The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds

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THE FOUR MOMENTS OF THE SUN

AFRICA ZAIRE

• Longa Kandu Lemt

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' 1981 Board of Trustees. National Copyright Gallery of Art, Washington. All rights re served. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the National Gallery of Art. Washing ton, D.C. 20565.

This catalogue was produced by the Editors Office. National Gallery of Art. Washington. Printed by Eastern Press, Inc., New Haven. Connecticut. Typesetting by Hodges Typographers, Inc., Silver Spring. Maryland. The text and cover papers are Warren Cameo Dull. Designed by Susan Lehmann. Edited by Nancy Heller. Exhibition dates: August 30. 1981-January

All

Thompson, Robert Farris. The four moments of the sun.

The following abbreviations are used in the photo captions to indicate the locations of the objects illustrated: Goteborg Museum = Etnografiska Museet,

"Catalogue": p Bibliography: p 1. Sculpture, Bakongo (African people) — Exhibitions. 2. Sculpture, Primitive— Zaire— Exhibitions. 3. Funeral rites and ceremonies,

Rietberg Museum = Museum Rietberg, Zurich, Switzerland

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publica tion Data:

Bakongo (African people)— InfluenceExhibitions. 4. Funeral rites and ceremonies, Black — North America— Exhibitions. I. Cornet, Joseph. II. National Gallery of Art (U.S.). III. Title. NB1099.C6T5 730' .09675' 10740 153 81-14033

ISBN 0-89468-003-X

17, 1982.

for the execution of J. Cornet and members of the staff of the Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire. Exhibition catalogue map by Peter J. Balch and John D. Garst, Jr. of the National Geographic the basic research

the catalogue map was prepared by

Society. Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs were taken by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Cover: detail of terra-cotta grave marker. Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire, Kinshasa (cat. no. 41).

AACR2

Goteborg, Sweden IMNZ = Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire. Kinshasa, Zaire

Terviiren Museum = Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Terviiren. Belgium

11

Foreword by J. Carter Brown

13

Preface by President Mobutu

14

Acknowledgements (Joseph Cornet)

15

Acknowledgements (Robert Farris Thompson)

27

Introduction

Chapter I

34

Kongo Civilization and Kongo Art (rfti

II

141

Chapter

irfti

The Structure of Recollection: The Kongo New World Visual Tradition (rft)

Chapter

III

211 Stone

Chapter

IV

220

Funerary Terra Cottas uo

225

Catalogue

247

Bibliography

Funerary Sculpture uci

The making of the exhibition, The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds, involved the intellectual comradeship of scholars from both African and Western worlds. Frere Joseph Cornet, a Delegue General in Zaire, and director of the Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire, initiated the idea of an exhibition of Kongo stone funerary sculpture. Over several years, his concept for such an exhibition expanded through discussion

and study with Prof. Robert Farris

Thompson of Yale University to include Kongo cloth funerary mannequins, terra cotta grave markers, and wooden statues from ancestor shrines. In the process, there emerged an Afro- American dimension characterized by a close relationship between certain gestures and icons from Kongo funerary art which are also found in several places among black populations of the Western became the first exhibition to focus upon the ancient

Hemisphere. Thus, this

and important funerary art

of this African civilization, and at the same time to reveal the trans-oceanic significance of these images and their iconography

as

fundamental manifestations

on both shores of the Atlantic world.

There are other "firsts" generated by this exhibition. For example, this

is the first

time that Kongo stone and ceramic sculpture from the reserve collections of the

Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire have been seen in such number outside Especially privileged is our showing of a superb series of Kongo none of them ever shown before in North America. We

that nation.

grave markers,

terra-cotta are grateful

to Frere Cornet and his colleagues

this spendid

loan. Cornet made several field trips to the area surrounding Boma,

in Zaire for bringing to fruition

expressly to gather exhibition objects that would enhance them. In addition, colleagues

in Sweden,

our understanding of Belgium. Switzerland, France, and the

United States cooperated in bringing together a constellation of additional loans never before gathered on this continent. Especially generous was the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Terviiren, Belgium. Thanks to the kind ministrations of Huguette

van Geluwe and Albert Maesen, Kongo stone statuary and cloth manne

quins from that museum's extraordinary collections were added to our exhibition.

