultures of, for example, Guinea,
Above and previous Mali, the Ivory Coast and the Cameroon Grassland. The
page
participants ask the spirits and the gods concerned to
55 Janus mask of
Waniugo style. grant them descendants, to help the crops and increase
Northern Ivory Coast.
Senufo region. Musee
their livestock.
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
This double mask is
At harvest time the Baga, who live near the Guinea
entirely composed of
threatening features: the
coast, take the great Nimba mask (fig.57) through their
jaws bristling with large fields. The peasants see its fibre robes and heavy breasts
teeth, the multiple horns
and, above all for appearing from among the crops and beg for its protection,
Africans, the small cup
held by two chameleons even if elsewhere they proclaim themselves as Moslems.
on top of the head.
Material alleged to give In the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, in rites begging
the mask strength and evil
power was put into this
the god Do to grant rain to the farmers, numerous zo.omor-
cup. A magical object, it phic masks mingle human and animal features. The form
was used by small
associations of men of the butterfly (fig.58) is a reminder that these insects
attached to the Poro.
See p.8 for a Wambele appear in great numbers immediately after the first rains.
mask dancing. Ivory
Coast, Senufo. Barbier- Among the Bambara, who are also farmers, at the be¬
Mueller Archives, Geneva.
ginning of the rainy season young men wearing Tyiwara
crests (figs.59 and 60) dance in the evening in the village
square after their day's work in the fields. They glorify the
spirit Tyiwara, guardian of the harvest and object of
worship by the society that bears its name. The Tyiwara
crests are always in pairs, male and female side by side,
marvels of harmonious elegance.
In the north of Cameroon the Ma'bu mask (belonging to
the Ngwarong secret society) is used in land and fertility
rituals (fig.61). This very powerful mask also appears at
funeral ceremonies. The face combines anthropomorphic
and zoomorphic features, with its “visor” forehead and the
puffed-out cheeks of the masks of western and north¬
western Cameroon.
78
 58 Do mask.
Burkina Faso. Bwa. (Photo:
Hoa Qui.)
The sod Do represents
renewal. This butterfly¬
shaped mask appears
during fertility rites and
after harvests.

61 Ma’bu mask.
Cameroon. Nkambe
region. (Photo: Louis
Perrois.)
The mask is set
horizontally on the head
of the dancer, whose
face is hidden by a sort of
ventilated black fabric.
Under the mask is a large
cape of bird's feathers.

60 Dancer carrying a
Tyiwara crest.
(Photo Hoa Qui.)
Right Masks visible to all
59 Tyiwara crest.
Mali. Bambara (Bamana)
from the Beledousou The masks moulded the personalities of members of
region. Wood, vegetable
fibres and iron nails. the tribe, an effect which developed progressively, by sta¬
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva. ges. Women and children had to hide, sometimes under
The Tyiwara crests can
have many widely varying
pain of death, when the most feared masks paraded
shapes on the theme of through the village, preceded by the sound of trumpets,
the antelope, which is
always very elegantly but many spectacles using masks were (and still are) open
depicted.
to all as entertainment on festive occasions.
Such celebrations are particularly widespread in the Ivory
Coast. Among the Dan, the Comic mask with its black polished
human face mimics and ridicules certain personalities in the
village, such as the careless woman who neglects her work.
Frequently, too, the young men wearing the Racing mask hold
sporting competitions amongst themselves, to see who will
arrive first. So that they can see better, large round eyeholes
are cut out of the smoothly curved surface of the face. Among
the We, or Bete, the Singing mask (fig.62), laden with little
bells and accompanied by drums, sings the praises of the
feast’s organisers and revives ancient tales and famous deeds
of their ancestors, quoting proverbs familiar to all. Still with the
We, the Begging mask which often accompanies the singer
entertains the public with clowning as the wearer gathers up
little gifts for himself.
Among the Dan, however, the feast is sometimes rough¬
ly interrupted by the sudden intervention of the Brawling,
mask (fig.63), with its coarse appearance, a sporting
duplicate of the War mask. He throws wooden hooks
around him and may set off a “joke war”, which serves as *
another welcome point of interest during the rejoicing.
At any moment, not only at feasts, the Gunyege mask
(fig.64) may burst in, playing the role of a frowning police¬
man. Woe to the woman who has carelessly lit her cooking
fire too close to the grass of the plain on a windy day! The
Mask overturns and confiscates the cooking pot, which
will only be returned to the guilty woman's husband on
payment of a heavy fine.
Mention should also be made of the Gelede masks (fig.
65) of the present-day Yoruba in Nigeria, named after the
brotherhood of the same name, for which the sculptors
give full rein to their imagination and which appear on a
variety of occasions.
v: v
 62 Singer mask.
Ivory Coast. We or Bete.
Wood, iron and brass
nails, fabric, cowries,
human hair and four small
brass bells. Size: 26 x 20
x 11 cm. Musee des
Beaux-Arts, Angouleme.
Considered feminine and
elegant, this mask
enlivened festivities.

63 Brawler mask. Right

Ivory Coast. Dan. Wood
and vegetable fibres. 64 Gunyege-type mask.
Size: 21 x 14.5 x 11 cm. Liberia and Ivory Coast.
Musee de lAfrique et de Dan. Wood with deep
I’Oceanie, Paris. Brawling patina and cap of plaited
and brutality expressed fibres. H: 36 cm. Musee
with a minimum of Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
means.

65 Mask of the Gelede

brotherhood.
Benin (formerly
Dahomey). Yoruba.
Polychrome wood, traces
of red, yellow, black and
blue. Size: 47 x 33 x 40
cm. Musee de I'Afrique et
de I'Oceanie, Paris.
These masks for
entertainment were
always very diverse in
style. This example has
the face of a bearded
man wearing a turban, no
doubt representing a
Moslem dignitary with,
above, geometrical forms,
an upturned crescent
and, finally, two birds
modelled in the round.
This mask was worn
across the top of the
head.

82
 Impressive masks for initiation rites

The period of initiation was crucial for all adolescents.

Some tribes had rites of passage for boys, others for girls
and still others for both sexes. These were rites to render
them adults with rights, but conscious of their responsibi¬
lities. Initiation was practised among most tribes but not all
and included in each case a period of seclusion away from
the village. However, initiation varied greatly in form from
one culture to another - there was no one overall style.
Take for example the Jokwe in Angola, who have been
studied in depth by Marie-Louise Bastin, professor at
Brussels University. Boys would spend several months in
the bush school where circumcision was carried out and
masked men taught them adult behaviour and led them
through a sequence of often very demanding trials. Masks
shaped out of bark, twigs, branches, resins and fabrics
and painted with symbolic motifs, evoked the cosmos. The
spirit dominating these rites was the mukishi, a disembo¬
died being, believed to be dead but bursting from the
earth completely clothed in fabric, a supernatural being to
be both feared and worshipped. The man directing the
ceremonial rites of passage wore the pointed Cikunza
mask (fig.66), made up of mixed anthropomorphic and
66 Cikunza mask. zoomorphic elements. The great Kalelwa Mask (fig.67),
Zaire and Angola. Jokwe
Branches, resin, beaten
which might be related to celestial waters, intervened
bark and fibres. H: 162 when the novices were short of food.
cm. Musee
d'Ethnographie, An impressive mask (fig.68), which might be found
Neuchatel.
The mask imposed the among the Yaka people, neighbours of the Jokwe, was
authority of the man
directing circumcision also linked to initiatory rites and the dances performed
rites.
when the young circumcised men returned to the village.
Among the Baga Fore in Guinea, other initiation festivities
were the occasion for a dance of wooden beams in the
form of pythons (fig.69), which were perhaps a phallic
symbol. These beams are not masks but accessories to
the dance.
Most of the masks involved in initiations belonged to
secret brotherhoods, so their appearances were not res¬
tricted to the initiation of adolescents. They might take
place on other occasions, often still little known, for
initiations allowing officials to attain higher ranks within the
brotherhood, or at funeral ceremonies. This was the case
84
67 Kalelwa mask.
Zaire and Ansola. Jokwe.
Bark and raffia. H: 60 cm.
Musee d’Ethnosraphie,
Neuchatel.
This mysterious mask is
involved in circumcision
rites.

85
 in Zaire with the Lwalwa’s Nkaki masks (fig.70), among
the Salampasu (fig.71) and finally with the mysterious
Mbagani masks (fig.72).
According to Frobenius, in Zaire the Songye people’s
Kifwebe mask (fig.73) was worn by the chief or the witch¬
doctor in serious cases such as epidemics, the death of
the king, or war. More recently, it was used in the initiation
rituals of male societies.
The masks of the Makonde (fig.74) in Mozambique, off
the east coast of Africa, also appeared at initiation ceremo¬
nies and funerals.

Masks as the basis of social life

Although African societies vary very widely in their

styles, the secret brotherhoods and their masks play a
Above and right central role everywhere in asserting authority, assuring
68 Initiation mask. social control and repressing deviant behaviour.
Zaire. Yaka. Wood, raffia
and fibre. Various For ceremonies designed to legitimise the authority of
colours. H: 71.5 cm.
Musee Ethnosraphique,
certain families, the Temne people of Sierra Leone have a
Antwerp.
mask (fig.75) which represents the spirit responsible for
New initiates danced
with these masks, whose protecting the reigning dynasty of each chieftainry. This
white-painted faces were
reminders of death. legitimises the religious power of the new chief. The mask
Fisurative elements - here,
fish - may vary, but are is only seen in public for the enthroning ceremony of a
derived from a
mytholosical cycle. chief, in which it plays a central role and is worn not by
the chief himself but by the dignitary presiding over the
transmission of power from one chief to the other. The
same dignitary also acts as mediator between the new
chief and his people.
In the past masks disguising men had a part in all areas
of society, until they were replaced by administrative or
judicial systems.
The War mask (fig.76) of the Grebo people of Liberia
spread fear all around with its fearsome expression. It was
meant to terrify opponents in battle and, above all, to put
the enemy's protective witchdoctors to flight.
Elsewhere it was a matter of easing the payment of
taxes, which was the great achievement of the Jokwe’s
Cthongo (fig.77). Evoking the spirit of wealth and worn by
a chiefs son for tours lasting several months, in return for
its dances it received substantial gifts equivalent to a
' V*Jff!/■ f*
g||/ &y!, s
' \
k t’%: v
 72 Circumcision mask.
Zaire. Mbasani. Wood. H:
31 cm. Private collection.
These masks appeared
during initiation
ceremonies. Their
enormous white eye-
sockets overwhelm the
thin face with its pointed
chin, creating an
impression of calm
contemplation.

76 Facial mask.
Ivory Coast and Liberia.
73 Kifwebe mask. Grebo. 19th-20th
Zaire. Songye. Heavy centuries. Wood and
hardwood. Remains of pigment. H: 69.9 cm. The
white pigment. H: 48 cm. Metropolitan museum of
Private collection. Art, New York.
Easily recognisable by Symbolising the
their design, the purpose implacable nature of
of the Kifwebe masks battle, this war mask is
remains very mysterious. designed primarily to
Made in the bush far from terrify. Nothing interrupts
outside eyes, they are or softens the rigorously
consecrated during a straight line of the nose,
secret ceremony in which the rectangular mouth
the spirit takes possession with its menacing teeth,
of the new masks. They or the protruding eyes.
are reserved for These masks appeared
dignitaries who have during battles, in the
been initiated. dances beforehand, and
at the funerals of
members of the group of
warriors of the same age.

88
 75 Brass mask of the
Arabai Aron type.
Sierra Leone. Temne. 20th
century. H: 29 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
This delicately worked
mask is one of the rare
metal masks still worn for
the enthronement
ceremonies of Temne
chiefs. Without this mask
a chief cannot exist,
because it is the mask
which is believed to
transmit mythic power to
him.

70 Nkaki-type mask.
Zaire. Lwalwa. Wood.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.
The masks are the main 74 Mask - Mozambique
product of the Lwalwa Makonde - Wood.
sculptors. Appearing H:30 cm. Marc Felix
during circumcision, they collection, Brussels.
belong to secret societies Little is known of the
which may later give culture of the Makonde,
certain members a fuller who live on the east coast
version of the initiation • of Africa, but we do
begun at circumcision. know that they believed
The strong curved nose is in ancestral spirits and
extended up to the practised initiation rites.
centre of the forehead At the end of these rites
and the eyes are two long the ancestors returned
slits surrounded by white. wearing masks, for
The mask is kept in place dances expressing their
by a string through the joy and demonstrating
holes between the lips the close bonds between
and nose, which the the living and the dead. In
dancer holds tight this carefully shaped mask
between his teeth. the size of the upper lip
can be seen, a
characteristic of these
objects.

89
 tr bate. t could also adm n ster justice bv point ng out a
guilty person in the croud.
St I in Zaire, the king of the Kuba understood how
much could be gained from this cred.. itv among the
population. A spirit called Mwaash a \1ooo\ was terrorising
the Kuba: on the king's orders masks created to "resem¬
ble" tbs spirit, the Mukyeem or \'waasr a Vfpooy masks
(fig. 8\ were supposed to assess everyone's behaviour,
and added their power to royal justice. Further, when thev
appeared before their subjects the chiefs wore the \',\ash
a Mbooy costume, for which the masks were made in the
royal workshops.
It was not actually necessary to be king to become a
judge. The members of many secret societies had nume¬
rous opportunities to turn themselves nto judges, the best
known being the Poro of the Senufo. in the Ivory Coast,
who often exercised a reign of terror under the pretext of
soc al regulation, the maintenance of order and the pursuit
of criminals.
71 Arrival of masks.
Za re. Ss a~oas„ vPnotO: Similar to the Poro. but more humane, was a female
HoaQu '
~ese ""cSvs \s€'e society, the Bundu or Sande in Sierra Leone, wh ch ruled
Drooac\ ^sea -
circumcision 3"a the female world and presided over the initiation of young
nitiation ceremon es r
ma e soce: es girls before marriage.
No matter how great the Poro's importance in pursuing
criminals of all kinds, it was not alone in adopting this role.
Right
The Ogbom societies of the Western Yoruba. and above all
69 Bansonyi.
Go ~ea Bags Fore Rea the Ekoi societies in Nigeria, took on the same role and
black and wr te
oarqwood and watched over the behaviour of members of the tribe
polychrome Encrusted
wt Ejropea1' — tcxs. H through the eyes of masks covered in skin (fig.79).
215 err v.usee Barbier-
Mue er Geneva-
Finally, in Cameroon, how could the inquisitorial gaze of
L ~«.ed to toe python
"nyr' r-ese long sinuous
the Crest of the brotherhood of the Night (fig.80) be
oeans came n pairs for avoided? Its most powerful members embodied a repres¬
the youths' n t ation rite
a~ong toe Baga Fore sive power from which royalty judiciously distanced itself,
Their dance s a duel
between the aquatic and the Ngil mask (fig.81) in Gabon was hardk more reas¬
world and the jungle,
between east and west suring. There are many more examples which could be
betwee" nusband'and quoted.
"wife the two halves of
the vr age The feast
Sometimes, however, the simple village inhabitant could
started when they
appeared ana, once it look to the masks for protection, as in the Ivory Coast and
was underway, they
d saopered back into the the masks of the Koma society, whose aim was to combat
wood.
the misdeeds of witchcraft, which were both widespread
and powerful.

90
 Funerals, the final rite of passage

Death, the second great rite of passage, is of capital

importance to animist Africans who believe that only the
body dies while the spirit and the “soul” live on. They
continue to surround the living, who are menaced by their
jealousy aroused by their death, a vital force which must
be seized and channelled through dancing for the benefit
of those who remain on earth. This is not without danger,
but the mask protects the dancer who wears it as a safe¬
guard against attack by the dead man’s spirit. These wan¬
dering souls must be prepared for their new existence and
their entry into the kingdom of their ancestors must be
eased.
With these fundamental concepts, common to different
Black African peoples, as a starting-point, each culture
has its own particular way of celebrating funerals: genera¬
lisation is impossible. Marcel Griaule has studied this ritual
thoroughly among the Dogon of Mali, who may serve as an
example. The death of a member of the tribe is announ¬
ced with drums, bells and gunfire and the body is carried
to the catacombs in a cliff where other villagers are already
buried. The next day the men dance, mime battles and
sing litanies. Finally, after a variable period of mourning,
festivities involving dancing with various masks mark the
end of the mourning. The great Kanaga masks are pre¬
sent, their superstructures resembling a cross of Lorraine.
Marcel Griaule sees a link between these unexpected
shapes and cave paintings which he discovered in the
Dogon lands. Then the anthropomorphic Walu masks
appear (fig.82), with their antelope horns and numerous
zoomorphic masks - for example hares, lions or hyaenas.
All these masks are sacred - charged with magic power,
they represent dangers for the uninitiated. At the end of
the dances the masks are considered to have played their
part and can return to the cave where they are normally
kept. The spirit of the dead man has reached the spirit
world and definitively rejoined his ancestors.
Not far from the Dogon, among the Bwa people of
Burkina Faso, the impressive Board masks (figs.83 and
84), some 3 or 4 metres tall, played a part in funerals and
initiations.
91
77 Cihongo mask.
Zaire. Jokwe. Wood,
brass, feathers and
plaited fibres. H: 24 cm.
(Photo: Hughes Dubois,
Brussels.)
A symbol of power and
wealth, this mask may
only be worn by a chief
or a chiefs son, who is
allowed to collect
substantial gifts during the
dances.
 Right
“Grand funerals”, ceremonies not for a single dead per¬
78 Mukyeem or Mwaash
a mbooy mask.
son but for several of the same age-group or who have
Zaire. Kuba. Wood, died during a particular period, might be marked among
beads, cowries and
vegetable fibres. Musee the Senufo of the Ivory Coast by the appearance of the
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
Reserved for members of Deguele masks (fig.85). They were helmet masks topped
the royal family, it has a
role of social regulation. with figures. This rare ritual of great pomp was part of the
Poro ceremony.
Elsewhere, funeral ceremonies might have very diffe¬
rent forms. In Gabon, for example, among the Tsangui of
the south or the Kwele in the north-east, certain masks
known as “white masks” were worn by men but repre¬
sented the female ancestors of the dead man (figs.86 and
87). They are remarkable for their extraordinary beauty
and the wealth of their psychological connotations.

Life and death of the masks

79 Dance crest. In African thinking, the mask was always the bearer of a
Nigeria. Ekoi. Wood,
human hair, metal and
fearsome magical energy for those who animated it as well
antelope skin. H: 33.5 cm. as for those who saw it. To understand the origin of this “po¬
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva. wer”, we must look at the creation of its material substance.
The shape of a mask is traditional and not specific to
any one period. In the Ivory Coast, if a mask deteriorated
or was destroyed, a small replica was made as a tempo¬
rary refuge for the mask’s spirit; this spirit should next
show itself in a dream to its future dancer, who would find
a sculptor to take the commission. Sometimes, too, among
the Dogon in Mali or in Gabon, the masks were not super¬
natural powers but the temporary incarnation of a spirit,
an ancestor or the vital energy of the dead, and were
constructed by initiates. Required to conceal details of the
initiation from outsiders, the neophytes disclosed nothing
to those around them and retained their faith in the power
of the masks on the religious level of the spirit world as
well as on the social level.
Professional or not, the craftsman had to conform to
existing models of masks: he did not have a free rein. He
worked in great secrecy, for the mask was never conside¬
red to be human work - it was always attributed to
supernatural origins: “It was found in the bush, or given by
a spirit, a long time ago.”
 ft Hi y^k r
Mi \
i \V , l \ \A Ail
VS ti'

WiiM
MwJiavy
'^SrJliKii’v
,wraLR/;;^.i
Above and right

80 Crest of the
Brotherhood of the
Night.
Cameroon. Bangwa.
Hardwood with traces of
kaolin. H: 41.5 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
These masks were seen as
the visible manifestation
of a supernatural power,
dangerous for both the
initiated and the
uninitiated. Their role was
one of repression.

97
 82 Walu mask of an
oryx antelope.
Mali. Doson. Wood,
vegetable fibres and
traces of white mineral
pigment. H: 63 cm.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.

Right

81 Ngil dance mask.

Equatorial Guinea.
Gabon. Fang. Semi-hard
wood, face painted
white. H: 44 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
The Ngil masks played a
part in the re¬
establishment of social
order. These impassive
elongated white faces
were well designed to
induce obedience to
orders from the
uncompromising mouth.
 *

Before starting work the craftsman chose wood of a

suitable quality, generally soft and light. To appease the
spirit of the felled tree a diviner was occasionally called in
to perform the appropriate ceremonies and in addition the
sculptor himself had to be in a state of ritual purity.
The mask was generally made from a single piece of
wood, although the Ivory Coast also produced masks with
a jointed lower jaw. If the mask was to be polychrome the
craftsman used kaolin for white, the symbolic colour of
death, and charcoal for black, the colour of evil. Red
ochre signified life. Later, yellow ochre or blue lye were
sometimes used.
Other masks might be made of leaves and very swiftly
destroyed; among the Ekoi of Nigeria masks of varnished
antelope skin, substitutes for the previous use of human
skin, were stretched on a cane frame. Beaten bark might
also be used and certain masks were decorated with
cowries or glass beads.
Despite the importance of such preparations, it was only
on its first public appearance with the appropriate ritual that
the mask acquired its sacred nature and until then there
was no need for special precautions in handling it because
it had not yet been charged with magic energy. In Gabon,
Louis Perrois noted that between public appearances the
masks were preserved well away from indiscreet eyes but
without any particular precautions. Elsewhere, woe to any
uninitiated who might try to take a look at certain masks, or
who even glimpsed them by chance.
E. Leuzinger mentions more dramatic episodes in the
life of the masks. “Among the Songye, in ancient times, a
human sacrifice was necessary to call up the divine power
and, in north-eastern Liberia, ritual required that a mask
which had failed to fulfil its purpose in battle should be
strengthened by the same means. But, later, by means of
deception, a cow would be sacrificed instead of a human.”

83 Blade masks.
Burkina Faso. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
84 Display of plank
masks.
Bwa. (Photo: Hoa Qui.)
These masks take part in
family rituals and funerals,
or they mark the end of
mourning.

101
Right
The mask generally had its own appointed dancer, an
85 Helmet-mask with appointment which might span several decades. The
female figure.
Ivory Coast. Senufo mask would remain in the same line of descent as it was
(village of Lataha).
Hardwood with a deep passed down from generation to generation, or would stay
grey patina. H: 102.5 cm.
Musee Barbier-Mueller, in the same secret society.
Geneva.
These helmet masks were Finally, the life of the mask would come to an end.
really statues carried on
the head for a procession
There were times when Jokwe masks of beaten bark or
through the village. This resin were burned at the end of ritual ceremonies, while
might be on the occasion
of "great funerals" wooden masks were preserved. In the past a mask was
designed to honour those
who had just been never generally thrown away without precautions being
"initiated” into the
kingdom of the dead. taken - its destruction was surrounded with rites destined
They belonged to the
Poro society and were to transfer its occult forces to another mask. Sometimes it
kept in the sacred grove
which they left only very
was deposited in a cave or a special hut so that it could
rarely. Always without disintegrate with the effect of time and termites.
arms, they generally went
in pairs, one female and Among the Jokwe, specific rites were carried out for the
one male. They are
characterised by the Pwo mask (fig.88). The sculptor drew his inspiration from
ringed neck and body,
the features and hair of a woman he admired for her
beauty and, as M. L. Bastin says, “before handing over the
completed mask to the dancer, the sculptor received a
brass ring as a “bride price”. A sort of mystic marriage
thus united the new mask with its owner. When he died,
Pwo was often buried in a marsh with a metal bracelet, as
repayment of the “bride price” to prevent the spirit coming
to haunt a member of the family of the former dancer.”.
In contrast to more realistic and static figures, the mask
world thus offered Black Africa an escape into the
supernatural, the unreal and the dynamic. It gave form to
disembodied psychological forces, made more terrifying
by their mystery, and catalysed immemorial fears in the
face of nature. Confronted with the horror of death, its role
in funeral ceremonies can be seen as psychotherapy -
and, more generally, detaching its dancer from the contin¬
gencies of the world of the living, it could sometimes bring
him to the heart of ecstasy and temporarily plunge all
those in attendance into the atmosphere of a sacred
world.
 86 Dance mask.
Gabon. Tsansui,
Softwood painted white
with black and red
details. H: 30 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
Particularly representing a
dead person’s spirit, this
mask appeared during
mourning ceremonies, in
dances performed in the
pale light of dawn or
dusk. The dancer was on
stilts with the mask barely
visible, but the sculptor
obviously wished to
create an effect of
mysterious beauty.

104
 87 Mask.
Gabon. Kwele.
Polychrome wood. H: 55
cm. Former Charles Ratton
collection. (Photo: G,
Berjonneau.)
The white colouring, the
^effect of the solids and
spbfes, the repetition of
thefehapes and the lack of
mouth all combine to
transport the spectator
into the world of the
dead and the sacred. For
the cultures of the
equatorial forest,
ancestral spirits must
always remain present
among the living.
105
88 Female Pwo mask.
Zaire. Jokwe. Wood,
kaolin, metal and fibre. H-.
28 cm. National Museum
of African art,
Washington.
The image of a woman
admired for her beauty
and linked to the sculptor
by a mystical bond.

Left

89 Antelope crest.
Burkina Faso. Kouroumba.
H: 70 cm. Musee de
I'Homme, Paris.
At the end of the
mourning period, the
souls must be expelled
from the villages.
Kouroumba dancers
appeared at this point,
wearing this elegant
sculpture with its
polychrome motifs on
their heads. A net held it
in place.

107
 *

Different mask forms

Very often the mask consists simply of a face and is carried in front
of the wearer’s face, the rest of the body being covered by an
appropriate costume. Surface modelling varies from the completely
smooth surface (Tsaye mask) to the most deeply sculpted features.
Helmet masks cover the dancer’s head completely, like a hollow
sculpture enveloping the head. They can be seen from all sides.
The Janus masks have two faces, set back-to-back with each
other.
Double masks also have two faces, but in this case they are side
by side.
Certain masks are not designed to enclose the head, but are worn
across the top of the head; the Gelede masks are an example of this
style.
Crests, such as the Bambara Tyiwara, consist of a figure,
90 Mask.
Ivory Coast. Pre-Senufo. occasionally very tall, set on a wicker skull-cap.
Possibly 12th or 13th Blade masks, surmounted by a tall wooden blade, are found
century. Poor quality local
tin. Size: 23.5 x 16 cm.
among the Bwa.
Weisht: 725 g. Musee Finally, there are some very small masks, often made of metal or
royal de I’Afrique
centrale, Tervuren. ivory, designed not for dances but as charms; they are worn under
clothing hanging from the waist.

Masks in the past

The Kpeliyehe Mask (fig.91), visible by everyone, is female in

character but is worn by men. It expresses feminine calm and
balance. The lines surrounding the taut mouth indicate self-control
and the crest set on top of the mask refers to revelations brought by
jungle spirits in dreams, while the tiny human head is a reference to
Dyula merchants. The horns are those of the buffalo, the powerful
91 Kpeliyehe mask. beast of the bush. Despite the great calmness of this face the dan¬
Ivory Coast. $.enufo . cers, young Poro initiates, wear brightly clashing colours and perform
(borrowed from Dyula).
Brass. H: 25 cm. 19th or
a wild dance.
20th century. Muse£ The Pre-Senufo mask (fig.90) was discovered by chance in an
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva
ancient tomb in northern Ghana. This ancestral female face, with a
chameleon on its brow and lateral decorations, resembles modern
Kpeliyehe masks, and may be the archetypal original.

108
 92 Idoma mask.
Nigeria. H: 29 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
93 Oubi mask.
Ivory Coast. Grebo.
%
Hidden inside his mask and costume, the dancer cannot Blackened wood and
vegetable fibre. H: 42 cm,
be identified but appears to possess multiple vision, all the W: 16 cm. Musee de
I’Afrique et de I'Oceanie,
better to track down and punish any who infringe traditio-
Paris.
nal laws (figs. 92 and 93).

109
 Ancestral statues
and representations
of spirits

Left
Ethnological research over half a century into Black
94 Seated couple.
populations has led to a better understanding of the rea¬ Mali. Doson. Wood and
metal. H: 73 cm. The
sons for the immense quantity of wooden statues and
Metropolitan
statuettes produced by sculptors. museum of Art, New
York.
There is certainly one general rule: the prime function
of these statues is not to please the eye. Their deepest
purpose is religious, based on ancestral or mythic cults.
In the image which he gradually draws from the wood,
the sculptor evokes a dead ancestor or an ethereal spirit.
The patrons who commission statues already have ideas
about these abstract entities, perceiving them in a particu¬
lar way, and the sculptor must conform to these concepts.
Within the framework of tradition he can, however, add his
own personal note to the wood, the mark of his ovyn artis¬
tic talent which, as is evident, often leads to the creation of
works of high quality.
The majority of wooden African statues are male or
female ancestor figures, or statues of dead chiefs. Others,
however, correspond to anthropomorphic representations
of spirits of nature or of secondary gods. As myths and
animist cults vary from one culture to another, the works
must be seen in the light of their place of origin.
 Among the Dogon

Living in an impressive, bare and austere landscape

near the cliffs of Bandiagara in Mali, the Dogon are among
the African cultures who have remained closest to their
ancestral traditions. They may have replaced an older
people, the Tellem, and also had links with the inhabitants
of the Niger Inland Delta between the 12th and 13th
centuries. The Dogon never attempt to represent historical
characters, as happens in Ife or Benin; their art deals with
the myths whose complex ensemble regulates the life of
the individual.
The sculptures are preserved in innumerable sites of
worship, personal or family altars, altars for rain, altars to
protect hunters, in markets ... In the Dogon pantheon
Amma appears as the original creator of all the forces of
the universe and of his descendant Lebe, the god of plant
rebirth. Amma is also the creator of the ancestors of each
clan, referred to as “those who are distant”. Among the
many other gods, Nommo, the water spirit, is often
represented in conjunction with Amma. For these various
cults the Flogon is both priest and political chief of the
village.
In every case these statues, which are always static,
display a solemn gravity and serene majesty well served by
strict geometrical patterns.
The ancestral couple is often represented, charged with
a particular creative energy which is honoured each year
by sacrifices seeking health and fecundity for the living.
Right and far right
The close union of masculine and feminine principles of
95-96 Man and woman
with raised arms. equal importance is expressed by the balance of vertical
Mali. Dogon.
Male statue: hardwood, and horizontal elements and, more concretely, by the
with a polished dark man’s arm on the woman’s shoulders (fig.94).
patina and traces of oil
from offerings. H: 118 cm. Male or female statues with their arms raised belong to
Female statue: hard¬
wood covered with Dogon sculpture. This is probably a gesture of supplication
reddish thick crusted
patina. H: 76 cm. to Amma to bring rain, so rare in this Sahel region
Both statues, Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva. decimated by drought. It is also tempting to establish a
link between these effigies with their arms uplifted and the
groups of vertical forms which characterise Mali architec¬
ture, but it is difficult to be precise about the nature of this
link. Certain statues with raised arms have fluid lines and
are relatively realistic, such as these two Statues in the
112
Barbier-Mueller museum (figs.95 and 96), but others may
tend towards the abstract, such as the Female statue with
raised arms in the Metropolitan museum (fig.97). This flat
figure with fully carved head and breasts was probably
placed against the wall of a small shrine. A “plank statue”,
it contrasts with other Dogon sculptures in the Metropo¬
litan museum, which are equally abstract but treated as
cylindrical volumes reducing the human form to its essen¬
tial elements. Dogon statues are always designed with
great deliberation.
The realistic representation of another Male statue
(fig.98) gives an idea of the real-life Dogon man, in tradi¬
tional costume. His beard shows him to be an elder of his
clan and he wears what look like shorts and a cotton hat
draped over the nape of his neck. The L-shaped instru¬
ment on his shoulder is both weapon, tool and ritual
object, and a pendant hangs on his chest. The statuettes
of the Horseman (fig.99) reflect the prestige attached to
this animal by the plains-dwelling Dogon; the horseman
has variously been identified as a Hogon (a Dogon priest),
or as Nomrno, principle of the order of the universe and
god of rain. These various statues of ancestors or gods
with their smooth appearance may have been simply
shown to the faithful during funerals or cult worship in
chapel.
A second type of more abstract works includes figures
entirely covered with sacrificial material, blood and boiled
millet, accumulated during ancestor worship and suppo¬
sed to revitalise both the relevant ancestor and the person
offering the sacrifice.

The Senufo

For these peaceful inhabitants of Mali, Burkina Faso

and the Ivory Coast, the wood carvers - the Kulebele -
created statues designed to sustain various cults linked
with agricultural work. They appear in agricultural festivi¬
ties and fertility cults, but may also be aimed at stimulating
work under the supervision of very powerful secret
societies regulating all aspects of life - the Poro, Sandogo
or Lo. More than representations of ancestors, the statues
113
 are mythic figures evoking the original man and woman.
They could be used to explain the origins of life to young
initiates.
Ritual statues of Deble style (fig. 100) are large figures,
although their lower parts are often missing because they
were carried in procession during the initiation of novices
and pounded on the ground in a slow rhythm to plead for
fertility. Between ceremonies they were guarded in the
sacred woods which were out of bounds for the uninitiated.
The grave and thoughful expression on the face generally
surmounts the heavy breasts. The whole effect is one of
sacred and monumental power.
In contrast to the Deble statues, many Senufo sculp¬
tures are small, such as those placed at the top of the
“champions’ batons” (fig. 101). At the end of competitions
organised between young land workers, this baton is given
to the winner, the greatest honour that a young Senufo
man can receive. In the example in the Barbier-Mueller
museum the female figurine has elongated features in a
stylised heart-shape face. Her long hanging breasts typical
of the Senufo standard of beauty are emphasised by the
sculptor with the same care shown for the hair and the
details of the seat. Far from being an ancestor figure, this
young woman evokes fertility and the future. She
represents the desired bride.

Among the Guro and the Baule

To the south of the Senufo, in the centre of the Ivory

Coast, the art of the Guro is related to that of the Senufo
but distinguished by extreme refinement. Their Weaving
loom pulleys (figs.201 and 202) are surmounted with
heads, often female, of great elegance, embodying the
protective spirit of labour. Among the rarer standing
statues, the example in the Barbier-Mueller musuem is a
representation of the soul of a Female ancestor (fig. 102).
Through her mediation, backed by the intervention of the
97 Statue with raised soothsayer, she transmits news of the dead to the living
arms.
Mali. Doson. H: 110.5 cm. and vice versa. Conceived as an image of beauty without
Wood and colourins. The
Metropolitan museum of being a portrait, she embodies the beloved wife of the man
Art, New York. who commissioned the figure.
98 Standing male
figure.
Mali. Dogon. Wood. H:
64.5 cm. The
Metropolitan museum of
Art, New York.

99 Horseman.
Mali. Tellem or Dogon.
Hardwood with matt grey
patina. H: 46 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
The necklace of flat beads
suggests a Tellem origin -
the Dogon'have similar
statues, although with
different jewellery and
hairstyles.

115
Far left

100 Ritual Deble statue

from the Lo society.
Ivory Coast. Senufo
(Korhogo Circle). Wood.
H: 95 cm. Museum
Rietberg, Zurich.

101 Top of a baton

awarded to a young
"champion farmer".
(Tefalipitya) Ivory Coast.
Senufo. Total height: 164
cm. Height of the figure:
34.3 cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.

Left

102 Statuette.
Ivory Coast. Gouro.
Hardwood with
polychrome traces
(white, black and red). H:
80 cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.

117
 The long artistic tradition of the Baule people, in the
centre of the Ivory Coast, has some links with Guro art. It
was the Baule statuettes which, early in the 20th century,
were the first to be appreciated by French artists. Surpri¬
sed and perhaps seduced by the novelty of form of this
male figure, Vlaminck bought one (fig.103). The work
conformed to traditions of Baule statues, however: large
head, long narrow torso, arms almost wasted away and
held close to the body. Vlaminck also undoubtedly fully
appreciated the refinement of the dignified and thoughtful
face, the precision in the representation of the hair and
the detailed ornamental scarification. For this sophisti¬
cation of lightly worked surfaces it is probable that the
Baule transferred onto wood the qualities applied to jewel¬
lery by their Akan neighbours.
In Vlaminck’s time this type of figurine was regarded as
being an “ancestor statue”. This is now known to be
wrong and the statues can be divided into two groups. The
first may represent natural spirits wandering in the jungle,
described in turn as hideous and very beautiful. These
spirits were supposed to have the power to possess'hu¬
man beings, to use them as mediums and to become
embodied as statuettes intervening in divination seances.
Such spirits must above all not be upset, but should be
conciliated with an offer of a beautiful image in which to
embody themselves. The statuette bought by Vlaminck
may perhaps belong to this category.
The second group includes the “wedding couple from
the other world . Every Baule, of either sex, was supposed
to have had a spouse in the spirit world, whom he/she had
left behind to join the world of the living, thus exposing
him/herself to the spirit spouse's anger. If the husband or
wife from the other world tormented the living person with
sickness or dreams, the latter, with a soothsayer’s advice,
had a portrait carved and placed on an altar with offerings
by way of appeasement. The statuette of the Pregnant
woman in the Musee d’Afrique et d'Oceanie, Paris
105 Female figure of a (fig. 104), with its deeply sad face, may express the reproa¬
spirit (anjenu).
Nigeria. Idoma. Wood ches of an abandoned spirit wife. However, the great diffi¬
with metal ear pendants,
European buttons and culty of knowing which category a Baule statuette belongs
loincloth. H: 73 cm.
to should be noted.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.
A final series of statues, on the other hand, presents no
118
103 Statue of seated
man.
Ivory Coast. Baule.
Hardwood with shiny
black patina. H: 63 cm.
Musee d'Art Moderne de
la Vi lie de Paris.
This fisure was owned by
the artist Vlaminck.

104 Statue of pregnant

woman.
Ivory Coast. Baule.
Hardwood with dark red
patina. H: 55 cm. Musee
d'Afrique et d'Oceanie,
Paris.
 doubt at all: they represent monkeys bearing a cup for
eggs to be placed as offerings. They evoke frightening
jungle gods, with their coating of coagulated blood. These
spirits are addressed as a last resort, when all others have
failed.

A mosaic of cultures in eastern Nigeria

The Ibo used to live in this region, until they were pus¬
hed back into the forests and high plains by the arrival of
the Yoruba people. Certain Ibo statues which have survi¬
ved are of remarkable quality; generally standing, facing
forwards with the body extended in height - a tendency
reinforced by the elongation of the neck which was often
adorned with necklaces - these are not portraits but styli¬
sed images imprinted with great gravity. They are, quite
simply, sacred objects.
A Female statue laden with heavy jewels may be a fe¬
male ancestor, an image of fertility whose full breasts and
general appearance are somewhat similar to the Deble
statues of the Senufo.
The stylised forms and subtle colouring of the Figures
of male ancestors make them hieratic beings imbued with
menacing authority, images well designed to perpetuate
106 Effigy of a male the memory of dead chiefs.
ancestor.
Cameroon. Mambila. In addition to numerous representations of local gods the
Semi-hard wood with
black crusted patina. H: ibo in the province of Onitsha have Ikenga, statues which
45 cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.
are not sanctified and which are accompanied by multiple
objects. The spirals of the ram’s horns, which the male
figure always wears, symbolise growing strength. In one
hand the man holds a knife with a long blade and in the
other an enemy head carved in wood, the whole accom¬
panied by other accessories relating to the personality of the
owner. On his marriage each man buys an Ikenga, gaudily
decorated with bright colours, while other larger examples
are held by communities. All are supposed to bring good
luck and prosperity to the relevant social group, family or
brotherhood. The Ikenga used to be destroyed on the death
of their owner, but are now placed on family altars.
To the south of the Benue the Idoma give their ances¬
tors an important place in daily life. The resurrection of the
120
dead is an important element of their religion and the cult
of the spirits of nature, Anjenu, is celebrated through the
mediation of figures preserved in shrines. In particular, a
protective spirit lives in the water or the forest and may ap¬
pear in dreams. Generally benevolent, an Anjenu favours
commercial transactions, helps to cure illness and, above
all, aids female fertility. This is why men visit the priestess
who guards one of these effigies, such as the Female
figure of a spirit in the Barbier-Mueller museum (fig.105).
The evocation of a spirit must be impressive and in this
work the sculptor has brought together two elements: the
face has the image of a traditional mask in this culture,
painted white and showing the usual scarification mar¬
kings, while for the body he has sought to create an unu¬
sually imposing religious image which distances this statue
as far as possible from the norm. The aim was to suggest
a superhuman power, entirely separate from the world of
the living, and from this evidence the sculptor seems to
have achieved his aim.
The Ijo from the marshy regions of the Niger Delta are
fishermen and farmers who believe that ancestors and spi¬
rits may surge up again from the waters. Their images are
often reduced to a strict geometry, with altars consecrated
to their worship where a central standing figure is set in a
wooden frame and surrounded by his smaller servants.
These statues, with their ferocious-looking cubist heads, 107 Statue.
Cameroon. Bamileke,
are not made from a single piece of wood - the trunk and Banswa. Wood. H: 81
cm. Collection Dartevelle,
limbs are bound together. If another ancestor is to be ad¬ Brussels.
ded to the family pantheon, a further head, sculpted in the
round, is set on top of the frame.