Their muzidi and mintadi are seen in addition to

a rare flat scepter

carved with

Kongo ideographs and gestures, which shed light on Afro-American life. We also thank Eberhard Fischer, of the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, Count Baudoin ancient

de Grunne and M. Dartevelle. of Brussels,

for extraordinary loans. Raoul Lehouard, in Paris, shared his expertise, and Francois Chanudet, of the Musees d'Histoire Naturelle et d'Ethnographie in La Rochelle, was equally helpful in

expediting

the shipment of a fine crimson hembe mannequin

to the National Gallery.

II

In Sweden we were assisted by the helpful counsel on Kongo art and culture from Kjell Zetterstrom. Ragnar Widman, Bertil Soderberg, and Anita JacobsonWidding. Zetterstrom kindly allowed the shipping of a striking niombo from the Goteborg Museum. Widman and Soderberg, in Stockholm, found a rare 1927 film of

a

cloth mannequin

print. Stills from

being carried in procession to its grave and provided a

constituting the first publication of a priceless cinematographic document. Michael Kan, Deputy Director and Curator of African, Oceanic and New World Cultures, Detroit Institute of Arts, generously it are in this catalogue,

shared his time in locating important photographs,

secured permission

for the

loan of the spectacular n'kondi in the collection of the Institute, and performed

other acts of comradeship for us. Zairois scholars made themselves extraordinarily useful, especially Fu-Kiau Bunseki, Mbuta Wamba. and Kimpianga Mahaniah. John Janzen. Wyatt MacGaffey, and Daniel Biebuyck. themselves leading American scholars of Kongo culture and religion, checked the manuscript and brought to our attention important African publications on Kongo art for the dead. At the National Gallery, more members of its hardworking staff have been involved than there is space here to mention. I must cite in particular, however. Charles Parkhurst, the Assistant Director, who has personally steered this exhibition to fruition with diplomacy and dedication; Professor Henry Millon, Dean of the

Gallery's Center of Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, who has helped place the exhibition in the context of contemporary scholarship; and Gaillard Ravenel and his design staff, who have come up with the innovative installation.

In sum, Four Moments of the Sun constitutes exercise in international colleagueship. deepest thanks.

J. Carter Brown, Director

To

a memorable

and gratifying

all who were involved, we offer our

Cultural exchanges among nations are tremendously satisfying, because they constitute a form of mutual enhancement — enriching one country, without taking anything

away from the other.

For its part, Zaire

is proud to share an artistic patrimony whose reputation is recognized today the world over. Many of our most beautiful objects have already been exhibited in the United States, where they have been received with interest

and enthusiasm

Therefore, it

by all those who wanted to know more about the art of Zaire.

with profound satisfaction that I endorse the project of presenting an exhibition of art from the tombs of Bas-Zaire at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., one of the most prestigious museums in the United States. is

This exhibition reveals hitherto unknown aspects of our traditional culture, and I am especially pleased that this exceptional exhibition offers not only aesthetic for all the many Americans who will visit the pleasure and new understanding museum throughout the season, but also, for those whose forebears from Bas-Zaire, an opportunity to re-establish

were originally contact with their ancestors. Thus,

exhibition, we wish not merely to reinforce our sincere amity with our American friends, but also to revive true ties of kinship with many United States citizens. through

this most meaningful

Citizen Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga. President-Founder of the Popular Revolutionary Movement President

(mpr)

of the Republic of Zaire

[3

I thank the members of the Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire for their

extraordinarily accomplished participation in the preparation of this exhibition and catalogue. Several accompanied me on field trips to the sites of the ancient Mboma Kongo cemeteries

where the terrain often was quite arduous.

completed photographic campaigns

and the necessary

Others

tasks of conservation,

and shipment— all this with an elan and spirit which informs participation in the writing of black cultural partrimony.

accessioning,

I heartily thank them all.

Frere Joseph Cornet

I dedicate my chapters to Fu-Kiau Bunseki. founder of the Kongo Academy in Bas-Zaire, author of important works on Kongo cosmology, and one of the richest traditionalist minds in Central Africa. In numerous interviews, from 1974 to 1981. he patiently taught me about point, depth, and intricacy in Kongo iconology and

In effect he made these chapters possible. this work to those women and men who responded generously to the requests of a restless scholar: Wyatt MacGaffey, Janet MacGaffey, John Janzen, Reinhild Janzen, Kimpianga Mahaniah, John Kinton, Maurice Tempelsman, thought.