In the chieftainries of Cameroon and Gabon

The sculptures in the Grassland region of Cameroon,

which are often royal effigies or represent individuals at
the court of various chiefs, have been the subject of a spe¬
cial study (see chapter 3). The inhabitants of the villages -
all the ordinary people - had their own art, however, which
was always vigorous and expressive. Within a general
framework of animist beliefs they worshipped tutelary
gods, spirits or ancestors.
121
 The Mambila, on the Nigeria-Cameroon frontier, believe
that ancestor spirits must intercede to secure the well¬
being of the living, who do not address the supreme being
direct. The statues are home to these spirits, which must
be appeased with offerings. Full of intensity, vigour and
concentrated power, the Effigy of a male ancestor in the
Barbier-Mueller museum (fig. 106) is a fine expression of a
vision of the ancestor seen as simultaneously benevolent
and malevolent. Offerings were certainly essential to
appease it!
Linked to the great ethnic group of the Bamileke, the
Bangwa created particularly expressive commemorative
statues which were not strictly full-face. One such figure
(fig. 107), with an emaciated body in the Dartevelle collec¬
tion in Brussels, gives a vivid image of the “thinker”, all its
energy apparently concentrated in its head.
Between Cameroon and Gabon, the ethnic group of the
Fang has produced ancestor figures of great plastic power
with curves that are always firm and taut. The stylised bo¬
dy and the brooding and intense facial expression make it
possible to create figurines full of a very strong “presen¬
ce”, as in the Statue of a Mabea ancestor in the Barbier-
Mueller museum (fig. 108).
In Gabon, various cultures living under the shelter of the
overwhelming equatorial forest practised a particularly
strong cult of ancestor worship which united the living and
-the dead intimately and permanently (fig. 109). To this end
the bones of ancestors were preserved in “reliquaries” in
the Byeri cult. They are considered separately in chapter 6.
Only the independent ancestor statues are touched on very
briefly here. Among the Tsogho the Gheonga statuettes are
mythic entities, representing dead ancestors, which may
intervene in the rituals of ancestor worship, the Bwiti cult,
or in family cults. Little sanctified, they are above all
commemorative, but are thought to possess a protective
force when magical substances are added to them.

108 Statue of an
ancestor.
Cameroon. Mabea (Fans).
Semi-hard wood with
brisht patina on the
body. Black colourins on
the hair. Metal bracelets.
H: 70 cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.

M
 Zaire, the great artistic homeland

Zaire, in the River Congo basin, is one of Black Africa's

most important artistic homelands, rich in both the quanti¬
ty and the style of its products, and particularly in all kinds
of statues of the dead.
Among the Kuba, in the centre and the south of the
country, the most famous works are the Ndop, a series of
royal statues which are not strictly statues of ancestors, for
this type of worship appears to be unknown among the
Kuba. However, the royal statues played their part when a
king died: before his death, his statue was placed beside
him, ready to receive his life-force and to pass it on to the
new king who would lie next to the statue during the
initiation ceremony. As so often in Africa, the statue is the¬
re as support for a dead soul, to act as a staging post while
a new incarnation is awaited.
Through written chronicles we know of the existence of
one hundred and twenty-four Kuba kings, but only
nineteen statues survive. Were they madexJuring the
ruler’s lifetime, or later? To date, the question remains
unanswered. The most famous of these kings, Shamba
Bolongongo, the conqueror and philosopher worshipped
as a sage and a divine hero, reigned at the beginning of
the 17th century. He is said to have summoned talented
sculptors to his kingdom, thus inaugurating the tradition
of royal statues. Each king is represented seated on a
cuboid throne with his legs crossed and his visored head¬
dress decorated with cowries and pearls, as for 109 Statue of Byeri
ancestor.
investitures. In front of each king is an object symbolising
Gabon. Ndoumou (Fang).
a significant deed of his reign; Kata Mbula (fig. 110), who Hardwod with dark
brilliant patina. H: 54 cm.
reigned from 1800 to 1810, carried as a sign of peace the Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.
wooden knife substituted for war weapons by Shamba
Bolongongo, and the royal drum stands before him. Full
of force and energy, this idealised portrait conveys great
dignity and authority.
The Kuba people's northern neighbours, the Ndengese,
absorbed their artistic influence. They made fine religious
statues (fig.Ill) which may be portraits of ancestors or
funeral effigies. The moulding on the elongated trunk,
covered with a close network of scarification, is entirely
different from that of the head, which is smooth, expres-
123
 sive and dignified. The body is abruptly cut short at the
buttocks, which act as a plinth.
Among the Jokwe, to the far south of Zaire, art takes on
a warrior inspiration without any true ancestor cults. None
the less, certain statues are portraits of genuine ancestors.
The Statue of the principal wife of the chief or the queen
mother (fig.l 13), in the Barbier-Mueller museum, reflects
the dynamism and power of this court art, as illustrated by
the hero Chibinda llunga, with whom this woman shares
certain physical features.
In the area of the lower river, in south-western Zaire,
most of the statuettes are “fetish objects” or “nail statues”,
which are covered in more detail in chapter 7. However,
there are also ancestor statues of great importance to the
Kongo, who believe that the idealised ancestor always
remains among his descendants to protect them. One
such statue, in the Musees Royaux dfArt et d’Histoire in
Brussels, represents a Kneeling woman (fig. 114) whose
face with closed eyes glows with an intense inner vitality,
while her hands resting on her knees express respect and
submission.
The Museum Rietberg in Zurich contains another
Commemorative statue (fig. 115), this time from the Sundi
culture close to the Kongo - an effigy of an ancestor
wearing the cap of high officials of the 19th century. This
type of statue, placed in a funeral chapel, often repre¬
sented a famous healer or midwife, and priests came to
pay homage and receive advice after offering sacrifices.
Among the large group of the Luba-Hemba people in
south-east Zaire, who inherited an important artistic
legacy, statues of the dead played an important role. The
Luba (fig. 116) or Hemba (fig.l 17) ancestor stood guard in
dark funeral chapels which looked like a beehive or a
110 Commemorative
effigy of Kata-Mbula,
chiefs mausoleum. Here all is calm. The body forms are
109th king of the
harmonious and smooth joins are dominated by a face
Kuba.
Hard polished wood. H: with noble curves. All this suggests a calm inner life. The
51 cm. Musee royal de
I'Afrique centrale, large closed eyes help to create an impression of
Tervuren.
concentrated thought, almost of sadness, suitable for a
chief conscious of his responsibility to his people. Even
from the spirit world he is responsible and attentive to the
requests of his descendants as they call upon each of the
dead during ancestor worship.
124
 The Luba cup-bearers are also statues of the first
female ancestor. One of them is the unforgettable work of
the sculptor known as the Master of Buli (fig. 155, page
168). Wrongly described as “beggars”, the true function of
these women was to bring help to women in labour. They
were placed in front of the huts of young mothers to
accept offerings from passers-by.
In contrast to the harmony and reserve of the Luba-
Hemba, the Boyo’s art bursts with vigour and dynamism.
Their ancestor effigies enable the spirits of dead chiefs to
remain and guide their people. A statue in a private
collection, representing an Ancestor of the king{fig. 118) is
a wonderful incarnation of this area of the chief’s duties.
The powerful and sharply-drawn shape adds to the vigo¬
rous joints, destroying any hope a potential enemy may
have. Even the decorative elements contribute unerringly
to this cohesion; authority here is based on the strength
expressed by a powerful artistic design. Brother Joseph
Cornet, the great authority on Zaire art, saw in this statue
“one of the essential items of Congolese art”.
In comparison to all the masterpieces produced in the
centre and south of Zaire, the north appears less prolific.
Yet among the Ngbaka there are, in addition to some
unpolished pieces, a few powerfully stylised creations
showing a strong plastic sense. These statues do not
represent ancestors, for ancestors no longer have human
faces; they embody guardian spirits, those of the legen¬ Ill Commemorative
statue of a chief.
dary couple Seto and his sister Nabo. The head of the Zaire. Ndengese. H: 68
cm. Ethnology collection,
family brings these figurines out of his hut at dawn and University of Zurich.

begs them to protect him throughout the day, offering

sacrifices if need be.

Who were the statues for?

European logic demands that a statue be displayed in a

public place, a church, a garden, a street, or in a private
setting like a palace. It must always be on view. This is not
necessarily the case in Black Africa. Some statues, held
by secret societies such as the Poro, are kept in sacred
places or thickets, and are shown only to the initiated.
Other figures are normally kept wrapped up and hidden
125
 when not in use for ritual ceremonies. Among the Yoruba
people, images of dead twins are kept by their mother in a
closed gourd. There are even reports of an Ife priest who
has no right to see the head of the ram whose cult he
celebrates.
At the beginning of the 20th century Africans still belie¬
ved in genuine powers possessed by these statues and
assumed that anyone who infringed their laws would fall ill
or die. Pregnant women were advised not to look at these
figures for fear that their child would be like the statues
with big eyes and a long nose”.

113 Statue of a chiefs

principal wife or a
queen mother.
Angola. Jokwe.
Hardwood with brilliant
patina. H: 33 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

114 Kneeling woman.

Zaire. Kongo. Wood. H:
57 cm. Musees royaux
d'Art et d’Histoire,
Brussels.

Right

115 Commemorative
statue.
Lower Congo. Sundi. H:
51 cm. Museum Rietberg,
Zurich.
 ■PIWf S'W-S
B&iifc ■>■ TF®
Wl. *f ■ j |j»

■Pt 1
i ii 1
life# * 1
k & ■.

v>
 117 Effigy of an
ancestor of the king.
Zaire. Hemba. Semi-hard
wood with matt patina.
H: 75.5 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
116 Statue of an
ancestor.
Zaire. Luba. Wood. H: 62
cm. Private collection.
Brother Cornet said of this
figure that "it establishes a
118 Statue of an true classicism of negro
ancestor of the king. art.".
Zaire. Boyo. Wood. H: 98
cm. Private collection.

128
119 Statuette.
Zaire. Nsbaka. Wood. H:
26 cm. Private collection.
An imase of Seto, the
male image of the
primordial couple. The
heart-shaped face is
typical of this art.

129
 Reliquaries
to conciliate
occult forces

Among the great multitude of more or less realistic

120 Reliquary figure,
ancestor statues, designed to perpetuate the memory of Bwiti.
Gabon. Mahongwe.
the founders of tribes through family or community wor¬ Wood decorated with
ship, there is a separate category of objects which united brass strips and plates. H:
38.2 cm. Musee Barbier-
human remains, skulls and/or bones and a statuette or Mueller, Geneva.
A non-realistic image of
carved head. This ensemble is known to western collec¬ rare perfection of form,
this figurine remains
tors as a “reliquary”. It expresses forcefully the persistence disturbing even for the
western observer. It
and authority of the dead, who thus remain doubly present should certainly be
classed among the
- on a material level, first, since the bones are preserved, world's great art treasures.
and also on a mythical level, in the figurine which is not a
portrait but an abstract evocation of the ancestor. It is the
bearer of signs which all those who have been initiated will
understand.
Care must be taken not to confuse relics, which are
associated with human remains within the setting of an¬
cestor worship, with fetishes, which contain only magical
objects to ward off evil.
The visual and psychological impact of reliquary figures
is intensified by their non-figurative style. They suggest an
unreal being, often more of a ghost than a representation
of actuality, designed to act as receptacle and dwelling-
place for the spirit of the dead person, while simultaneous¬
ly concentrating on him the conscious and unconscious

impulses of the living.

131
 African attitudes to reliquaries

Until very recently, relics inspired in Africans intense

feelings of uncontrollable terror and respect. The
ethnologist Georges Balandier tells, in Afrique ambigue
(1963) how, during one of his voyages, he saw the
reaction of Africans around him when he showed them a
Fang reliquary at close quarters. Astonishment, recoil.
“One of the young men was bold enough to confirm “It's a
Byeri. The heads of families used to have them in their
huts.” Balandier states that the statuette was set on red-
tinted skull-caps piled up like pieces of crockery, sprinkled
with very fine black specks which the African observers
saw as “black Nsou, the most terrible of our fetish-makers’
poisons. Don’t touch it yourself or you will die!”. Nothing
could make them change their minds.
Balandier’s informants correctly placed reliquaries in a
vague “once upon a time” period, one or two generations
earlier, but they originally dated back to much more dis¬
tant times.
In view of the shifting location of the peoples living in
south Cameroon and in Gabon, in the Ogoue basin, it is
impossible to retrace the precise history of, among others,
the Kota, Mahongwe, Ambete, Fang, Tsogho and Sanga
cultures. Certain ethnological and sociological aspects of
their life are relatively well-known, however, and we also
know that the secret societies were numerous and power¬
ful. The best known was the Bwiti or Bwete, which was
particularly active among the Tsogho people. This was a
brotherhood restricted to men, who joined it after a painful
initiation involving a hallucinogenic plant liable to induce
121 Reliquary figure,
Mbulu Ngulu. visions of spirits. Other brotherhoods were meant for wo¬
Gabon. Obamba
Ndoumou. Wood men and helped them in their social life.
decorated with copper
strips and plates. H: 42.8 Among the Tsogho, the Bwiti celebrated ancestor wor¬
cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.
ship. Among the Fang similar rites were performed within
the framework of the Byeri referred to by Balandier. Bwiti
and Byeri were similar in their concepts, which also
underlay family cults designed to complement those of the
brotherhoods.
The aim of these rites was always to sustain close
contact between the living and the spirit world. In the eyes
of the Africans of the equatorial regions, life was only a
132
passing and incomplete feature of a cosmic whole; the
other aspect of this ensemble, the spirit world and death,
was no less real. As Louis Perrois remarks in Art ancestral
du Gabon: “Nothing happens by chance, neither birth
(reincarnation) nor death (witchcraft). Familiar spirits,
ancestral spirits or fearful monsters in nature, ghosts of
the unhappy dead or even doubles of living people - the
immense crowd of shadows is omnipresent in the daily
experience of the living.”.
A political dimension was added to the religious role of
the reliquary: it legitimised the chiefs' power through the
possession of the skulls and various relics of the succes¬
sive chiefs who had previously led the clan.
It should be noted that the relative importance of the
carved figurine and the bones has different meanings for
Blacks and for Whites. The latter concentrate on the figu¬
rine, which seems to be most important, while for a Black,
on the other hand, it is the bones and relics which are the
essential core of the ceremonies. Louis Perrois again: “The
wooden object is only the material symbol of the image
one has of one's ancestors. It helps to recreate the image
of the dead and to restore a sort of symbolic life to them.”.
As for material representation, reliquaries had very dif¬
ferent forms depending on the culture concerned. Some¬
times a figurine or a head was set on a stem in a bundle of
relics contained in a basket or fabric. Elsewhere it may be
a statuette or a head mounted on a box containing skulls,
and elsewhere again the statue may be hollow with the
bones kept inside.

122 Reliquary figure,

The various cultures known as “Kota” Mbulu Ngulu.
Gabon. Obamba
Ndoumou. Wood
decorated with strips and
The name Kota is used to designate many cultures in plates of brass and
copper. H: 41 cm, Musee
eastern Gabon. Aesthetically speaking, they are all des¬ Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
cendants of the same northern culture, but their figurines
take various forms.
The oldest relics appear to be those previously attri¬
buted to the Ossyeba but now thought to belong to the
Mahongwe. They are also the most abstract and by far the
most impressive. Made of a flat wooden construction in
the shape of a leaf, they are entirely covered with fine bla-
133
 des of brass. The shape was once seen as the head of a
Naja snake, but this was only the imaginative opinion of an
ethnologist and has not been confirmed by local informa¬
tion. The figurine’s details (fig. 120) suggest a spirit-world
entirely separate from the world of the living. Of the sen¬
ses, only sight functions, with the round eyes set low, their
importance emphasised by the fact that they are the only
features shown. The vertical brass threads beneath the
eyes may represent tears. The mouth is unnecessary and
has therefore disappeared. There is no message from the
other world. The nose is reduced to a fine blade and the
dominant chignon may recall the traditional hairstyle of the
old Mahongwe initiates.
The long support stem, a stylised abstract neck be¬
neath these features, further emphasises their sense of an
unreal world, turning them into fantasy apparitions of
strange fascination.
The Shamaye relics are of a style which lies between
the Mahongwe and the Kota proper. Some rare items have
the almond-shaped face set within a closely enveloping
headdress. As with the Mahongwe, the mouth has been
eliminated; sometimes it is replaced with a small plate of
brass carved with decorative motifs, expressing forcibly
how difficult it is to communicate with the spirit world.
Less abstract, the various Kota relics appear nearest to
the world of the living (fig. 121). The Mbulu ngulu of the
Obamba and the Ndoumou are classic pieces, the face
always covered in metal (copper or brass) in the form of
123 Two-faced either sheets or close-set threads. Although intended as
reliquary figure.
Gabon. Ndassa two-dimensional, the play of convex and concave surfaces
Woumbou. Wood
decorated with plates of on these faces produces a definite relief effect. The
copper, brass and iron.
H: 54.2 cm. Musee general design is strictly geometrical and is emphasised by
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
The concave/convex and
the treatment of the metal surface in strips or squares.
abstract/realistic contrasts The oval outline of the hair harmoniously echoes the face.
were undoubtedly highly
significant, but the The figurine is set on a lozenge-shaped base reminis¬
meaning is now unclear.
cent of the canoe motif of central Gabon with its sexual
connotations.
Other relics have varied motifs on their backs, for
example a large slit, a triangle, or a lozenge, whose signifi¬
cance is unclear. They may be tribal or brotherhood em¬
blems, magic symbols of protection or more straightfor¬
ward female symbols.
134
 124 Reliquaries seen
by P.S. de Brazza.
"Voyages dans I’Ouest
africain". Le Tour du
Monde, Paris, 1887.

125 Complete reliquary

Mbumba Bwiti.
Gabon. Sango. Wood,
copper strips and nails
(basket with human
skulls). H: 30 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

Variations in form are numerous. Still with the Obamba

and Ndoumou, there is a figurine (fig.122) which, combi¬
ning copper and brass, hints at a search for polychrome
effect beyond the rounded harmony of its forms. The me¬
tallic threads or strips covering the surface are replaced
here by plaques worked with fine hammered motifs and
the effect is less austere.
Questions arise over the meaning of certain two-faced
figurines (fig. 123) which show an abstract concave face
without a mouth, backed by a realistic convex face with a
mouth and clearly visible teeth.
All these Mahongwe and Kota reliquaries were originally
set in a bundle of relics. A drawing illustrating P.S. de
Brazza’s description of West Africa in Le Tour du Monde,
Paris 1887-8, shows them in position and confirms this
point (fig. 124).
Reliquaries with their bundle of relics have been found
among the Sango in southern Gabon (fig.125). These were
linked with rites celebrated among the Bwiti. With these
figurines, the face is set on a disproportionately long neck,
with the outline distorted so that it is not always clear whe¬
ther the traditional lozenge corresponds to the arms or the
 129 Statue whose head
forms the top of a
reliquary.
Conso. Ambete. Wood.
H: 80 cm. D: 22 cm.
Musee de I'Afrique et de
I'Oceanie, Paris.

127 Reliquary head.

Gabon. Betsi sub-style, legs. The face is covered with fairly large metal plates.
possibly Okano valley.
"Sweatins" wood and Terms such as Abstraction or Realism are inappropriate
copper. H: 36 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
here, for this is an example of the most extreme stylisation.
A double socket on top The reliquary skulls were normally invisible inside the
of the head held either
easle or touraco feathers. basket but initiates could take them from this wrapping to
receive offerings and sacrifices, with sprinklings of blood
to ensure that the dead looked kindly on the living.
Metal was regularly rubbed with sand to revive its shine
Right and was designed to strengthen the psychological impact
126 Male ancestor of these figurines when, gleaming in the dark, they were
statue, eyema-o-byeri.
Gabon. Northern Fang, presented during nocturnal rituals. At all other times the
Ndoumou sub-style. Light
brown polished wood.
reliquaries were grouped by clan in the shadows of a con¬
H: 44 cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva,
secrated hut, sheltered from profane eyes but close to the
An example of a statue village.
with elongated
proportions, found
among the northern Fang.
The legs are lost. When
complete, the statuette
was seated on a reliquary
chest.

136
 Among the Fang

Here the picture is a complete contrast to what we

know of the Kota. The Fang and their allied tribes (the
Ndoumou, Okak, Betsi and Nzaman) live in the north and
west of Gabon and the south of Cameroon. In the past
their ancestor worship conformed to the traditional ritual
established by the brotherhoods, particularly the So and
the Byeri.
The Fang tradition of statues has produced numerous
figures of ancestors which, for the Byeri ritual, might be
seated on large round reliquary boxes of bark containing
the bones of ancestors (fig. 126). It was their task to guard
or evoke them.
Sometimes elongated (among the Fang of the north)
and sometimes short (among those of the south), the Fang
statuettes always consist of solid, hard and tense forms.
Among the Fang of the south the reliquary very fre¬
quently consists not of a statue but only of a head (figs.
127 and 128) coiffed with a helmet wig, either with tresses
or with a three-fold central crest. More rarely there may be
a transverse chignon set as a crown. These faces have all
the formal tension which characterises the statues’ bodies.
Beneath the heavy bulbous forehead the nose area is
shallow, but the chin juts forward with the mouth generally
pouting and lips tightly compressed.
Whereas the Kota reliquary figurines were simply shown
to the faithful who were permitted to see them, among the
Fang the individual responsible for the rites separated the
statuettes or the heads from their relics and used them as
130 Reliquary cover.
Congo. Ambete. Wood. puppet figures, waving them above a cloth stretched
H: 36 cm. Museum
Rietberg, Zurich. between two trees to present them to the assembled
audience. Their three-dimensional structure is thus fully
justified.

Reliquaries integrated into a statue

With all the reliquaries discussed so far, the statuette or

figurine stood above relics. Alternativety, the relics could

138
be set inside the statue, as was done by the Ambete, or
Mbede, tribe living in the part of the Congo near the north¬
ern frontier of Gabon. The upper body of the statuette is
particularly elongated in this case and the back hollowed
out with a box-shaped cavity accessible through a small
door held in place with a thread. It is thought that this
would hold the long bones of hunters who had played an
important role in tribal life. The faces of the Ambete
statues show a prominent forehead overhanging a hollow
receding face with a rectangular mouth and broadly
carved features, so that the original tree-trunk form is still
visible. The arms are often fixed to the body and the
hands and feet barely discernible.
The Musee de I'Afrique et de I’Oceanie in Paris owns
three of these Ambete reliquary statuettes, on two of which
the head forms a lid for the cavity containing the relics
(fig. 129). This practice is not merely a plastic solution to
the problem of uniting two different forms (statue and
relics); when the two elements interact materially there is
greater emphasis than elsewhere on the supernatural
function and its visual expression.
In the Museum Rietberg in Zurich there is an interes¬
ting Ambete head (fig. 130) which was used as the top of a
reliquary. Surmounted with a very high crest, it is heavily
stylised, which lends metaphysical weight to this evocation
of a dead ancestor.
The Kuyu tribe in the Congo, to the south of the Ambe¬
te, also frequently adopts the pattern of the body reliquary.
Access to the relics is from above, at the top of the hollow
trunk, with the removable head acting as a “stopper .
There are often no arms, the body is elongated and
occasionally the face is covered lightly with various motifs
representing scarification.

128 Giant head for a

reliquary.
Gabon. Fang. Wood and
metal. H: 47 cm. The
Metropolitan museum of
Art, New York.
139
iM
 Large
and small
fetishes

Left
Magic is practised throughout Black Africa, but there
131 Nail fetish.
are distinctions to be made among those who participate Zaire. Kongo. Wood, nails
and metal blades, with
in it. The witchdoctor is seen as someone who undertakes
assorted materials.
on his own account a personal communication with evil Musees royaux d’Art et
d'Histoire, Brussels.
powers -suspected of casting spells, he is feared and
rejected as the most dangerous individual in the tribe. The
accusation of sorcery is a serious one.
The diviner, or fetishist, operates in principle for the
good of all. His help is sought in times of need, for he is
seen as the mediator between members of the tribe and
all the powers of darkness. For this reason he also acts as
healer.
The various attempts to influence the fearsome powers
of the supernatural through the mediation of statues or
fetishes have acquired particular intensity in the regions
round the mouth of the River Congo, home of the Kongo,
Yombe and Vili tribes, and this is also the case in the east
of Zaire, among the Songye.
Magical objects were for many years little known in
Europe, as Christian missionaries working in Africa tracked
them down and had them burnt. Certain statues which
were brought back to Europe by religious men, allegedly
for documentation, were kept in secret and could not be
studied. They were much feared for they seemed, even to
141
 European eyes, to have real power, a belief almost univer¬
sally accepted in 17th-century Europe. Olfert Dapper was
the first to look dispassionately at these “fetish” objects
and to dare to describe them.
Recent work has led to a better understanding. They
are wooden carvings, either anthropomorphic or zoomor-
phic, which are covered with a variety of objects such as
nails or metal blades. The cavities in their back or sto¬
mach contain “medicines” - grains, hairs, teeth or finger¬
nails - which are held together with various binding mate¬
rials. Pieces of fabric, feathers or lumps of clay are some¬
times present. Finally, bits of mirror, shiny metal or shells
are used to close the cavities or to mark the eyes (fig. 131).
Very often the faces alone are carved in detail, while the
rest of the body - destined to be hidden under these va¬
rious additional features - is sculpted more summarily
(figs. 132 and 140). The figure’s genitals may even be
missing, either becaue they have never been carved or
because they have been removed by a zealous missionary.
These figures have only a remote ancestral connection
and they are distinguished from reliquaries by the absence
of skulls or large bones, although some may sometimes fit
into either category.
Generally grouped as Nkisi, they were the result of the
combined work of two men, the carver and the fetishist.
The former created the shape, but without the latter (the
Nganga) the figure had no meaning. It was the Nganga
who filled it with magic substances and completed the
132 Nkisi Nkonde
rituals which gave it supernatural powers.
statuette.
Popular Republic of the
Conso. Cabinda. Vili,
Konso. Wood, iron
blades and nails, with
composite materials, skin Large nailed statues, the “Nkonde”
and mirror. H: 53 cm.
Musee d’Ethnographie,
Geneva.
All statues possessed magical powers but their roles
varied according to their size. The largest, the Nkonde,
standing between 0.90 and 1.20 metres high, appeared at
collective ceremonies and were pierced with nails or metal
Right
blades. More of these were added after each vow of com¬
133 Sculpture covered
with nails. Nkonde. mitment, in order to give the illiterate public a way of rati¬
Lower Zaire. Yombe.
Wood, nails, wooden fying their action. The fetishist acted first to “awaken” the
spear and fabric. H: 97
cm. Musee Barbier- Nkonde with his touch - part of the surface was left clear
Mueller, Geneva.
of nails for this purpose - and then a sharp blade or nail
142
 3MH& "r lr
rVfeY »
$0*

ISiSt
 135 Sculpture of a two-
headed dog, covered
with nails.
Nkonde.
Lower Zaire, Kongo.
Hardwood, nails, and
iron blades. H: 67.5 cm.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.

144
was set into the body of the statue, to remain there until
the contract was completely fulfilled.
The fetishist was primarily a witness, and an important
one in view of his supposed relationship with the world of
the supernatural. Woe to anyone who failed to keep his
promise! The Nkonde, as guardian of collective memory,
would inflict sudden sickness on any defaulter, or even
bring about his death, but he protected the innocent. The
Nkonde’s face is always aggressive and deliberately terri¬
fying; the mouth is always open, as if shouting a warning
to the person making a vow. Was that person also required
to chew or lick the nails? The fact that a tongue is occasio¬
nally visible may suggest this, although there is no concre¬
te evidence.
In the presence of a Nkonde there is greater interplay of
glances. There is the Nkonde’s gaze, his metallic eyes see¬
ming to transfix the man who takes an oath, and following
him through space and time. And in return this man is
held fascinated and cannot detach his gaze from the frag¬
ment of mirror on the Nkonde’s stomach which conceals
the supposedly magical substances, hiding their striking
poverty and hinting at their power. Once again African tra¬
ditions manage to bring considerable natural and wholly
psychological powers into play, operating through the
manipulation of relatively meagre material factors.
Depending on the statue’s attributes or regional varia¬ 134 Nkisi statuette of
a crouching monkey.
tions - factors which remain uncertain - the physical atti¬ People's Republic of the
Congo. Vili, Kongo.
tudes of the Nkonde might differ. Those holding a weapon Wood, iron, glass and
skin. H: 35 cm.
in their raised right arm (fig.133) are the most dynamic,
Rijksmuseum voor
but the figures with their hands on their hips and with their Volkenkunde, Leyden.
(Photo: Musee Dapper,
beards of clay and resin are clothed in majesty. Finally, Paris.)
The small size of this
there are many with their hands set close to their navel, a statuette places it in the
Nkisi category, although
possible reference to their lineal origins. the nails would indicate
an Nkonde figure.
Surprisingly, some animal forms of Nkonde also have
certain features similar to human statues. The Crouching
monkey (fig. 134), with open mouth and eyes fixed on its
human brothers, is firmly classed among the animals by
his bent stance, long arms and realistic fur - yet this ma¬
kes it particularly disturbing. Two-headed dogs have also
been found (fig.135). Each muzzle has the traditional
lolling tongue. Their role, as with real living dogs, appears to
have been to protect families and give warning of danger.
145
 Professor Th. Obenga, director general of Gabon's inter¬
national centre of Bantu civilisations, offers interesting de¬
tails on the social role of the Nkonde in his article in Dos¬
siers d’archeologie. He sees the nails as “nails of male¬
diction”. And, extending the debate, he adds: “The princi¬
pal role of the Nkonde is to engender respect for the coun¬
try’s laws, to aid the reign of civic peace, to seek out and
denounce thieves and to wreak vengeance on wrong¬
doers”. On the Nganga (fetishist) he offers a soundly ba¬
sed opinion: “These are skilful and intelligent men. Their
historic skills, their extended knowledge of both fauna and
flora, of the environment, the group and psychology, gave
them, and still give them, powerful ascendancy over the
minds of the people and over the imagination of society as
a whole.”

Smaller statues

The small statues, the Nkisi, (fig. 136) were less ambi¬
tious than the large Nkonde and were designed for the
individual or the family. Never more than 40 centimetres
tall and without nails, they often had a feathered hat on
their head after they had been consecrated by the feti¬
shist. The fabrics wrapped round them were covered with
a crusting of red powder. As with the Nkonde, they had a
cavity in their back or stomach which held “medicines”
and magic substances placed there by the fetishist. These
consisted essentially of white clay from the marshes, red
clay used for ancestor worship, and tukula (sawdust from
red wood).
These Nkisi were supposed to protect their owner’s
health and transmit to him the vital strength with which
they were endowed. The owner could give them offerings
to escape from difficult situations.
Similar to the Nkisi, the small commemorative statuet¬
tes known as Phemba (fig. 137) were designed for women
136 Wood statuette.
Zaire. Konso. H: 36 cm. who had lost a child and wanted another. These carvings,
Private collection.
With ritual cockerel generally sophisticated and very graceful, were thought to
feathers on its head, this
Nkisi statue carries a load favour such a happy event.
of particularly important
magical materials on its
back.

146
 Among the Songye

Far from the Kongo tribe, the Songye, settled in the

south-east of Zaire, are not known for being gentle - in¬
deed, they have a well deserved reputation for being
tough. They can, however, be compared to the Kongo and
the Vili in their overriding attention to magic. Fetishes are
far more numerous here than ancestral statues.
In these fetishes the lower part of the face is elongated,
the cheeks are hollow and the neck very long, so that
coloured necklaces can be worn. They are not nail feti¬
shes; their magical substances are inserted into the
stomach or in one or two antelope horns set on top of the
head. Such materials are carefully selected for a specific
purpose. For the hunting fetish, for example, there might
be “a piece of a dog’s muzzle, a swallow’s wing and, if
possible, a finger from a pygmy, the outstanding hunter,’
as Brother Cornet recounts.
Although they do not have ritual nails, the Songye feti¬
shes are decorated with several brass nails which are used
as ornaments. A metal plaque may also cover the navel
and the magic material. These fetishes are intended to
ward off evil, to preserve the tribe or the family from hostile
powers, sorcerers or evil spirits, and to aid fertility.
The Luluwa, whose art has been influenced by both the
Songye and the Luba people, have created numerous
crouching figurines for use as fetishes (fig. 139). This is
proved by the antelope horn stuck into the skull to hold
magical materials. Lacking all other additions, these sta¬
tues are remarkable for the care taken in the carving of
the body and the consistent treatment of forms. Everything
is curved and remarkably balanced, with large feet acting
as a plinth. The thoughtful expression of the face matches
the body in showing a skilful and highly developed art.

137 "Phemba"
commemorative
statuette.
Cabinda. Kongo. H: 44
cm. Rijksmuseum voor
Volkenkunde, Leyden.
(Photo: Musee Dapper,
Paris.) This statuette
shows a woman kneeling
with two human figures
and three snakes.
 140 Statue with nails,
Nkisi Nkonde.
Congo. Vili, Yombe.
Wood, iron and nails. H:
108 cm. Musee de
I’Afrique et de I'Oceanie
Paris. (Photo.- RMN.)
As often happened, the
magical contents have
been lost from the
stomach cavity in this
figure.

139 Fetish.
Zaire. Luluwa. Hardwood,
with traces of white and
red pigment. H: 24 cm.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.
138 Wood statue with
various accessories.
Zaire. Songye. H: 98 cm.
Private collection.
This large fetish has all the
attributes designed to
increase its powers: a
hom on the head,
metallic additions to the
face, various feathers and
skins, smaller fetishes and
horns full of magical
materials.
 Warriors
and
hunters

141 Sceptre.
The social systems which have held sway in Africa vary Seated male figure. Mali.
Niger Inland Delta, or
enormously according to region. All types can be found, Dogon or Bozo. Bronze
and iron, H: 76.2 cm. The
from great empires to small chieftainries.
Metropolitan museum of
Emperors who governed vast territories generally de¬ Art, New York.

manded taxes or gifts, contributions which were needed to

maintain a substantial professional army.
In the smaller chieftainries, on the other hand, the war¬
rior equipment varied according to family or individual. It
was a matter of weapons and not of armies.

Three great empires

Three great empires held the basin of the River Niger in

succession, between the 11th and 16th centuries - the
Ghana, the Mali and the Songhai. Each sought to outshine
its precedecessor in wealth and prestige. They are known
to us now through the accounts of travellers more than
through their very rare archaeological remains.
The Ghana empire, which reached its peak in the 11th
century, gained part of its wealth from the gold of the
Bambuk, but was unable to resist the assaults of the
Moslem Almoravids who sought to convert Africa to Islam.
Their domination was short-lived. In 1240 the prince of
 *

Mali conquered Ghana and managed to seize political po¬

wer, dazzling his contemporaries with his immense wealth
and his array of gold. From the 15th century onwards it
was the Songhai empire which dominated, but finally, in
the battle of Toudibi in 1591, it fell to the Moroccans when
they used firearms, hitherto unknown in Africa.
Until then it was the cavalry which provided the greatest
strength of the Sudanese armies - there is proof of horses
in this region since the year 1000 AD. The Africans rode
bare-back, the saddle apparently being introduced by the
Moslems. The Arabian traveller Ibn Battuta, who was
received by the Emperor of Mali in 1352, recounted that
for his audience the sovereign was surrounded by courte¬
sans and generals, all on horseback and carrying a bow in
their hands and a quiver on their backs. Two saddled
horses were held by their bridles in front of the emperor.
The horsemen described by Ibn Battuta may have been
the same as those represented on the terracotta of the
Niger Inland Delta, dated by thermoluminescence at
between 1240 and 1460 AD. Bernard de Grunne, a spe¬
cialist in Mali archaeology, considers that they were
Kamara. These were the proud warriors who fought with
the Mali emperor’s army and who were represented on
horseback, full of astonishing energy, their rich harnesses
giving an idea of their prestige as troops. The details of
their weapons have not always survived the passage of
time, but we can see that the horsemen wore a cross-belt
which would have held the quiver mentioned by Ibn
Battuta. One of them had a round shield, and most had
their heads protected by a helmet held in place by a
chinstrap.
Many other statues have been discovered, in particular
a horseman and an archer now in the Washington mu¬
seum of African Art, which help to flesh out this picture
(fig. 12, p.22).
The former inhabitants of the Niger Inland Delta have
left us a remarkable sceptre from their distant past (fig.
141), made of iron and brass and decorated on top with a
142 Statue small figure of a seated chief. Fie is shown in perfect
representing King
Glele as the god Gu, detail, both in his bodily scarifications and beard and also
god of metal and war.
Brass. H: 105 cm. (Photo: in his head-dress and clothing, which are represented with
Musee Dapper.)
great precision. His arm and ankle rings are also very
152
.

143 Ritual throwing

knife.
Gabon. Kota and Fang. H=
33.5 cm. Blade: 38.5 cm.
Iron, wood and brass
strips. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.

144 Dagger and

scabbard.
Gabon. Fang. Wood, iron,
.I
lizard skin and copper
nails. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.

153
 detailed. The brass-founder (this was made by the lost
wax process) paid particular attention to this chiefs wea¬
pons, the pointed lance in his right hand and the short
sword with handle set in a scabbard hanging by his left
arm. The man looks calm and confident in his authority.

Benin and Dahomey

From the 15th century onwards, in the twilight of the

Songhai empire's power, the kingdom of Benin which
emerged in Nigeria was rich in its fine royal art. Its
strength was based on armies controlled by the tribal
chiefs,- the “warrior kings” of the 15th and 16th centuries
ruled in a state of semi-permanent war, but the sovereigns
preferred to emphasise the monarchy’s divine origins and
nature. There are few strictly military representations on
the brass plaques decorating the royal palace, but one,
dating from the 16th century and now in the Leipzig
Museum fur Volkerkunde, appears to depict the Benin
warriors engaged in their victorious war against the Igbo.
Wearing large helmets, they brandish their swords. One
man, on horseback, has a lance hanging from his saddle,
while the footsoldier in the rear carries a shield as well as
his lance.
Dahomey, inhabited by the Fon and Yoruba peoples
145 Throwing knife. and now the Republic of Benin, was a powerful kingdom
Republic of Central Africa.
Zande. Iron and plant from the 16th to the 19th centuries, ruled by ten kings in
fibre. L: 39.5 cm. Musee
royal de I'Afrique succession. In the 18th century the well administered
centrale, Tervuren.
kingdom gained most of its wealth from substantial com¬
merce in slaves sold to European slave-traders, but its po¬
wer was mostly founded on the successful military expedi¬
tions of its terrifying armies. In Dahomey and Benin alike
there were considerable numbers of human sacrifices.
These took place in Dahomey twice a year and on the
death of each sovereign. It was the French who in 1892
delivered the final blow to the last king, Behanzin, and
deported him.
Right The royal palace in Abomey, the capital, was in effect a
146 Bow-stand. city in itself, with its walls decorated with painted bas-
Zaire. Luba. Musee royal
de I'Afrique centrale, reliefs. The court was steeped in luxury which was evident
Tervuren.
on all sides, particularly the sumptuous fabrics and metal
154
crafts. In Dahomey metal-workers constituted a powerful
caste who produced weapons and jewels for the king. It
was they, in particular, who forged the iron or copper
Asen, a type of portable altar consecrated to the ancestors
of kings and important chiefs.
The god of war and metals, Gu, was represented twice
by Dahomey metal-workers. One of the statues, housed in
the Musee de I’Homme in Paris, seeks to express ancient
myths through a collection of European metal. Dressed
like a Dahomey soldier, the god wears a short tunic and
his head bristles with arrow-heads, knife blades and iron
lances. Slightly off-centre, the figure appears to be wal¬
king. Its hands, now empty, originally brandished a sabre
and a war-bell. It represented the motto of the terrible king
Glele of Abomey, who reigned from 1858 to 1889: “When
the sabre of Gu appears the beasts do not show
themselves.”.
A second statue (fig. 142), much more powerful in that
it is less anecdotal, shows a clear wish to express the most
profound essence of war: a pitiless cruelty. These two
exceptional unsigned works have influenced modern wes¬
tern artists, but they themselves may also have been in¬
fluenced by European statues.
Other Dahomey artists created recades, ceremonial
gifts for the king to present to his chiefs. They were a type
of axe or adze, the metal or ivory blade being carved with
a figurative motif - for example, there is a roaring lion on
the recade in the Musee de I’Homme in Paris. The item,
a sign of dignity for its bearer, would as a last resort let
loose the sovereign's martial mystic and strengthen his
prestige.