I also dedicate

Joseph Dwight Crowley, Phyllis Crowley, Mbuta Wamba, Ambassador and Mrs. Oakley, Robert Heath, John L. G. Archibald, Huguette van Geluwe. Albert Maesen, Pierre de Maret, M. Dartevelle, Dr. R. Duguy, Francois Chanudet, Marie-Louise Bastin. Jan Vansina, Ragnar Widman, Bertil Soderberg, Anita Jacobson-Widding. Kjell Zetterstrom, Nestor Seeus. Joseph Cornet, Gweta Lema. Makanzu Kinkela, Daniel Biebuyck, Luc de Heusch, Vincent Scully, Albert Fishlow, Eugenia Herbert, Charles Davis, Henry-Louis Gates. John Blassingame, Sylvia Williams, MarieTherese Brincard, Donald Easum, Eberhard Fischer. Count Baudoin de Grunne, Bernard de Grunne, Raoul Lehouard, John McKesson. Michael Kan, John Burrison. William Ferris, John Szwed. Roger Abrahams, Lydia Cabrera, Andre Pierre, J. Carter Brown, Charles Parkhurst, Theodore Amussen, Nancy Heller, Frances Smyth, Gaillard Ravenel, Robert Grove, Victor Covey, Margaret Bouton. Margaret Morgan, James Davie, Junellen Sullivan, and Tricia Cawley. At home, my wife. Nancy, and children, Alicia and Clark, kept me in humor, kept me in motion, and even managed to persuade themselves the typewriter constituted a kind of music, cheerfully atonal.

Robert Farris Thompson

that the clangor of

Grand Oath-Taking id

and Healing Image (n kondi). Detroit Institute of Arts. cat. no. 80 (fig. 7).

Ponto Riscado for Eshu The King. Indiana University Museum (fig. 119). Babwende Cloth Mannequin

Reliquary,

Musees d'Histoire Naturelle et Ethnographic La Rochelle.

cat. no. 8 (fig. 30).

" "Family of Four Figurated Trumpets (nsiba). Private collection, cat. nos. 81-84 (fig. 37 and details). 18

"Mother"

of Figurated Trumpet Family. Private collection,

cat. no. K2 (fig. 37. detail).

20

"Father" of Figurated

Trumpet Family. Private collection,

cat. no. Ml (fig. 37. detail).

Wooden Image of a Noble Person. Museum Rietberg. Zurich, cat. no. 79 (fig. 4).

21

Stone Image of a Drummer. Musée Royal de l'Afrique Belgium, cat. no. 77 (fig. 81).

22

Centrale, Tervùren,

Terra-Cotta Funerary Jar, Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaïre, cat. no. 30.

Terra-Cotta Funerary Jar, Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaïre, cat. no. 32 (fig. 51).

Terra-Cotta Funerary Jar, Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaïre, cat. no. 21 (fig. 61).

23

Terra-Cotta Funerary Jar. Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaïre. cat. no. 22 (fig. 52).

24

Steatite Tomb Image, Musée Royal de l'Afrique

Centrale, cat. no. 39 (fig. 97).

Stone Figure of a Mother and Child. Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire, cat. no. 68 (fig. 104).

Image of a Most Important Woman with Her Child. Collection Grunne. Brussels, cat. no. 88 (fig. 141).

Count Buudoin de

25

M IW*

m

Kongo people, several million strong, live in modern Bas-Zaire and neighboring Cabinda. Congo-Brazzaville, and Angola. The present division of their territory into these modern political entities masks the fact that the area was once united, under the suzerainty of the ancient kingdom of Kongo, as one of the most important civilizations ever to emerge in Africa. The King of Kongo ruled over an area stretching from the Kwilu-Nyari River, just north of the port of Loango. to the river Loje in northern Angola, and from the Atlantic to the inland valley of the Kwango. roughly equaling the miles between New York City and Richmond, Virginia, in terms of coastal distance; between Baltimore and Erie. Penn sylvania, in terms of inland breadth. The con solidation of this impressive kingdom prob ably dates from the 1300s but the evolution of Kongo culture, as such, may have begun as early as the first millennium, according to