In equatorial regions

The luxuriant vegetation and the lack of paths through

the thick jungle encouraged the development of restricted
social systems which were linked to lineal groups. No
great kingdom could develop or expand in such a setting,
but although it would be fruitless to seek traces of great
armies, the inhabitants were none the less engaged in
inter-tribal confrontations. They also had to defend them-
155
Right
selves against the raids of neighbouring tribes. The Fang
147 Statue of Chibinda
llunga.
in particular had a reputahon for redoubtable ferocity.
Zaire. Jokwe. Wood, fibre They would use a variety of weapons: lances, swords of
beard, with no genitals.
H: 40 cm. Kimbell Art various kinds and throwing weapons.
Museum, Fort Worth,
Texas. The Throwing knife (fig. 143) of the Fang and the Kota
was a weapon for fighting as well as a prestige object. It
also made its appearance during certain initiations: the
leader of the dance crawled along the ground waving the
knife while the initiates had to avoid it by jumping as high
as possible over him. The blade of the knife was shaped
like a toucan’s beak and curved over in a line which, des¬
pite being designed to be functional, was none the less of
a rare purity.
Even if it could not compete with this for elegance, a
Fang dagger (fig. 144) showed similar features in its adap¬
tation of form for practical purposes. The elongated blade,
double-edged and decorated with finely carved motifs,
was protected by a scabbard covered with lizard-skin and
embellished with brass nails, while brass thread streng¬
thened all the fragile parts. Apart from these weapons the
Fang used the rifles introduced by European traders.
The Zande in the Central African Republic displayed
their particular artistic talents in their warrior equipment,
such as a remarkable Throwing knife (fig. 145) whose blade
and handle are decorated with fine engraving in perfect
curves and counter-curves. Stylistic links exist between the
Zande and Mangbetu in northern Zaire. It is thus not
surprising to find among the Mangbetu knives with curved
handles which clearly show signs of deliberate shaping,
above all when made of ivory. The result, however, is
heavier and cannot be compared with the elegance which
distinguishes the finest Zande or Fang knives.

In the Congo Basin

In the past some states came into being through the

union or confederation of a number of tribes or chief-
tainries. This happened with, among others, the Kuba, the
Luba and the Jokwe. The arts of war retained all their
vigour here, at the heart of an artistic production of the
highest standard.
 A confederation of Kuba tribes was originally created
under the domination of the Bushoong, the royal clan of
the Kuba, whose name means “men of throwing iron" or
“men of lightning", the lightning of the gleaming blade.
The name indicates the importance attached to this wea¬
pon, of which some richly worked examples survive. How¬
ever, this warlike instinct was channelled and watered
down by successive Kuba kings, who were depicted in
peaceful guise in their royal portraits (Ndop). By 1650
Shamba Bolongongo, a philosopher king, had in fact
sought to replace the throwing knife with less aggressive
weapons.
Among other Zaire peoples, like the Makaraka, there
were many decorative weapons. The Teke people were
famous blacksmiths, producing iron anvils and weapons
and axes which drew European admiration as soon as they
arrived. All these non-firing weapons did not prevent the
use of firearms: several Bembe statuettes show a warrior
148 Seated Chibinda
llunga.
carrying a traders' rifle in one hand and a dagger in the
Zaire. Jokwe. Wood. H: other.
25 cm. Private collection
The Luba empire was the result of the 16th-century
unification of a large number of small Bantu chieftainries.
One of the first Luba chiefs, Ka la la llunga, was a great
hunter, whose power was symbolized by the bow-stands
(fig. 146) which later became one of the Luba chiefs' most
precious emblems of authority. Closely identified with
royalty, they were involved in the succession of new chiefs
and were kept in a special room by hereditary guards who
were among the most important officials of the kingdom.

Among the Jokwe

In southern Zaire, and among the various Jokwe tribes

of Angola, the warrior myth centred on Chibinda llunga, a
civilising hero who never the less continued to lead his
people in the hunt and in combat.
Right
A love story set around the 16th century indirectly
149 State lance.
Angola. Jokwe. Iron, narrates the origin of the Jokwe dynasty. Chibinda llunga,
wood and copper. H:
106 cm. Height of figure: the Luba emperor’s son, devoted all his energies to
20 cm. Museum Rietberg,
Zurich. (Photo: Wettstein hunting, his favourite activity, which during one of his trips
en Kauf, Zurich.)
took him into the territory ruled by the Lunda princess
158
Lweji. She was impressed by the prince’s handsome
appearance and the delicacy of his manners, invited him
to her court and married him. There was dismay and
revolution among the princess’s brothers, who refused to
submit to the intruder and set off to establish other king¬
doms. Although Chibinda llunga never reigned over the
Jokwe himself, they considered him a model prince. In the
19th century he was depicted in impressive effigies
(fig. 147) which stand at the forefront of African statues.
Jokwe art, at once baroque and lifelike, always exhibits
great power. In the statues of Chibinda llunga two princi¬
pal characteristics seize the eye - strength and authority,
particularly remarkable in view of the fact that these
powerful statues are never more than 50 centimetres tall.
Their strength lies in the muscular, athletic shoulders and
in the limbs which the sculptor treats like harmoniously
articulated solid cylinders. Strength, for the hunters, also
meant an aptitude for forest life - the ears are pricked,
with an apparent mobility which indicates a man on guard,
an impression confirmed by the flaring nostrils.
To represent authority, that exclusively psychological
and abstract force, and render it in physical terms, the
Jokwe sculptors made good use of the large curved
headdress always worn by the chief. They show every
detailed groove, modulated and amplified, making them
stand out and using every resource of the baroque en¬
semble to extend this visible symbol of authority round the
face. The face itself looks intelligent, with a high and broad
forehead extended by the grid at the centre of the head¬
dress. In certain statues, like those in the Berlin Museum
fur Volkerkunde and the Porto University museum, it is
thoughtfulness which takes pride of place. But in the
specimen in the Kimbell art museum in Fort Worth the
angle of the face in relation to the body expresses prima¬
rily the wish to be obeyed and the confidence of posses¬
sing a strength which cannot be challenged because it is
sacred.
All these characteristics can be seen in the figurines
showing the hero sitting and applauding (fig.148) or in
those which decorate the tip of sceptres. In the latter
cases the head-dress still displays its heavy arabesques
but the body is generally replaced by a smooth surface.
Right
This also helps to emphasise the image of the chief, while
150 Forge bellows with its abstract motifs separate it from its surroundings.
anthropomorphic
figure. On a more practical level, Chibinda llunga is honoured
Gabon. Shira-Pounou.
Hardwood with brilliant above all for his knowledge of hunting, which he shared
patina. H: 62 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva. with the Jokwe by introducing them to more sophisticated
weapons and more effective spells. He is represented with
a walking stick and a “medicine” horn which was later
replaced by a firearm {Statue in Porto University).
In the 19th century the Jokwe were still passionately
devoted to hunting, which had been a speciality of their
ancestors. To call their dogs or to communicate amongst
themselves, they used little wooden or ivory whistles which
were often decorated with a male head. They loved fine
weapons carefully made by skilful blacksmiths, who could
reproduce on daggers, swords or throwing weapons the
decorative motifs so often used by wood-carvers.
Other Jokwe weapons were uniquely prestige objects,
such as the extremely elegant State lance (fig. 149) which,
in the context of court art, reveals how chiefs could discri¬
minate when seeking out the finest artists.

The blacksmith

In any society the blacksmith plays an essential role. He makes the

farm tools which are necessary for survival, as well as the iron
weapons which make combat possible.
In African societies he is always feared because of his links with fire,
which hinted at magical practices or even sorcery. He is also feared
for his familiarity with metals extracted from the body of the mother-
earth. Finally, he can be seen as a somewhat ambivalent character, a
mediator between the living and the dead.
The blacksmith’s social position varies from area to area, but it is
always an extreme one. In Senegal he must come from a single caste;
in Mali and the Ivory Coast he is feared, but in the former Congo and
in Angola, metal work was undertaken by important individuals.
Founding myths recall the hero Chibinda llunga who taught the Jokwe
how to make and use the best hunting and combat weapons, while
among the Kuba, Mbop Pelyeeng was a blacksmith-king who was
identified by the anvil at the front of his statue.
••W
 The dignity
of
Black womanhood

Left
Until the middle of the 20th century, African society,
151 Wooden doll, Akua
whether of a patrilinear or matrilinear structure, was based ba.
on kinship and lineal descent. We are not concerned here Ghana. Akan. Wood
painted or stained black.
with the upheavals affecting social structures after 1950, H: 44.5 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
so only events occurring before this date are discussed.
As the mother-figure the woman plays a central role,
ensuring that the line continues. Any man without a child
would see a break in his ancestral family worship, and on
his death there would be no one to watch over the perfor¬
mance of rites which would allow his soul to move on to
the spirit world.
The woman also enables the man to prove his fertility,
indispensable in certain circumstances - for example, so
that the son of a chief can succeed his father. This is the
case in the Grassland of Cameroon. Before his enthrone¬
ment a future Fon must pass every night during his ini¬
tiation with the young girls presented to him, until one of
them becomes pregnant. It is a privilege for the young girls
to be chosen for this purpose. They all come from rich
families, and the woman who gives birth to the first child
thus conceived will always enjoy unanimous respect, in
particular from the Fon who through her is able to take
possession of his kingdom. Even if she does not become
the Fon's first wife, she will automatically belong to the
 society of queen mothers. This example, although limited
to a special area, indicates the overwhelming importance
of fertility for the African women. A woman’s social situa¬
tion was thus dependent on the number and the quality of
her pregnancies.

The young girl before marriage

In the eyes of the men of her family line, the young girl
represented above all a valuable item for barter. Although
she could not live an autonomous life, she would marry
and thus allow women of other backgrounds to join the fa¬
mily as wives for her brothers and the men of her family.
Her whole life was a preparation for motherhood, the
only event which could give her a place in society. Well
before puberty, young African girls would often wear dolls
made of reeds or wood as pendants - far from being toys,
these little figurines were believed to favour fertility through
their magical powers. Various types have been found
among the Dan of the Ivory Coast and the Mossi of Upper
Volta, as well as among the Jokwe of Angola.
152 Mask of the Sande
Society Even in modern times the more elaborate Akua ‘ba
Sierra Leone. Mende or
Vai. Softwood with fertility dolls (fig. 151) of the Akan and the Ashanti of the
brilliant black patina. H:
45.5 cm. Musee Barbier- Ivory Coast are for young women hoping for a child or al¬
Mueller, Geneva.
ready pregnant. The fame of these objects derives from a
legend asserting that a woman who has worn one will give
birth to a particularly beautiful daughter. They may vary in
their degree of realism and the forms differ according to
whether the woman wants a son or a daughter. The wo¬
man always wears the little figure on her back, like the
hoped-for child.
Among the Yoruba of Nigeria such dolls were often
found in pairs to give twins, because twins were looked on
with particular favour. If one died, the doll received the
same attention as the surviving child.
The passage into adulthood for both girls and boys was
frequently, but not always, marked by an initiation period in
the sacred grove away from the village, supervised by a se¬
cret society or a group of experienced women. In general this
initiation coincided with the young girl’s first menstruation
and in the past was accompanied by rituals of excision.
 In Sierra Leone the powerful female Bundu or Sande
society directed the young girls’ initiation. They made use
of characteristic Masks which, surprisingly, were carved by
men (fig. 152). They were intended to evoke beautiful and
wealthy women. A very elaborate hairstyle, shown in care¬
ful detail, multiple folds of flesh round the neck as a sign
of prosperity, scented palm-oil on the mask as well as on
the body - everything is designed for the same purpose.
During the initiation the young girls learn the manners
which will direct their lives, and the shape of the mask,
with its receding chin and small or even absent mouth, re¬
flects the blind obedience demanded from women.
The role of the Bundu society was not limited to the ini¬
tiation. Directed by the Majo, an experienced woman, the
society watched over social life in general.

vA
Marriage

Motherhood was the woman's way of escaping from her

inferior social position. To do so, she also needed to marry,
but it is clear that marriage was not the result of mutual
153 Headrest
attraction between two young people - it was based on Zaire. Luba. Wood.
Musee royal de I’Afrique
different systems of financial or material exchange and centrale, Tervuren. This
rare example showing a
compensation, designed to sustain the circulation of wo¬ pair of Luba people bears
all the grace of Luba art.
men outside their own line. Since marriage was of impor¬
tance to the whole social group, it must not be left to the
hazards of individual preference.
Sexual pleasure might be involved, but it was not the
sole purpose. Sex was generally associated with fertility
rather than pleasure, although the latter was not excluded.
Actual images are rare, but they do exist, such as in cer¬
tain Luba headrests representing a young couple cares¬
sing each other (fig. 153).
After marriage, the couple's greatest wish was to have a
child. Among the Bamileke of Cameroon the soothsayers
of the Ku n’gan society claimed to be specialists in pro¬
blems of infertility. The woman would be shown a Fertility
statue (fig. 154) representing a mother giving birth to twins,
her mouth open to cry out. Standing upright, she holds
her swollen stomach with the first child’s head already
visible. Consultation with the soothsayer took place in
 Left
secret and consisted of rituals and offerings. Sterility and
death in childbirth, both very frequent, underline the tragic 154 Ku n’gan fertility
statue.
nature of this figure. Cameroon. Bamileke.
Hardwood with a crusted
Among the Baule people of the Ivory Coast sterility was patina and a plait made
of tufts of hair and raffia
attributed to a “husband in the spirit world” or a natural fibre. H: 82 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
spirit. The soothsayer recommended the building of a do¬
mestic altar for a statuette (fig. 104, p. 119) carved for the
purpose on the soothsayer’s instructions. In the harmony
of their proportions and the delicacy of their carving, some
of these figures are works of art expressing great serenity
suitable for calming the distress of a young wife. Such
works are entirely different in style from the tragic effect of
the Bamileke statues.
Among the Idoma a bush spirit, Anjenu, was invoked
for the same purpose by men who wanted their wives to
become pregnant. The austere and noble Statue represen¬
ting the spirit (fig. 105, p. 118) clearly exhibits the impor¬
tance attached to the request.
Childbirth, presided over by two old women or a mid¬
wife, was not without its pains. Among the Luba a Cup¬
bearer was set at the young woman’s door (fig. 155 and
p.12) to receive the offerings of passers-by and evoke the
image of a female ancestor.

Motherhood

The pregnant or breast-feeding mother has always been

a popular subject among African sculptors. These are not
portraits but ritual figurines which glorify the perpetuation
of life. It has also been observed that pregnant or breast¬
feeding women do not menstruate and are thus nearer to
old women or female ancestors, sharing their spiritual
force. For these statues of maternity the artist would create
the most perfect image of the woman in African eyes,
although such visions vary greatly from one culture to
another, from the noble austerity of the Dogon to the
smiling friendliness of the Yombe.
Among the Senufo, farmers for whom fertility is very
important, the evocation of the breast-feeding mother with
a child at each breast is powerful (fig. 156). The statue in
the Barbier-Mueller collection shows her raised to.even
 greater symbolic stature by a cup holding magical
materials. The many applications of oil this figure received
during the Poro ceremonies were proof of the devotion it
aroused and it also had links with the Sandogo, the secret
society of women soothsayers. For the Bambara people of
Mali the highly stylised maternal image (fig.157) may
express the calm dignity of the woman who finds self-fulfil¬
ment through her child. The even more stylised Dogon
figure of motherhood appears to be reduced to a geome¬
trical extreme. According to legend the twins on her back
are endowed with particular vital force.
In the matrilinear society of the Mbala in Zaire, maternity
was celebrated very specifically. A symbol of the chief’s
authority and the capital part of ancestor worship, it
inspired powerful evocations of the clan's female founder,
the true force of nature (fig. 158). Despite their sacred
155 Figure with cup. character these statues are very lifelike, often designed with
Zaire. Luba. Wood. H:
45.5 cm. Musee royal de a slight asymmetry which gives them particular spontaneity
I'Afrique centrale,
Tervuren. The tension and personality. Still in Zaire, the Kongo and Yombe statuet¬
expressed in this cup¬
bearer makes it probably
tes present us with more smiling and familiar “mother and
one of the most beautiful child’’ images (fig.159 and p.10). The woman sitting
works of the Master of
Buli, who worked in Buli cross-legged on the ground holds her child in front of her.
in south-east Zaire.
The many scars on her shoulders and body, fashioned like
jewellery, indicate that she belongs to a wealthy family.
Despite her almost smiling appearance of humanity this
statue should be seen as an element of ancestor-worship,
which was highly developed among the Kongo.

Daily life
«
The much respected mother often appears as the
“sustaining pillar of the chieftainry”, a concept presented
in literal fashion by Yoruba sculptors who often created

Right
Verandah posts (fig. 160) showing a woman with her child
on her knees. Designed for royal palaces, temples or the
156 Figure of a woman
breast-feeding, Poro houses of rich officials, these carvings give the woman an
brotherhood.
Ivory Coast. Senufo. authoritative expression which is the speciality of an artist
Hardwood with black
patina. H: 65 cm. Musee whose name is for once known, Oshamuko; in about 1920
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
The figure oozes with oil he created the carved post which is now in the Barbier-
from past sacrifices. Mueller collection.
 BAjv ;}®iB§i;i’ 3H;
1ist IssT^^Rv
^ w

» A p

1 .'JP m j

^ v■ ;■ r $ 1

iin. j . (■Q&’tf ,^i|

BSJRh
 158 Mother and child
Zaire, Mbala. Wood. H:
54 cm. Musee royal de
I'Afrique centrale,
Tervuren.

Mali. Bambara. Wood. H:

115 cm. The Metropolitan
museum of Art, New
York.

170
159 Mother and child.
Zaire. Yombe. Wood. H:
42 cm. Musee royal de
I’Afrique centrale, 160 Veranda post.
Tervuren. Nigeria. Yoruba,
Hardwood, remains of
white paint of European
origin. H; 142 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
w*
 The husband and wife might suffer from psychological
difficulties. Discreet submission was demanded of the
wife, but among the Woyo of Cabinda, if she wished to
have her point of view heard she could use pot-lids on
which proverbs were shown. Her mother gave her a set on
her marriage, and she could use one to explain her pro¬
blems and ask for advice when her husband received
friends. On one of the lids the woman lying flat on her sto¬
mach appears to beg for sympathy, but on another a bird
escaping from a trap indicates: “I shall go back to my pa¬
rents if I want to.”
However skilfully the lids were used, they could not
resolve all problems. “Women’s affairs” were very frequent
and provoked armed confrontation between clans, while
adulterous women were cruelly punished and might even
be put to death. This scene is represented by a soapstone
Kongo carving: an angry husband who has already killesT
his wife’s lover is preparing to strangle her.
Most women led lives of constant painful labour, even
when they were pregnant. Among the Dogon, long spee¬
ches at funerals celebrated the labour of men and women;
relating to women, the ethnologists D. Paulme and G.
Dieterlen have recorded the following phrases: “Thank you
for yesterday. Thank you for working in the fields. Thank
you for having children, with God’s help. Thank you for
preparing meals. Thank you for meat, thank you for millet
beer, thank you for water. Thank you.”.
The Dogon statue of a Woman with mortar and pestle, a
Millet grinder {fig. 161), of which there are several varia¬
tions, might be the visual equivalent of this type of prayer.
Standing on the family altar, the statue would perpetuate
the memory of the dead mother’s never-ending labour.

161 Woman with mortar

and pestle, known as
"The Millet Grinder".
Mali. Dogon. Wood and
iron. H: 56.6 cm. The
Metropolitan museum of
Art, New York.

Left

162 Queen mother’s

head.
Nigeria. Benin. Brass.
British Museum, London.

173
Right
On the ancestral altar
163 Pair of funeral
statuettes.
Ghana. Culture known as The queen mother generally held a very powerful
"Komaland". 13th-16th
century. Terracotta. H: 23 position in royal families. Her authority is further apparent
and 25 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva. in the bronze heads representing the Benin queen
mothers (fig. 162) who had a right to an altar of their own,
while the Afo-a-Kom group in Laikom, Cameroon (fig.47,
P-65) shows an unforgettable figure of a queen mother on
her throne.
Whether in a royal or an ordinary family, on ancestors’
altars the woman was often represented as the man’s
equal. The ancestral couple, the originators of life, cannot
be disunited. Terracotta statuettes (fig.163) recently
discovered in Komaland (Ghana) are evidence of this: no
physical ties link these two people, but they would lose
much of their significance if they were separated. This is
also true of all the ancestral couples mentioned in the
chapter on this topic.
In all these examples the female statue marks the final
stage attained by a woman who has won a place in society
and through her pregnancies guarantees the continuation
of her line.
aj
 Gold
for decoration
and ceremony

Left
For thousands of years Europeans have regarded pre¬
cious stones, jewellery, regalia and gold as possessing 164 Head from the
royal treasure of the
great value, each enabling a privileged social class to dis¬ Ashanti.
Ghana. Ashanti. Pure
play its superiority. Africa is very different. Copper was ori¬ Sold. Weisht: 1.5 kg.
Wallace Collection,
ginally the most highly prized metal, and it was the Arabs London.

who, through intermediaries, taught Africans from the 7th

century onwards to appreciate the market value of gold.
The goldsmith’s art did not develop evenly throughout
Africa. It has been noted particularly in western Africa in
two broad areas, one in the dry Sahel region from Senegal
to Mali and Niger, and the other in the forest regions of
Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) and the Ivory Coast, both
populated by the Akan nation. There are vast areas with
no indigenous tradition of gold work, for example Burkina
Faso, Liberia, the west and north Ivory Coast, the east and
north of Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon.
Despite the enormous amount of gold which was
extracted from these lands over a period of fifteen centu¬
ries, very few actual objects have lasted until modern
times. There are several reasons for their disappearance.
Primarily, they were melted down to be used as money or
simply to follow fashion. In Senegal, very few pieces of
jewellery can be found which are more than forty or fifty
years old. Trade also helped to strip western Africa of its
177
 gold, as it was exported across the Sahara to North Africa,
Egypt and Europe. Those treasures which did remain were
subject to the vagaries of war: many defeats were settled
by the seizure of wealth as booty. Sometimes, indeed,
when the victors were European, war indemnities paid in
kind permitted the preservation of valuable items, as was
the case with the pieces seized by the British at Kumasi in
Ghana in 1874 (fig. 164) and by the French at Segou in
Mali in 1893. Finally, when a king managed to retain his
treasure and it was laid with him in his grave, there was a
serious risk of looting, despite the religious laws. Archaeo¬
logical research in Africa has very rarely uncovered major
gold items: the only notable find is the Pectoral discovered
in a royal tomb near Rao in Senegal. This may date from
either the 17th or the 18th century.

166 Peul woman. Looking at African gold

Barbier-Mueller Archives,
Geneva.

In such conditions it is difficult to see far back into the

past. The oldest jewellery and regalia in museums or pri¬
vate collections date from the mid-19th century, and most
from the early 20th century.
Where the 17th and 18th centuries are concerned we
are fortunate in having the information recorded by a
French traveller, Jean Barbot, in his Journal de Voyage,
the diary of his long stay in the Gold Coast in 1678-9.
Careful sketches (fig. 165) prove the existence at that time
of designs which were passed on to the Akan goldsmiths
of the Ivory Coast and which are still being made in mo¬
dern times.
Unexpected confirmation of Barbot’s researches was
found recently with the archaeological search of the hull of
a ship wrecked off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts,
in the United States. This was the Whydah, which was
wrecked in 1717. Built for the British Royal Company, the
ship was no doubt named after the city of Ouidah, in mo¬
dern Benin, an important staging-post in the slave trade
167 Peul goldsmith at during the 18th century. After exchanging European goods
work.
Near Jenne. Barbier- for slaves, ivory and gold, the ship sailed for Jamaica
Mueller Archives, Geneva.
where the human cargo was sold. It then fell into the
hands of pirates, whose leader kept a mistress in Cape
178
Cod. He wanted to visit her but the ship was caught in a
storm and sank with almost all her crew during the night
of 26 April 1717. Unable to raise the hull, the adminis¬
trators of the Colony of Massachusetts could only record
where it lay.
The legend of the ship survived in Cape Cod until a
local professional treasure-hunter, Barry Clifford, managed
to locate the hull still resting on the sea-bed. In 1984
Clifford brought coins, gold bars and small jewels to the
surface. A ship's bell engraved with the inscription
“Whydah Gaily 1716” eliminated all possible doubt as to
the origin of the finds and the hull, seen as an archaeolo¬
gical site, was then searched scientifically.
If Clifford had hoped to retrieve works of art of great
value from the sea-bed, he was to be disappointed. The
gold recovered was in a poor state, consisting only of
small, worn and broken pieces of jewellery which had
been compressed to take up less space until they could
be melted down. From the point of view of historical docu¬
mentation, however, they are of outstanding interest, for
these are the oldest pieces of African jewellery which can
be dated with any certainty. Very similar to the forms sket¬
ched by Jean Barbot half a century earlier, they also ap¬
pear to be the direct antecedents of the Akan and Ashanti
goldsmiths of modern Ghana. Finally, they prove that
African gold craftsmanship had not at that time fallen
under the European influence which was later to prove so
powerful.

Gold in Africa

For centuries western Africa has figured as a rich gold

reservoir, with an average total production of two tons per
year from 1400 to 1900. The gold-bearing zones are small
in size, but large in number. The first to be exploited,
possibly as early as the 4th century AD, were the Bambuk
and Bure deposits in Senegal and Guinea. Other gold-
bearing zones exist in Ghana, the Ivory Coast and, less 165 Akan jewellery.
Sketched by Jean Barbot
productive, in Burkina Faso. Most were already being to illustrate his
manuscripts of 1679 and
exploited before colonial times. 1688, and his book
published in 1732.

179
 The shafts in the mines were between 10 and 20 me¬
tres deep, just wide enough for one man. Crouching at the
bottom, the miner attacked the gold-bearing rock with his
pick and the fragments were hauled up to the surface in a
basket. He often paid for his finds with his life, for
accidents were frequent in these unsupported pits.
Less dangerous, but much less productive, was the po¬
pular practice of washing sand or the alluvial soil from cer¬
tain river-beds. Gold washing was a hereditary activity in
western Africa, and was undertaken after it had rained,
because the rain made the tiny particles glitter. The
women washed the sand and tipped it into gourds. Olfert
Dapper recounts in his Description de i’Afrique (1668)
that in order to find sand which was richer in nuggets, di¬
vers would sometimes seek them out in the depths of river
beds.
Despite its well known wealth of gold, southern Africa
has not produced notable pieces of jewellery. Archaeolo¬
gical digs in Zimbabwe have uncovered only small quanti¬
ties of gold jewellery, while among the Zulu the preference
is for multi-coloured glass beads.

Gold’s evil powers

168 Peul gold earrings.
Mali. Hammered gold.
Mid-20th century. Musee
Africans have ambivalent feelings towards this gold
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva. which has cost them so much. For years the precious
metal has been feared: its enduring gleam appears to
have a life of its own, the life of an evil spirit ready to bring
madness on anyone who uncovers it, or to annihilate his
family. Its origins remained obscure. According to 10th-
century Arab geographers, it was thought to grow as a
plant and increase in the earth. George Niangoran Bouah,
the leading modern African specialist on gold and
professor at the higher education institute in Abidjan,
reports a belief among certain Africans that gold comes
from the heavens and appears in the form of a rainbow.
Right At all times, ritual ceremonies accompanied the gathe¬
169 Ornaments. ring of the dangerous metal, danger which was always
Senegal, Mali and
Mauretania. Tukulor, liable to reveal itself in the violence of rock falls and splits.
Sarakole and Maure. Gilt
silver. Musee Barbier- Its negative powers had to be neutralised with sacrifices,
Mueller, Geneva.
and the Bambuk and Bure peoples would call on a
*? i*Wg

'M&ll
Moslem to recite verses from the Koran at the opening of a Left

new mine. Among the Akan animists, a priest carried out a 170 Spherical or pear-
shaped beads.
sacrifice to ancestral spirits and miners were required to Senegal. Tukulor, Wolof.
Gilt silver. These beads of
respect numerous laws. In the middle of the 20th century various shapes were worn
as hair ornaments. Musee
the appearance of a very large nugget could still cause Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

consternation: all work ceased, until a young red-coated

bull could be sacrificed.
In modern times the Akan or Ghanaian Africans can be
seen wearing gold nuggets threaded through as bracelets
or necklaces. These are regarded as fetishes with protec¬
tive powers. Belief in magical powers still exists but has
become a positive factor. The nations of north Africa
appear to have had some influence in this development; in
their eyes gold was beneficial and in any case they very
quickly appreciated its market value and commercial
significance. Through trans-Sahara contacts they helped
the Sahel people to overcome their fear of gold.
The Arabs who overran the Maghreb in the 7th century
soon guessed that there was gold beyond the Sahara, but
never managed to locate it. The particularly rich deposits
among the Akan were unknown among neighbouring
nations until around the 14th century, when substantial
trade began.
The three great empires - Ghana, Mali and Songhai -
which followed each other in western Sudan between the
11th and 16th centuries, left a memory among their
contemporaries of an incredible wealth of gold. According
to travellers’ tales, the courts of Ghana and Mali were
torrents of gold; horses were covered in gold cloth and
even the dogs wore little gold bells.
This abundance of precious metal did not fail to attract
the attention of Europeans, who began to arrive by sea in
the 15th century and competed with the trans-Saharan
trade. Coastal cities expanded and enormous quantities of
gold were exported to the Old Continent.
There is a world of difference betweeen these lost
marvels and the relatively late objects which have
survived, but we can still admire some very fine pieces
from the 19th and 20th centuries, including examples of
several different styles.
171 Set of filigree
jewellery.
Senegal. Wolof. Gilt silver.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.

Left

172 Necklace of 108

beads.
Ghana. Akan. Gold. L:
49.5 cm. Weight: 84 g.
19th century. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

185
 V

From the coast of Senegal to the plains of Mali

The goldsmiths of Mali (fig. 167, p. 178) can be justi¬

fiably proud of their creations, which are among the finest
pieces of African jewellery (fig. 166, p. 178). These are the
Fulani (Peul) women's earrings, truly abstract works of art
(fig. 168, p. 180). They are made by hammering, starting
with a small gold bar which is flattened down to produce
four ribs and finally curved round in a crescent-shape.
Their wide polished surfaces, sometimes embellished with
light engravings, gleam with multi-faceted radiance, but
their weight (between 50 and 300 grammes) means that a
red leather or fabric supporting strap must be worn over
the top of the head.
The Senegalese goldsmiths’ style is entirely different
from that of the Mali craftsmen. There are no smooth sur¬
faces here, as the craftsmen emphasise the complexities
of granulation and filigree which in turn enable them to
show effects of light and depth. Among these motifs are
the lion’s claws, (fig. 169, p. 181) the local name for a type
of pendant in the shape of a swastika with curved
branches.
Filigree was also used to create large round or biconical
drops (fig. 170) which could be threaded onto necklaces
and spherical or pear-shaped head-dress ornaments grou¬
ped in twos and threes in the hair.
These jewellery shapes cannot be attributed to any
173 Pectoral disc
strung on fibre threads. particular region because they were widely copied and ea¬
Ghana. Akan. Gold and
silver alloy. D: 10.6 cm, sily transportable. The Peul people, after all, are nomads -
weight: 127 g. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva. and the goldsmiths themselves were travellers.
A Maghreb or Mauretanian influence can be seen
among the oldest Senegalese pieces, and similarities have
even been noted with 11th-century pieces of Islamic-style
jewellery found in Jerusalem. Moorish women’s love of
jewellery is well known, but this is mostly silver.
Europe has unfortunately had a great influence on
Senegalese gold jewellery. It was probably first felt in the
17th or 18th centuries in the city of Saint-Louis in Senegal,
leading craftsmen to work commercially with European
clients in mind. The techniques of which they were
masters - filigree and granulation - were adapted to
accommodate the most banal of motifs, such as butter-
186
flies, stylised flowers or baskets of flowers, modern ver¬
sions of ancient Sahel designs embodying an ancestral
dream of flowers round the edges of the Sahara (fig. 171).
In modern times the pieces of jewellery worn in Senegal
and Mali respond to a desire for coquetterie and social
prestige, and are designed exclusively for women. In the
past they were also worn by men, but that custom died out
with the spread of Islam.
Finally it should be noted that until recently Sahel
jewellery craftsmen did not specialise in gold-working: they
were also blacksmiths capable of working with all metals
and often used silver.

The Akan people of Ghana

The term Akan is often applied to the six million people

of various cultures who live in Ghana and the Ivory Coast,
famous for their wealth in gold and the abundance of
jewellery and regalia worn by their kings and retinues at
public feasts. Not being Moslem, they are not subject to
the restrictions in the Koran regarding men wearing jewel¬
lery. To organise and expand the metal trade over long
distances, the Akan people employed the skills of another
race, the Mande who, unlike the Akan, were Moslems and
knew how to write. The Mande introduced the use of gold
dust as money for exchange and brought in the custom of
174 Fish and crocodile
weighing it against special brass weights. It was also the sword ornaments.
Ghana. Akan. Gold.
Mande who supplied the Akan with the copper they Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.
needed for certain alloys and taught them certain techni¬
ques, in particular lost wax casting.
When Jean Barbot visited the Gold Coast in 1678 he
sketched Akan jewellery. Although his text mentions many
figurative designs, particularly of animajs, the beads in his
drawings show abstract forms such as discs, spirals,
rectangles, lozenges, cones and tubes. Some of these de¬
signs have survived down the centuries (fig. 172). A round
and delicately worked Pectoral (fig. 173) in the Barbier-
Mueller collection is very similar to Barbot’s drawings and
its design is equally reminiscent of the Rao pectoral.
These discs, worn in the past by dignitaries in the king’s
entourage, are still brought out on ceremonial occasions.
187
 Their origins may lie in the gold dinars which are often
transformed into decorative items to the north and south
of the Sahara.
Rings were rare and plain among the Akan. Barbot
drew only one, which is undecorated. Later, however, we
see a surprising proliferation of all kinds of figurative ele¬
ments - animals, birds, fish, insects, fruit and even human
heads. Rings like this very often have a meaning, referring
to a popular proverb or aphorism, and, without losing any
of their artistic value, are closely linked to the collective
unconscious.
An example of this is the porcupine, which very often
signifies the invincible warrior and the chiefs power. The
frog is not a very common royal symbol, but when it
appears it is a reminder that: “The full length of the frog is
only visible after its death”. This can be interpreted as: “A
man’s full worth cannot be recognised during his lifetime”.
On the other hand another royal symbol, the mud-fish
(fig. 174), is ambiguous. It is often associated with the
176 Top of a
messenger’s staff. crocodile, as in the proverb: “If the mud-fish swallows
Ghana. Akan. Carved
wood covered with gold
something precious, he does it for his master,” i.e. the
leaf. H: 26.8 cm. Musee crocodile.
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
This specialised bestiary may also adorn an infinite
variety of objects, from decorative elements on swords and
helmets to the tops of royal shafts. The message from
coiled snakes on the helmet of the chief’s bodyguard is
unmistakable: “A snake bites when it is angry,” meaning,
“Do not arouse the chief’s anger”.
Sometimes a head cast in gold representing a
conquered enemy can be found attached to the throne of
Akan kings, or it may appear on their ceremonial swords.
Among the war booty brought back from Kumasi by the
British is a Head (fig.164), cast in pure gold and weighing
1-5 kg, which represents a chief killed in battle - Worosa,
king of Banda or perhaps Adinkra, king of Gyaman.
Ceremonial swords (fig. 175), with their unsharpened
blades, were not designed for use in battle, but they do
Right have a purpose. The large seed on the pommel, made of
175 Ritual swords. wood and covered with gold, is a symbol of fertility or
Ghana. Akan. Iron blade
and a pommel of carved wealth, while another sword with a gold and white pommel
wood covered with gold
leaf. Musee Barbier- had its place in a ritual ceremony when the “soul washer”
Mueller, Geneva.
was supposed to purify the king’s soul. In addition, the
188
 rW
1 1 4
 1

king would place his hand on a state sword as he took his

oath.
Once enthroned, the king sits on his throne beneath a
sunshade decorated with animal designs and his mes¬
sengers carry batons with matching decoration. One such
stick, made of wood covered with gold (fig. 176) and with a
bird at the top, looks to European eyes like a splendid and
very attractive carving in the gentle harmony of its shape -
but to the Akan this Sankofa bird is connected with the
proverb: “Gather what falls behind you;” in other words,
“Take advantage of your past experience”.
Among the middle classes, bracelets are not often worn
by either Akan men or women. However, the chiefs and
their wives or queen mothers make up for this by the enor¬
mous size of their bracelets. To reduce both the weight
and the price they are cast in two halves with a hollow
centre. Their complex decoration combines points and
carved designs (fig. 177). Elsewhere, numerous gold orna¬
ments attached to the chiefs’ headdresses or their sandals
further enhance the display of wealth in their treasury.
All Akan jewellery and regalia is predominantly
figurative in form, only the bracelets and certain pectoral

178 Pendant.
discs having abstract motifs. Other ornaments are beauti¬
Ivory Coast. Baule. Gold. ful three-dimensional miniature sculptures in which spe¬
H: 9.5 cm. Musee
d'Afrique et d'Oceanie, cial attention is paid to the interplay of the surfaces. These
Paris. (Photo: R.M.N.)
characteristics differentiate the productions of the Akan
from the light filigree and more ordinary jewels of the
Seneglaese goldsmiths, just as they distinguish them from
the abstract or stylised visions of the Ivory Coast peoples.