Kongo, extending back more than seven hundred years, lies deep in memory. The rich ness of the Kongo peopled traditional herbal ism, law. leadership, a classical poised.

literature, and art identifies

civilization,

Their proverbs,

self-confident textiles,

statuary

and in

terra cotta, cloth, wood, and stone have an organized, self-contained appearance. Their art is full of information, precepts, and ad monitions communicating abiding concerns with moral continuity and renaissance, heal and the splendor of the ideal perfect capital, Mbanza Kongo. This was the central city, the city of Kongo, peopled in legend with avatars of generousness and law. "where all were born, where each clan still has its street, and where each one has rela tives to receive him."3 The mirror of this intricately ideal vision ing, justice,

was

the cemetery itself and

material signs

(bidimbu)

placed on graves within its precincts:

Vansina.1

statuary,

Ancient and proud, the Kongo people gave their name to the mighty, famous river that traverses the northern portion of their terri tory. Moreover, as Janzen and MacGaffey note in their Anthology of Kongo Religion. Kongo was the threshold for the vast Belgian colonial penetration of Central Africa, hence

rate surface deposits of glassware,

terra-cotta monuments, and elabo faience,

the resultant colonial

designation: Belgian Congo. In time Kongo also gave its name to the modern independent republics of CongoBrazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa, the latter nation becoming Zaire in 1972. Congo with a

C essentially refers to shifting political devel opments. But Kongo spelled with a K. refers to the unitary civilization by which Bakongo (the Kongo people) themselves refer to their traditional territory and way of life. Kongo, in short, refers to an eternal civilization, like Israel. China, or Japan, and that is the name

pottery, and many other objects, encoding messages of continuity, beauty, love, and law. The cemetery is not a final resting-place, in Kongo terms, but a door (mwelo) between two worlds, a "threshold" (Biebuyck's term), marking the line between the two worlds, of the living and of the dead, circumscribed by the cosmic journey of the sun. Hence the title of this exhibition. The Four Moments of the Sun— that is: dawn. noon, sunset, and midnight (when the sun, so it is believed, is

shining on the kingdom of the dead). Hence, also, its rationale, for the sun's four moments trace in the Kongo mind a circle or a diamond about the twinned worlds of the living and the dead, the city and the cemetery:4

and that is the spelling we shall use consistently

throughout this volume.2

Kongo Funerary Mannequin. Etnografiska Museet. Goteborg, Sweden, cat. no. 5 (fig. 21). 27

zon and the door to the kingdom of the dead. Here the Kongo cosmogram. a shorthand phrasing for the sign of the four moments of the sun devised by Wyatt MacGaffey. is abbre viated gesturally. as a sign of noon and the horizon line —

In each rendering the right-hand sphere or corner stands for dawn which, in turn, is the sign of a life beginning. Noon, the uppermost disk or corner, indicates the flourishing of life, the point of most ascendant power. Next, by the inevitable organic process as we know it, come change and flux, the setting of the

— the sign of the four moments of the sun is

sun. and death, marked by the left-hand median

the Kongo emblem of spiritual continuity and

point or disk. And then, assuming a life well lived, we may return within another dawn, emerging from the midnight world, carried back into the mainstream of the living, in the name and body of grandchildren or succeeding genera tions. Thus, in Kongo immortality is a privilege

renaissance

par excellence. In certain rites it

is written on the earth, and a person stands

upon it to take an oath, or to signify that he or she understands the meaning of life as a pro cess shared with the dead below the river or the sea— the real sources of earthly power

perdurance. Coded as a cross, a quartered circle or diamond, a seashell's spiral, or a special cross

prestige, in Kongo thinking. Similarly, neighbors of the Bakongo. the Mbundu of northern Angola, "authority rested on the ability to invoke supernatural sanctions and inhered not in human beings but in authority emblems associated with the titles."6 The cross of the four solar moments marked one such emblem. The intimation , by shorthand geometric statements, of mirrored worlds within the spiral journey of the sun. is the source and illumination of some of the more important sculptural gestures and dec orative designs pertaining to funerary mon uments and objects designated for deposit on the surface of cemetery tombs, or otherwise connected with funeral ceremonies and the end of life. Thus, scarlet cloth images (niombo) made for the most important dead leaders among the northern Bakongo of the region of Kingoyi (fig. 1 ), indicate heaven and the level of the sun at noon with a characteristic ges ture, holding the right hand up: a countergesture, with the left hand down and parallel