Ivory Coast cultures close to the Akan

The inhabitants of the centre and south of the Ivory

Right Coast connected to the Akan are either the Anyi, Baule

177 Bracelets and Nzima group or the numerous Lagoons peoples cultu¬
belonging to a chief
res. The scattered gold-bearing areas, less rich than in
and a queen mother.
Ghana. Akan. Carved Ghana, supply the primary material needed by the many
wood covered with gold
leaf for the chief's goldsmiths working in the villages. Their creations consist
bracelets, gold or gold
and silver alloy for the above all of personal jewellery, particularly beads and
queen mother's bracelets.
Musee Barbier-Mueller, pendants, their ancient native production including very
Geneva.
few rings. The regalia are less significant than in the courts
190
&////?
 of the Ghanaian kings, for here the chiefs reign over smal¬
ler territories which are sometimes barely more than a
village. They therefore have limited resources.
The gold finery of the Ivory Coast differs noticeably in
style from that of the Akan. Figurative forms and animal
representations are replaced in the Ivory Coast by stylised
interpretations of similar themes, and on occasions by
totally abstract geometric forms.
Ivory Coast gold-working undoubtedly developed after
the 17th century, but no trace of it remains. In the 19th
century many objects were made of gold cast by the lost
wax process, but more recently, in order to reduce costs,
greater use has been made of wooden items covered in
gold-leaf. It is difficult to distinguish between Baule pro¬
ducts (fig. 178) and those of the Lagoons peoples cultures,
but it is probable that the most perfect castings come from
the Baule. The work of the Lagoons goldsmiths is less
technically advanced.
The most remarkable creations of the Ivory Coast
goldsmiths are their pendants which take the form of a
stylised human face. An isolated face formed in low relief
looks out, without a neck. Certain heads are quite realistic
and occasionally resemble the heads of Baule statues
(fig. 179), while others are reduced to an oval perforated
with triangles (fig. 180) in a surface of close-packed gold
threads. Ivory Coast goldsmiths generally consider that the
perforated pendants with the largest heads come from the
179 Pendant in the
form of a human face. Lagoons people. These pendants have no connection with
Ivory Coast. Ghanaian
frontier region. Possibly dance masks - they may be hung from a necklace or set
Anyi or Abron. Gold and
copper alloy. H: 8.5 cm, in the hair. Nor are they portraits, although they may on
weight: 75 g (approx.). occasion represent an ancestor.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva. This miniature G. Niangoran Bouah also sees the pendants as
"mask" cast by lost wax
may be an Akan trophy primarily defensive. He writes: “When a man was on the
head, representing a slave
or an enemy killed in point of being struck in a fight, he could claim that he had
battle.
a man’s head, thus placing himself under the protection of
his ancestors and warning off the aggressor.”. These pen¬
dants did not protect the wealthy alone, for the same po¬
wers were attributed to heads made of copper.
Other pendants represented animals which were so
stylised as to be no more than a piece of pure design
(fig.181). “Treasures” consisting of a collection of such
gold objects were also exhibited at great feasts, “the feast
192
of the generations”, and helped to raise the head of the
family’s standing to that of a dignitary.
Some remarkable beads, generally flat and designed to
be strung in necklaces, can be found among the Baule
creations. Unlike the Akan beads, they are not figurative;
their strictly geometrical forms are probably derived from
old Akan models such as those drawn by Jean Barbot.
With their splendid simplicity, they are essentially varia¬
tions on the theme of a circle or rectangle. Close-set gold
threads create various motifs on their surface, but this is
not filigree; everything is cast. In the centre of each bead a
tubular channel allows for stringing (fig. 182). According to
old goldsmiths, these beads used to be known by poetic
names, such as “pool of water” or “setting sun” for circles,
and “bamboo door”, “chicken feather” or “back to back”
for certain rectangular designs.

Manufacturing techniques
180 Human face
pendant.
Hammering and cutting. A gold rod is heated and, when the metal ivory Coast. South-east
resion. Gold. H: 6.9 cm,
softens, is shaped with the hammer. This is the method for making
weight: 38 g. Musee
the Fulani women’s earrings. Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
Wooden forms covered with gold. The craftsman carves the wood,
then hammers out a very thin gold sheet which is stuck onto it.
Direct casting or casting by lost wax. The practice is the same as for
the Benin works. In the case of the Baule beads which consist of
close-set threads, the goldsmith forms a wax thread less than one
millimetre thick and moulds it into the desired shape. A matching
surface is then stuck to it. Finally, the craftsman puts this wax model
into a mould for a lost wax casting.
Filigree. Here the craftsman produces the gold thread, stretching it
through holes in a sheet of iron, with the thread passing through
increasingly narrow holes. The metallic thread thus obtained is placed
according to design, leaving some empty spaces. The finished motif is
finally placed on a gold-leaf surface.

193
mum
182 Twenty-one bead
necklace.
Ivory Coast. Baule. Gold.
Total length: 84 cm. Size
of the central bead: 6.7
cm. Weight: 252 g. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

Left

181 Stylised animal

ornaments.
Ivory Coast. Probably the
Lagoons region. Size:
between 8 and 9.5 cm.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.

195
 The significance of
beautiful
objects

Left
A great many African objects are embellished with
abstract designs and sometimes with figurative carvings. In 183 Drum.
Guinea. Basa. Hardwood
both cases this added ornamentation has more than merely and skin. Polychrome,
partly worn away, in red,
decorative value: it is usually weighted with a very precise white, blue and black. H:
172 cm. Musee Barbier-
significance, its role being to give visual information about Mueller, Geneva.
Amons the Basa the
the owner’s social standing and to add to his prestige. body of the drum was
sometimes set, as here,
However, it may also be used in a ceremonial context and to on a carved base whose
sisnificance is not entirely
evoke a myth familiar to the assembly. Almost without clear. A female caryatid
exception, then, such decoration has implicit symbolism. stands on each side of
the horse -the reason for
We have already seen that in Cameroon the use of pi¬ this is unknown, as is the
reason for the horse's
pes was regulated by a code: the individual was not free to presence. The Basa
certainly never had
select just any pipe. Depending on his status as either an horses, because they
could never have
ordinary member of the tribe or a grand initiated member survived in Guinea’s
climate. The horse’s
of a brotherhood, the individual might or might not be presence may be
allowed to pride himself on a pipe embellished with carved explained by its symbolic
value, as in Africa it is
designs whose message was unmistakable to all. linked to military or
public power.
This is only one example. In categories of objects as va¬
ried as musical instruments, seats, doors, vessels or
spoons, the decoration or the form had to have signifi¬
cance. For the Africans, who were sensitive to beauty and
who associated it with prestige, the decorataion had to be
as beautiful as possible. This is particularly true for scep¬
tres (see chapter 8), champions’ batons (see chapter 5)
and regalia (see chapter 10).
 *

Carved musical instruments

Musical instruments were, and sometimes still are,

closely linked with the chiefs function. In Cameroon the
Fon of Korn, photographed by Louis Perrois, sits between
statues of his royal ancestors and instruments of sacred
music (fig.44, p.62).
In the Bantu lands of Central Africa, drums with slots
(or gongs) or membrane drums have always played an
important social role. The consecration of a chief's drum
required its own special ceremony, a distinction not made
for instruments designed to accompany secular dances. In
west Africa the ceremony for Membrane drums (fig. 183)
was always linked to male power and reserved for boys’
initiations or old men’s funerals.
The category of stringed instruments covers citharas,
lyres, lutes and harps, where the sound is created by
vibrating strings stretched between fixed points. Among
the Imbangala people in Angola the Kakosha is a very rare
stringed instrument shaped like a standing woman. There
are very few known examples. Two threads of fibre stret¬
184 Head of a stringed ched on pegs extend from her mouth to a ring which is
instrument.
Angola. Imbangala. fixed between her legs. The Barbier-Mueller museum con¬
Polished hardwood, nails,
buttons, beading and tains a Kakosha head (fig. 184) with a very powerful
cotton. H: 23 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva. expression, all the more surprising because the Imbangala
have otherwise produced very little in the way of carved
items.
Harps in particular have a special mystique, expressed
through highly sophisticated carvings and their great social
prestige. They are royal instruments, the subject of le¬
gends and their frequently anthropomorphic shape makes
them almost an extension of the soul, a feature enhanced
by the fullness and range of their sound. The Mangbetu
have produced very fine anthropomorphic harps (fig. 185).
The lozenge-shaped sound box is covered with skin and

Right has five strings fixed to the cross-piece of the instrument,

which is carved in the form of a human figurine often
185 Bowed harp with
five strings. shown with the hairstyle favoured by women of high social
North-east Zaire.
Mangbetu. Soft wood rank.
with light polish and
poker-work decoration.
Vegetable fibres, skin and
bark. H: 68 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

198
 186 Ceremonial stool.
Cameroon. Oku kingdom.
Semi-hard wood, with
roughened polished
patina. H: 54.5 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
Wearing the headdress
appropriate to effigies
commemorating royal
ancestors, the male figure
symbolises the legitimacy
of the reigning dynasty,
with further authority
added by the leopard
and the snakes.

200
 Chiefs’ seats and dignitaries’ doorways

The chiefs throne was the essential indication of his

status. Three extraordinary seats carved out of a single
quartzite block have been found in Ife. The king of Benin
is known to have had luxurious brass stools and the
Cameroon chiefs had seats of highly complex design
(fig. 186), often with added beads which gave a colourful
silkiness (figs.51 and 52, p.70).
Among the Luba, the Hemba and also the Songye in
Zaire, seats with caryatids of a fascinating beauty have
been found. Several of them, all quite similar in concep¬
tion, are attributed to an artist known as “the Master of
Buli” (fig.187). This is because two works of this style
seem to have originated in the village of Buli, in the north
of the Luba country. Was there really a single Master of
Buli? It seems possible to distinguish two slightly different
hands in the group of works concerned, which would
suggest that they are the products of a school or work¬
shop. Whatever the truth, the style of these most impres¬
sive works is unforgettable. It is characterized by ascetic
and emaciated bodies whose angular faces bear painfully
sad expressions and whose large hands are placed on ei¬
ther side of their ears. Also attributed to the Master of Buli
is the poignant Female cup-bearer in the Musee royal de
I’Afrique Centrale in Tervuren (fig. 155, p.168).
Marking the division between the interior and the
exterior, between private and public life, carved doorways
were first designed to show the passer-by the high social
status of the householder. A Senufo door for a master ma¬
gician (fig. 188) is carved in bas-relief with a group of
highly symbolic motifs. On the other hand a Baule door
decorated with fish (fig. 189) was carved by a master
craftsman and appears to have been primarily decorative,
unless it alludes to the conviviality of a superb meal of fish
or illustrates a proverb. The design on the bar is often car¬
ved with particular care; the Senufo door shows a finely
carved lizard (fig. 188) while the Lock of a Dogon granary
187 Seat with caryatid.
door {fig.190, detail) is surmounted by a pair of statuettes Zaire. Luba-Hemba.
Attributed to the Master
representing the founder of the line and his wife, who of Buli. Wood. H: 61 cm.
Late 19th century. The
guarded the harvest contained in the granary. Metropolitan museum of
Art, New York.

201
 .1'!■»*«-->t

Mgs
 189 Door.
Ivory Coast. Baule.
Hardwood. H: 146 cm.
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.

Left

188 Bas-relief door for

a master magician.
Ivory Coast. Senufo.
Hardwood with deep
patina. Height with hinge:
160 cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.
This door was made by a
kulebele, a wood-carver
possessed of occult
powers. He has placed
the motif of the “mother's
navel" at the centre, a
reference to the myth of
the creation and also
symbol of the village
microcosm. The upper
and lower bands show
groups of three warriors.
The rest of the space is
marked out with narrow
lines, clustered together
and then crossing at the
centre. The latch is held in
place by a crocodile, a
frequent element in
Senufo art, and which
may be a reference to the
forces of evil and sorcery.

190 Lock of a granary

door (detail).
Mali. Dogon. Hardwood
Musee Barbier-Mueller,
Geneva.
 1

Spoons for special occasions

The world of spoons is infinitely diverse in Africa. They

can be found everywhere but their uses vary widely. In
everyday life, Africans generally ate with their right hand.
Spoons were used for special meals, for sharing sacred
food and banquets on festive occasions. Alternatively a
king would use a spoon if his supposedly divine nature
prevented him from being observed while eating.
An external sign of wealth and prestige, the spoon was
more than purely functional. Its carved design linked it
with myth.
In practical terms too, the sculptor had to combine two
separate factors in a single object: the bowl of the spoon
was a normal shape, while the decorated handle often
represented a human being or part of a body. The crafts¬
man might combine the two with a linking element, as
often happened with the Dan people (fig. 191), or he might
use a longer linking piece decorated with a finely-worked
spiral, as on certain Fang spoons. He could also join the
figure and bowl directly to each other, without using any
form of link, a solution adopted by certain Mangbetu car¬
vers (fig. 192).
When a spoon bore a carved figure the style was the
same as for a free-standing statuette. The traditional de¬
signs of each culture were respected, so the metal spoons
191 Spoon. made by the Akan of the Ivory Coast might have handles
Liberia. Dan. Wood. H: 48
cm. The Metropolitan decorated with lost wax motifs. Designed for weighing
museum of Art, New
York. gold, these spoons could be used as strainers once they
had been perforated.
The Dan and the neighbouring We of the Ivory Coast
made a large number of very fine spoons. The handle con¬
sists of either a female torso or of legs which extend the
elongated bowl. When piled high with rice this gives the
swollen effect of a pregnant woman’s stomach. There may
even be a double bowl evoking breasts full of milk.
The Dan spoon is a ceremonial item which singles out
the woman (the Wadeke or Wunkirle) to whom it has been
Right awarded. She is judged to be the finest cook and manager
192 Ceremonial spoon. of feasts, renowned for her generous hospitality and
Zaire. Mangbetu. Wood.
H: 31 cm. Museum supported by the other members of a female society. The
Rietberg, Zurich,
tribal chief calls on her when particular circumstances,
204
.-
notably a funeral, require a feast. The spoon will then be
used to distribute the rice and meat from the stores of the
woman or her little flock. To accomplish such tasks suc¬
cessfully she needs the help of a spirit which is embodied
in the large spoons. Through their mediation, the spirits
come to help prepare the banquet.

Sacred or secular vessels

As numerous as the spoons, various carved receptacles

are found in Africa. Their purposes are equally varied, ran¬
ging from the sacred to the secular. Among the ceremonial
vessels there is, for example, the Dogon’s Ancestors’ dish,
also known as The ark of the world (fig. 193). This was
kept hidden away and taken out only once a year, for the
winter solstice ceremony, which brought together all the
family’s blood relatives. The meat cut from the sacrificed
beasts was placed in the dish before being shared out.
Although not strictly speaking a ceremonial dish, the
Baule mouse oracle should be mentioned here. The finest
known example is in the Musee de I’Homme in Paris
(fig. 194). Used for divining and preserved by a soothsayer,
195 Anthropomorphic
the dish is separated into two levels by a board with a hole vase.
Zaire. Kuba. Wood. H: 25
in it. When a consultation was required the soothsayer cm. Private collection.

shut a pair of mice into the lower part, having kept them
without food. Over them he placed a tortoise-shell contai¬
ning a small amount of millet and ten small sticks. As the
mice ate the millet they moved the sticks and their fresh
positions provided the soothsayer with the essence of his Left

reply. The Baule believed that the mice were in commu¬ 193 Ceremonial dish.
Mali. Dogon. Hardwood,
nication with the spirit of the earth and the ancestors, and cut from a single piece.
Length: 164 cm. Musee
hence were aware of the future. The seated figure is se¬ Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.
This ancestors’ dish or
rious and deep in meditation, and could be a representa¬ "Ark of the world”
represents the Ark in
tion of the soothsayer pondering on the correct interpreta¬
which Nommo, the father
tion of the signs. Only two mouse oracles of this type have of humankind, and the
various gods of the
been found throughout the world. This example is seen as Dogon pantheon (see
chapter 5) came down to
one of the chief works of Baule statuary. earth. The carved figures
correspond to founding
The decorative art of the Kuba, in Zaire, is remarkably ancestors, their arms
raised to pray for rain. The
rich and enhances all objects of daily life. These items are two handles of the dish
recall the horse, Nommo’s
purely aesthetic and independent of all forms of worship - incarnation after the Ark
a characteristic which is very rare in Africa. The dignitaries had reached the earth.

207
Right
who can afford to possess such objects are delighted and
194 Mouse oracle. proud to do so. The love of the perfect form is evident in
Ivory Coast. Baule. Wood,
terracotta, vesetable the various carved boxes which often belong to the
fibres, leather and
untanned skin. H: 25 cm. Bushoong, the royal clan. The finest objects, however, are
Musee de I’Homme, Paris.
without doubt the effigy cups, in the shape of a human
head or even a whole body. Certain Anthropomorphic
cups (fig. 195) have been seen as portraits, with the face
idealised by the features drawn towards the temples and
the judiciously placed abundance of geometrical orna¬
ments. These items never suggest effort or repetition.
Far less prestigious, the vases made by the Mangbetu
are none the less interesting in their very individual anthro¬
pomorphic style. The Museum Rietberg in Zurich, for
example, has cylindrical Boxes (fig. 196) made of bark.
The boxes stand on human legs and have a head on top.
They were designed to hold honey or the red tukula pow¬
der, which was said to have magical powers.

Headrests and fabrics

Known in Egypt from 3000 BC, headrests may have

reached Black Africa via the Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia.
They have been found in great numbers in the River
Congo basin. Luba headrests are complete carvings, full of
the harmony which characterises the art of this culture
(figs.197 and 153, p.165).
Headrests are relatively rare in west Africa, so it is all
the more surprising to find them in Mali, in ancient tombs
dating back to the Tellem occupation. The problems that
this poses have not yet been resolved, but in one of them
(fig. 198) there is no mistaking the horse figure often repre¬
sented in this culture.
Fabrics deserve an entire study of their own. Their
colourful presence and the infinite variations of their deco¬
rative motifs create a contrast which offsets even the most
austere of statues. As an example, in the former state of
Dahomey there were the fabrics decorated by Abomey
craftsmen with applique motifs which corresponded to
writing. There were also the personal efforts of the
Cameroon king Njoya to promote the manufacture of
fabrics decorated with figurative or abstract motifs, which
Vvt
 1

he would sometimes design himself. Above all there are

the famous Kasai raffia velvets with their dark mono¬
chrome patterns and endless tracery (figs 199 and 200).
The technique of indigo “tie-dyeing” is widely practised in
Senegal, while coloured earths are used in Mali for the
bokolanfini and in the Ivory Coast for the Korhogo fabrics.
In Togo, finally, prestige loincloths are made of numerous
bands assembled and decorated with square motifs.
This brief and incomplete study of the objects of Black
African art reveals that most of the time they were the
result of an aesthetic search. This search was concerned
with food as well as sleep, from the past to the present
day, and from the secular to the sacred.

196 Two containers.

Zaire, Zande or
Mangbetu. Bark and
wood. H: 69.4 cm.
Museum Rietberg, Zurich.

197 Headrest.
Zaire. Luba. Ivory. H: 17
cm. Musee Dapper
Archives, Paris,
The material chosen for
this carving, a well-
polished ivory,
accentuates the gentle
effect of Luba art.

210
Left

201 Weaving-loom
pulley.
Ivory Coast. Gouro.
Wood. Musee de
I’Homme, Paris.

Right

202 Weaving-loom
pulley.
ivory Coast. Gouro.
Hardwood with brilliant
patina. H: 21 cm. Musee
Barbier-Mueller, Geneva.

198 Headrest.
Mali. Tellem. Wood. H: 14
cm. Musee Dapper
Archives, Paris.

211
mm

msf
SHR^^
i1 §mm
199 Kasai velvet.
Zaire. Raffia. Size: 66 x 59
cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.

Left

200 Kasai velvet.

Zaire. Raffia. Size: 56 x 54
cm. Musee Barbier-
Mueller, Geneva.