with solar emblems at each ending—

to the ground, indicates the line of the hori

of right living. In the vernacular imagination, extraordinary persons— those who are gener ous, strong, and wise in life on a heroic scale— die twice. They die once "here," and once "there," beneath the watery barrier, the line Bakongo call Kalunga. This is a line marked by the river, the sea. or even dense

foresta-

tion. a line which divides this world from the next/ Then they come back, within the spiral of the sun. defying time, becoming immortal simbi spirits, themselves transformed into time-resistant natural forces or natural forms, such as pools, strange rock formations,

streams,

ravines, waterfalls, oceans, and shells izinga). As special emblems of immortal presence, shells repeat within their spiral structure the wheeling of the sun through time and space. Shells also indicate, through a pun on a Kongo term for lengthy life izinga). the quality of

and

among the southern

Corporeal rendering of the Kongo sign of cosmos possibly extends back many centu ries. For example, a corpus of signs appearing in rock paintings in Bas-Zaire which are associated with a necropolis recently dated archaeologically to around the 1600s includes this sign.8 It also appears in the Kongo anthropomorphization of the pommel and the handguard of certain old royal "swords of the power of life and death" imbele a lulendo).

Fig. I. Niombo mannequin by Makoza of Kingoyi. Terviiren Museum, (see fig. 3D 2N

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including one in the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale at Terviiren, which R. L. Wannyn9 has provisionally attributed to the 1500s. Another impressive dimension in Kongo funerary art is characterized by the use of hollow terra-cotta stelae (maboondo) (fig. 2) to decorate the graves of very important peo ple among Mboma and other Kongo groups in Bas-Zaire.10 The sign of the sun circum scribing two worlds in maboondo decoration takes the form of lozenges in openwork (a). or lozenges with solar disks at each sharp point (b), or myriad diamond forms con nected in meshlike fashion (c), in the latter instance symbolizing a "world of words," or separate worlds, each inhabited by a per son, symbolized by a centered dot." At least

terra cotta bears a figural com munication of the ancient cosmogram, in this case a human figure, seated, striking a mourn ing (kyaadi) pose with one hand on head: the other hand is placed flat upon the seated person's thigh, thus carrying the eye from a vertical to a horizontal axis and making a crosslike gesture:11 one diboondo1-

Part of the vision of another form of Kongo funerary art. superb figures carved in steatite.

Fig. 2. Terra-cotta grave marker idiboondo) M'Sengi. Terviiren Museum, (see fig. 40) 30

from

called variously mintadior bitumba. similarly addresses the cosmogram in the fullness of its appearance. Martin Heidegger defines poetic ability as "the ability to take the measure of the world," which is an observation especially appropriate to certain Kongo stone funerary images (fig. 3), showing a ruler wearing a special bonnet (mpu) bearing on its upper surface four leopard claws, so disposed as to divide the hat into a miniature cosmos with its four appointed corners, and meaning that the king displays his power as a "carrier of the world."14 Similarly, the lords of Kongo might wear an impressive arm-ring inlunga) displaying

curving leopard's teeth represented in bold relief,15 symbolizing, within the sign of the spiral of the sun through life and death, that the ruler had the right to order the end of a convicted murderer's life, that he had the power not only to protect but also, like an attacking leopard, to destroy. The Four Moments of the Sun thus consid ers the world of Kongo funerary art as a heroic form of cultural memory, encoding philosophic issues of life and death in terms of some of the most elegant elaborations of the land. This world contains: ( 1) Figures shaped in crimson cloth, some larger than life, towering and imposing, called niombo and used to trans port the smoke-mummified bodies of the most important persons from this world to the next. Also included in this category are smaller, related cloth reliquary-mannequins, called muzidi or kiimbi, which function as vessels for hair, nail parings, human ashes, and other relics of important persons. In extraordinary instances, these muzidi or kiimbi might serve as judges from the other world, receiving ques tions from troubled clients and answering yes, by certain motions, or no, by other motions. (2) Hollow terra-cotta cylinders (maboondo), placed as monuments on the surface of very important tombs and frequently sectioned in

Fig. 3. Stone image (tumba) of an important person in pose of authority. Terviiren Museum, (see fig. 100) 31

several

levels, are richly incised with inter

lace patterning and other traditional designs. (3) Figures in stone, also for deposit on the surface of a chiefs grave. These sometimes make gestures which bring back the protocols of ideal civic behavior or the coding of points of emphasis in mambu (lawsuits), the latter ges tures full of disputation and argument, as befits the litigiously-minded Bakongo people. These

figures are called bitumba or mintadi. (4) Kaolin-daubed images (bitumba) in wood (fig. 4) destined for shrines honoring the mem ory of important dead men and women (minzo a bakulu). as opposed to actual cemetery graves, or serving to mark a ruler's tomb, as illustrated by a vernacular text: "For a chiefs grave they would carve (vala) a handsome effigy (kitumba kia kitoko)." The principal forms surveyed within this text and exhibition are: niombo and muzidi: kiimbi; maboondo; and bitumba, in stone and wood.16 Here, as elsewhere in the text, Kongo as a unitary civilization is emphasized. This is instanced by the occurrence and overlapping of interpretation of certain cross-cutting signs. However, as Daniel Biebuyck, a ranking authority on the arts of Zaire, points out, "Niombo are identified with Bwende, kiimbi with Bembe clans, so cultural specializations also here are highlighted."

We find extensions and transformations of this rich aesthetic universe in Kongo-influenced

sectors of the Western Hemisphere, notably Haiti and the United States. Philip Curtin has estimated that fully one-third of United States blacks are of Kongo and Angola ancestry,17 and this partially explains the presence of Kongo-influenced signs in black traditional burials across the southeastern United States and the continuity of some of the main ges tures of Kongo statuary in Afro-American gestures and stance. The pure language of these ideal forms shines upon the black Atlantic

Fig. 4. Wooden image for an ancestor shrine (kitumba kia nzo a bakulu). Rietberg Museum.

Footnotes m,

world with prophetic force. We meet these sites and honorific objects as Schliemann once met Troy, astonished at the richness of a world founded upon profound beliefs andpatience artisanale. This is a world of objects bearing humanistic messages of spirit and vin dication, objects full of communal comment

pointing to the perennial Kongo concerns with balance between worlds, the healing of minds disturbed by social disequi librium, and the rediscovery of the ideal city, Mbanza Kongo, where wisdom and ecstatic sharing, justice and compassion, once were given perfect visage. Let us turn, then, towards and aspiration,

the fullness of these reflected worlds.

1. Jan Vansina, in Curtin. Feierman. Thompson, and Vansina. African Histoiy' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978). 258. 2. See J. Van Wing. Etudes Bakongo (Brussels: Desclee de Brouwer, 1959). 41 for a precis of some of the stages by which the term "Kongo" emerged in history. Compare, also. Crawford Young. Poli tics In The Congo (Princeton: Princeton Univer sity Press, 1965), 508: "Bakongo spelled with a 'K' — the Kongo which is held to be the domain of the Bakongo." 3. Ibid.. 247. 4. Fu-Kiau kia Bunseki. N'kongo ye Nza Yakun' zungidila (Kinshasa: Office National de la Recher che et de Developpement. 1969). 26, 28, 30. Janzen and MacGaffey. on p. 31 of their Anthology of Kongo Religion (Lawrence: University of Kansas. 1974) make it clear that Fu-Kiau was the first writer who made explicit the implicit paradigm of Kongo thought and ritual. Fu-Kiau himself remarks (Janzen and MacGaffey. p. 34) that, "contrary to what many students have said, the sign of the cross was not introduced into this country and into the minds of its people by foreigners. The cross was known to the Bakongo before the arrival of Europeans, and corresponds to the understanding in their minds of their relationship to their world." See works by Hauenstein, Ortiz, and Puckett. listed in the Bibli ography section, for corroboration of this finding in the Kongo Atlantic world. 5. Fu-Kiau kia Bunseki. The African Book Without Name (privately printed. 1980).3: "Kalunga. mean ing also ocean, is a door and a wall between two worlds. Kalunga became also the image of immen sity, sensele/wayala, that one cannot measure." For discussion of the Kalunga concept in neighbor ing Bantu civilizations see H. Baumann. Schopfung und Urzeit des Menschen im Mythus der Afrikanischen Volker (Berlin. 1936), especially 89, with map. Cf. also "The Supreme Being in The Beliefs of the Balovale Tribes." by C.M.N. White, in Afri can Studies (Johannesburg. 1948). vol. 7. no. 1, 29-35, esp. 29-32. 6. Joseph C. Miller. Kings and Kinsmen: Early Mbundu States in Angola (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1976), 52. 7. Fu-Kiau.