213
Map of Ethnic
Groups
1 Abron
2 Anyi
3 Akan
Ambete
Ashanti

7 Baga, Baga Fore

9 Bambara, Bamana
10 Bamileke
11 Bamoum
12 Bangwa SENEGAL
16 Baule
19 Bembe
20 Bete
21 Betsi GAMBIA
22 Bini
Casamanc
25 Bobo
27 Bongo
28 Bozo
29 Boyo
32 Bwa
GUINEA
34 Dan
40 Dyula
42 Dogon SIERRA-
LEONE
45 Edo
47 Ekoi 121 Ndassa
51 Fang 123 Ndengese
52 Fon 125 Ngbaka LIBERIA
53 Fulani, Peul 126 Ndoumou

59 Gere 131 Obamba

62 Grebo 134 Okak
63 Guro 135 Oubi
64 Gurunsi
138 Peul
65 Flemba 139 Punu

69 Ibibio 141 Salampasu

70 Ibo 144 Sango
71 Ijo 145 Sao
72 Idoma 146 Sarakole
73 Igbo 147 Senufo
74 Imbangala 150 Shamaye
154 Songye
168 Jokwe 155
156
Soninke
Songhai
Atlantic Ocean
84 Kongo 157 Sundi
88 Kota
92 Kuba 160 Tellem
93 Kurumba 161 Teke
94 Kuyu 162 Temne
95 Kwele 163 Tikar
164 Tiv
97 Lega 165 Tukulor
99 Lobi 166 Tsaayi
100 Luba 167 Tsangui
102 Luluwa 169 Tsogho
103 Lunda
104 Lwalwa 173 Vili

105 Manding, Mande 176 Wobe

106 Mabea 177 Wolof
107 Mangbetu 178 Woyo
108 Mambila
109 Mahongwe 180 Yaka
110 Makonde 181 Yohoure
111 Malinke 182 Yombe
112 Mbagani 183 Yoruba
113 Mbala
118 Mende 184 Zande
120 Mossi
 Index

A Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 178 Grassland, 57, 78, 121, 163

Abomey, 154, 155, 210 Chad, 28 Grebo, 86
Afo-a-Kom, 61, 62, 63 Chibinda llunga, 158, 159, 160 Griaule (Marcel), 91
Africa (north), 183 chieftainries, 57, 58, 62, 86, 121, Grunne (Bernard de), 152
Akan, 164, 178, 179, 183, 187, 151 Gu, 155
190, 193, 204 Cihongo, 86 Guinea, 78, 84, 179
Akenzua, 36 Clifford (Barry), 179 Guro, 114, 211
Almoravids, 151 crest of the Brotherhood of the
Ambete, 132, 138, 139 Night, 90 H
Amma, 112 crests, 108 headrests, 208
Angola, 84, 158, 160, 164 Congo, 123, 139, 141, 160 Hemba, 124, 125, 201
Anjenu, 121 Cornet (Brother Joseph), 125 Plogon, 112, 113
Anyi, 28, 190
Arabs, 177, 183 D I
Asen, 155 Dahomey, 154, 155, 210 I bo, 120
Ashanti, 164, 179 Dan, 80, 164, 204 Idoma, 109, 120, 167
Dapper (Olfert), 35, 38, 46, 142, Ife, 20, 41, 44, 47, 48
B 180 Ighea, 48, 49
Babungo, 61 Deble, 114, 120 Ijo, 121
Bafandji, 60 Dieterlen (G), 173 Ikenga, 120
Baga Fore, 84 Do, 78 initiation, 84
Baiandier (Georges), 132 Dogon, 91, 94, 112, 113, 168, 173, Islam, 187
Bambara, 78, 168 207 Ivory Coast, 28, 73, 78, 80, 90, 94,
Bambuk, 151, 179, 180 doors 100, 113, 114, 118, 160, 164,
Bamessing, 64 Baule, 201 177, 178, 179, 187, 190, 192,
Bamileke, 57, 58, 62, 63, 64, 122 Senufo, 201 204
Bamoum, 57, 58, 62, 63, 64, 66 Drums, 198
Bandiagara, 112 Duchateau (A), 44 J
Bangwa, 57, 122 Dyula, 109 Jamaica, 178
Bankoni, 28 Jenne, 24
Bantu, 146 E Jerusalem, 186
Bantu chieftainries, 158 Edo, 47 Jokwe, 84, 86, 102, 124, 156, 158
Barbot (Jean), 178, 179, 187, 193 Ekoi, 90, 100 159, 160, 164
Bastin (Marie-Louise), 84, 102 Ekpo Eyo (Mr), 20
Battuta (Ibn), 152 Europeans, 38, 142, 158, 177, 178 K
Baule, 118, 190, 192, 193, 207 183, 190 Kakosha, 198
Baule mouse oracle, 207 Kalala llunga, 158
Behanzin (Gbehanzin), 154 F Kamara, 152
Benin, 22, 33, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, Fagg (Bernard) 16, 20 Kasai velvet, 210
48, 49, 52, 58, 112, 154, 177, Fagg (William), 38 Kata Mbula, 123
178,193, 201 Fang, 122, 132, 138, 155, 156, 204 Koma, 90
Benwe, 120 Fang dagger, 156 Komaland, 28, 174
Betsi, 138 fertility, 78 Kongo, 124, 141, 147, 168, 173
blacksmiths, 154, 158, 160, 187 fetishes, 147 Kota, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 156
Bolongongo (Shamba), 158 Fon, 154 Ku n’gan, 165
Boyo, 125 Foumban, 66 Kuba, 90, 123, 156, 158, 160, 207
brass, 21, 41, 52, 64, 134 French, 178 Kulebele, 113
Brazza (P.S.de), 135 Fulani (Peul), 186 Kumasi, 178
British, 33, 35, 41, 49, 178 funerals, 91, 94, 102, 113 Kuyu, 139
bronze, 22, 33, 48, 52 Kwele, 94
Bundu, 90, 165 G
Bure, 179, 180 Gabon, 90, 94, 100, 121, 122, 132, L
Burkina Faso, 78, 91, 113, 179 133, 134, 135, 138, 139, 146 lagoon cultures, 192
Bushoong, 156, 208 Ghana, 109, 151, 152, 174, 177, Laikom, 61, 62
Bwa, 91, 108 178, 179, 183, 187, 190, 192 Lebe, 113
Bwiti (Bwete), 122, 132, 135 Gheonga, 122 Leuzinger (E), 100
Byeri, 132, 138 Glele, 155 Liberia, 86, 100
gold, 177
c Gold Coast, 177, 178, 187
Lo, 114
lost wax casting, 52
Cameroon, 57, 58, 60, 61, 66, 78, goldsmiths Luba, 124, 125, 147, 156, 158, 167
90, 121, 132, 138, 163, 177, 197, Mali, 186 201, 208
198 Senegal, 186 Luba-Plemba, 124, 125
Luluwa, 147 Ndoumou, 134, 135, 138 Sandogo, 114, 168
Lunda,158 Nganga, 142 Sango, 132, 135
Luschan (M.von), 38 Ngbaka, 125 Sao, 28
Lwalwa, 86 Ngwarong, 78 sculptor, 102, 111, 113, 121, 142
Lweji, 158 Niangoran Bouah (Georges), 180,192 Segou, 24, 28, 178
Niger, 177 Senegal, 160, 177, 178, 179, 187
M Niger Delta, 121 Senufo, 90, 94, 114, 120
Mabea, 122 Niger Inland Delta, 24, 112, 152 Seto, 125
Mahongwe, 132, 133, 134, 135 Nigeria, 15, 52, 80, 90, 100, 120, Shamaye, 134
Makaraka, 158 122, 154,164, 177 Shamba Bolongongo, 123
Mali, 24, 78,91, 112, 113, 151, Njoya (King), 58, 63, 64, 66 Sierra Leone, 86, 90
152, 160, 168, 177, 178, 183, Nkisi, 142, 146 So, 138
187, 208 Nkonde, 142, 145, 146 Songhai, 151, 152, 154, 183
Mambila, 122 Nok, 15, 16, 20, 21 Songye, 100, 141, 147, 201
Mande, 187 Nommo, 112, 113 Soninke, 28
Mangbetu, 30, 156, 204, 208 Nyendael (David van), 36 soothsayer, 167
masks: Nzaman, 138 spoons, 204
begging, 80 Nzima, 190 stringed instruments, 198
blade, 108 Sudan, western, 183
brawler, 80
0 Sundi, 124
Cikunza, 84 Obamba, 134, 135
Obenga (Th.), 146
T
Deguele, 94
Do, 73, 79 Odudua, 21 Teke, 158
Gelede, 80 Ogboni, 90 Tellem, 112, 208
Gunyege, 80 Ogouta] 132 Temne, 86
helmet, 108 Okak, 138 terracotta, 15
Janus, 108 Oku, 62 throwing knife, 156
Kalelwa, 84 Olokun, 38, 44, 46 Tikar, 57, 64
Kanaga, 91 Onitsha, 120 Timbuktu, 24
Kifwebe, 86 Oranmyan, 44 Tiv, 63
Kpeliyehe, 109 Osemwede, 38 Togo, 177, 210
Ma’bu, 78 Oshamuko, 173 Tsangui, 94
Makonde, 86 Ossyeba, 133 Tsogho, 122, 132
mbagani, 86 Oubi, 109 Tyiwara crests, 78
Mukyeem (or Mwaash a Mbooy), Owo, 22, 49
U
90
Ngil, 90
P Upper Volta, 164
ngon, 62 Paulme (D.), 173
Pelyeeng (Mbop), 160
V
Nimba, 78
Perrois (Louis), 100, 133 Verger-Fevre (Marie-Noel), 73
Nkaki, 86
Phemba, 146 Vili, 141, 147
plank, 91
Phillips (John R.), 33 Vlaminck, 118
Pre-Senufo, 109
Poro, 90, 109, 114, 125, 168 Vogel (Susan), 10
Pwo, 102
racing, 80 Portuguese, 35
W
singer, 80 pygmy, 147
Wadeke (Wunkirle), 204
Tsaye, 108
Walu, 91
Q We, 80, 204
queen mother(s), 38, 61, 64, 124, Whydah, 178
Wambele, 9
164, 174, 190 Willett (Frank), 20
Waniugo, 78
Woyo, 173
war, 80, 86
Master of Buli, 125, 201
R
Y
Mbala, 168 Rao, 178
Recades, 155 Yaka, 84
Mbulu ngulu, 134
reliquaries, 131, 133, 134, 136, Yombe, 9, 141, 168
medicine man, 141, 147
138,139 Yoruba, 20, 21, 22, 44, 80, 90, 120,
Moroccans, 152
126, 154, 164, 168
Mossi, 164
Mukishi, 84
s
Z
Sahara, 183
N Sahel, 183 Zaire, 30, 86, 90, 123, 124, 141,
Saint Louis of Senegal, 186 147, 158, 168, 201, 207
Nabo, 125
Salampasu, 86 Zande,156
Ndengese, 123
Sande, 90, 165 Zulu, 180
Ndop, 123, 158
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221
 Acknowledgements

Left
My warm and whole-hearted thanks to everyone whose
help and encouragement have contributed to this book. Horseman.
Mali. Niser Inland Delta.
Monsieur Jean-Paul Barbier, director of the Musee Museum of African Art,
Washinston.
Barbier-Mueller in Geneva, and Madame Christiane
Falgayrettes, director of the Musee Dapper in Paris, have
generously read through the whole manuscript and given
me the benefit of their suggestions. Madame Marie-Noel
Verger-Fevre, research assistant in the Department of
Black Africa in the Musee de I’Homme, has provided
similar help with the lengthy chapter on masks.
I have benefited from the exceptional generosity of
Monsieur Jean-Paul Barbier concerning the use of photo¬
graphs of many of his museum’s items. Madame
Christiane Falgayrettes allowed us to make use of her
archive of photographs and Monsieur Louis Perrois,
research director at the Office de la Recherche Scienti-
fique et Technique Outre-Mer (ORSTOM), gave us the
benefit of his fine land-survey photographs. I would also
like to thank the collectors who kindly allowed us to take
photographs of some of their finest pieces: Monsieur
Dartevelle, Monsieur Marc Felix, Count Baudouin de
Grunne and all those who asked to remain anonymous.
Madame Veronique de Fenoyl laboured long and hard
to assemble the many slides, while the smiling efficiency
of Madame Laurence Mattet was equally valuable.

Laure Meyer
 Photo credits

Angouleme, Musee des Beaux-Arts/Gerard Martron: p.82 (inv.:34-397).

Antwerp, Musee Ethnographique/Hughes Dubois: p.66, 86, 87.
Brussels, Hughes Dubois: p.88, 89, 92-93, 121, 128, 129, 146, 149, 158, 207.
Brussels, Musees royaux d’Art et d’Histoire/Hughes Dubois: p.126 (inv.: 36-25), 140 (inv.: 38-20-130).
Fort Worth, Texas, Kimbell Art Museum: p.157 (inv.: AP-78-5).
Geneva, Barbier-Mueller Archives/Jean-Paul Barbien p.8/Monique Barbier-Mueller: p. 178/Joachim Campe: p.178.
Geneva, Musee Barbier-Mueller/Maurice Aeschimann: p.212 (inv.: 1029-42), 213 (inv.: 1029-34).
Geneva, Musee Barbier-Mueller/Roger Asselberghs: cover (inv.: 1019-15), p.5 and 25 (inv.: 1004-131), 6 and 196 (inv.: 1001-4), 14 (inv.: 1015-7),
20 (inv.: 1004-95), 21 (inv.: 1004-78), 70 (inv.: 1018-73), 71 (inv.: 1018-21), 74 and 75 (inv.: 1001-1), 76, 77 and 78 (inv.: 1006-10), 83 (inv.:
1003-14), 91 (inv.: 1001-21), 94 (inv.: 1015-50), 96 and 97 (inv.: 1018-65), 104 (inv.: 1019-66), 112 (inv.: 1004-3), 118 (inv.: 1014-9), 122 (inv.:
1019-5), 126 (inv.: 1028-7) 128 (inv.: 1026-90), 133 (inv.: 1019-4-F), 135 (inv.: 1019-77), 136 (inv.: 1019-13), 143 (inv.: 1021-5), 144 (inv.:
1021-35), 164 (inv.: 1002-11), 171 (inv.: 10II-2A), 175 (inv.: 1009 III A and B), 198 (inv.: 1026-170).
Geneva, Musee Barbier-Mueller/P. A. Ferrazzi;ni: p. 16 and 17 (inv.: 1011-119), 53 (inv.: 1011-121), 81 (inv.: 1004-100), 89(inv.: 1026-218 and inv.:
1002-16), 95 (inv: 1026-102), 99 (inv.: 1019-14), 100 (inv.: 1005-10), 108 (inv.: 1006-52), 109 (inv.: 1014-10), 116 (inv.: 1006-27), 130 (inv.:
1019-68), 132 (inv.: 1019-4-G), 134 (inv.: 1019-4-H), 137 (inv.: 1019-34), 148 (inv.: 1026-11), 153 (inv.: 1019-45 and inv.: 1019-56), 161 (inv.:
1019-21), 180 (inv.: 1004-135A-B), 181 (inv.: 1034-185), 182 (inv: 1034-133B) and A, 1034-180A, 1034-194), 184 (inv.:1034-60), 185 (inv.:
1034-125 and 1034-126), 186 (inv.: 1034-240), 187 (inv.: 1034-171, 1009-63, 1009-69), 188 (inv.: 1009-60), 189 (inv.: 1009-36, 1009-17), 191
(inv.: 1031-76, 1031-305, 1031-321, 1031-66, 1031-23), 192 (inv.: 1034-38), 193 (inv.: 1034-9), 194 (inv.: 1034-57), 1034-139), 1034-4 1034-
21), 195 (inv.: 1034-193), 211 (inv.: 1008-10).
Geneva, Musee Barbier-Mueller/Rene Steffen: p.2 and 162 (inv.: 1009-16), 98 (inv.: 1004-8), 103 (inv.: 1006-36), 113 (inv.: 1004-13), 115 and
222 (inv.: 1004-16), 116 (inv.: 1007-1), 120 (inv.: 1015-3), 123 (inv.: 1019-6), 166 (inv.: 1018-78), 169 (inv.: 1006-5), 199 (inv.: 1026-115), 200
(inv.: 1018-59), 202 (inv.: 1006-19), 203 (inv.: 1007-3 and inv.: 1004-48), 206 (inv.: 1004-27).
Geneva, Musee d’Ethnographie: p.142 (inv.: 21316).
La Rochelle, Musee d’Histoire Naturelle: p.28 (inv.: 1004).
Leyden, Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Paris Archives Musee Dapper/Hughes Dubois: p.145 (inv.: 497-89, 1884), 147 (inv.: 1354-47, 1902).
London, British Museum/reproduced by courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum: p.39 (inv.: PS 036731) 46 (inv ■ PS 020912) 51 (inv ■ PS-
010843 or PS-014970), 172 (inv.: KI-547).
London, Wallace Collection: 176 (inv.: 0A-1683).
Neuchatel, Musee d’Ethnographie/Alain Germond: p.84 (inv.: III.C.6132), 85 (inv.: III.C.6140).
New York, American Museum of Natural History/Lynton Gardiner: p.26 and 27 (inv.: 3985), 31 (inv.: 4113).
New York, The Metropolitan museum of Art: p.54 and 55 (inv.: 1978-412-323), 59 (inv.: 1978-412-576), 88 (inv.: 1979-206-7) 110 (inv • 1977-
394-15), 114 (inv.: 1977-394-9), 115 (inv.: 1985-422-2), 139 (inv.: 1979-206-229), 150 (inv.: 1975-306), 170 (inv.: 1979-206-121) 173 (inv •
1979-541-12), 201 (inv..- 1979-290), 204 (inv.: 1979-206-264).
Paris, Archives Musee Dapper: p.34/Gerald Berjonneau: p. 152/Hughes Dubois: p.210, 211.
Paris, Gerald Berjonneau: p.105.
Paris, Dominique Genet: p. 16, 18, 19.
Paris, Hoa Qui/Huet: p. 79, 90, 101.
Paris, Musee de I’Afrique et de I’Oceanie/R M N: p.82 (inv.: AM-298 and inv.:AM-297), 109 (inv.: D-67-1-7), 119 (inv ■ 62-1-60) 136 (inv ■ 11800-
1963-65), 148 (inv.: 1963-175), 190 (inv.: 66-9-2). " ’
Paris, Musee d’Art moderne/R M N: p. 119 (inv.: AM 370).
Pans, Musee de I’Homme: p.24 (inv.: 20-153), 28 (inv.: C65-2350-493), 68 (inv.: 10-087), 106 (inv.: 10-334), 209 (inv.: 10-289), 211 (inv.: 10-

Paris, Louis Perrois: p.56, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 79.
Paris, Musee Picasso/R M N: p.37 (inv.: MP-3636).
Tervuren, Musee royal de I’Afrique centrale/Hughes Dubois: p.10, 12 and 168, 108, 124, 154, 155, 165, 170, 171.
Vienna, Museum fur Volkerkunde, Paris Archives Musee Dapper/Hughes Dubois: p.ll and 42 (inv.: 64-747), 32 (inv.: 64-748) 35 (inv ■ 98-154)
40 (inv.: 64-723), 41 (inv.: 64-745), 43 (inv.: 65-743), 44 (inv.: 64-796), 45 (inv.: 64-717), 47 (inv.: 64-799), 48 (inv ■ 64-669) 49 (inv 64-737)
52 (inv.: 74-017). ’
Washington, National Museum of African Art, Eliot Elisofon Archives, Smithsonian Institute/Jeffrey Ploskonka: p 23 and 216 (inv • 86-12-2) 68 dnv ■
85-8-1), 107 (inv.: 85-15-20). '' °° unv"
Zurich, Institut d’Ethnographie: p.125.
Zurich, Museum Rietberg/Wettstein and Kauf: p.67, 116, 127, 138, 159, 205, 210.

Printed in Italy
by Stocchiero Grafica
VICENZA
224
i., „
 Laure MEYER
ca. In 1965 she graduated from
TRENTON PUBLIC LIBRARY t e of Art and Archeology at the
ART 709.67 M575.1
Meyer, Laure. 010109 000 F nne in the History of Art and
Black Africa : masks, sculptur
Archer. A historian and journalist, she is
passionately interested in African Art. Laure
3 6592 00139658 3 Meyer has published many articles on
African Art in prestigious journals:
Archeologia, the Dossiers d’Histoire et
Archeologie, and also in I’d//.

In the same series :

Modigliani
by Christian Parisot
Kandinsky and Der Blaue Reiter
by Luc and Annette Vezin
Mucha : the Prince of Modern Style
by Arthur Ellridge
The Fauves : the Triumph of Colour
by Jean-Louis Ferrier
The Art of Japanese Paper (masks,
lanterns, kites, dolls, origami)
by Dominique Buisson
Black Africa (masks, sculpture, jewelry)
by Laure Meyer
Villas and Gardens of Tuscany
by Sophie Bajard and Raffaello Bencini
Architectural Design for Today
edited by Andreas Papadakis

•i

ART /'■'•i' & M.USFG '

709.67
M575.1 SEP 0 1093

GAYLORD R
J
 Masks, pottery, bronze, ivory,
gold, statues of ancestors,
reliquaries and jewelry all
express the influence of myths
on the daily life and inventive
genius of more than sixty ethnic
groups. This book covers each
subject in turn, is magnificently
pip?
illustrated in colour and
examines in a clear and
accessible manner the entire
range of Black African Art from
aesthetic and ethnological
points of view.

9"782879 390321