Congo iChamples par Wavre: Editions Du Vieux Planquesaule. 1961).64. 10. Frere Cornet discusses maboondo in the light of his field research, in Chapter IV. 11. Fu-Kiau, interview. 8 November 1980: "where you have a yowa. a sign of cosmos, with a dot inside, the dot represents a human being within his world." 12. Archives. Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire. Kinshasa, diboondo (73.622.1 ) attributed to a cemetery near Kungu in Bas-Zaire. 13. Fu-Kiau. 8 November

1980.

14. Ibid. He adds: "If there are four claws, this symbolizes the chief as the carrier of the four cor ners of the world, the four doors leading to the other world." Zdenka Volakova, "Insignia Of The Divine Authority." African Arts. XIV. 3 (May 1981) has published further evidence on this aspect of Kongo regalia. She finds (p. 47) that "four is the number of strong claws in a leopard's footprint, called kanda . . . one or four claws stand for leop ard." This is consistent with Fu-Kiau's thesis that the king, as leopard, supports the world and the statement by MacGaffey (personal communication. Fall 1977)to the effect that the leopard is an emblem of mediation between worlds. 15. Fu-Kiau. 8 November 1980: "Nlunga symbolize authority accepted by the people — the authority of the king or chief; leopard's teeth emblems on nlunga symbolize his power to protect and to destroy, to make the end of someone's life, where such is necessary to maintain the law." 16. Laman Cahier 371. a translated excerpt from one of numerous cahiers. written in Ki-Kongo by Bakongo. and compiled by the Swedish ethnolo gist. K. Laman. after the turn of the century and deposited in Stockholm. The citation and transla tion are courtesy of Wyatt MacGaffey. as are all further citations from this important source of Kongo lore. Biebuyck's remarks were included in a per sonal communication. 7 May 1981. 17. Philip Curtin. from a lecture given at Calhoun College. Yale University. Spring 1977.

interview. 31 August 1980.

8. Pierre de Maret, personal communication, Boisfort. Belgium. 14 November 1980. 9. R. L. Wannyn, L'Art Ancien

du Metal au Bas-

33

Kongo Civilization and Kongo Art

Like inscriptions incised upon our calabashes, our pottery, and our masks, speech remains among Black Africans what it always is: namely, a thing unveiling, a thing unveiled, a thing remaining to be unveiled. It never exhausts its message. Its speech is suggestive, in senses virtually extreme, because of its fundamentally enigmatic spirit, pluridimensional or pluridimensionable. In its comprehensiveness this mode of speaking forever raises points anew because, it speaks with an initiatory voice. — J. Kinyongo. Presence Afric aine. No. 109(1979) The reality of the cultural heritage of a community, i.e. its knowledge, is the experience of that deepest reality found between the spiritualized ancestors and the physically living thinkers within the com munity.— Fu-Kiau Bunseki, The African Book Without Name (1980)

When the Portuguese voyagers

first arrived

persons came from far and wide, attracted by his reputation for equity and fairness. The fame of his law court became virtually synon ymous with the name of the founding capital, Mbanza Kongo. This city commanded a hill above the Lelunda, a small river that flows into the Mpozo which, in turn, flows into the mighty Zaire at a point just above the modern city of Matadi. Mbanza Kongo (modern Sao Salvador) emerged in what is now northern Angola. Its famed court of law was in the southern quar ter of the town. There, in ancient times, the king would sit, in the midst of titled officers, dispensing judgments as supreme head of justice. The power of the great king of Kongo was divided essentially into four realms: political, economic, judicial, and religious. Politically,

in Kongo in 1482, they found a vast and com

the king in council decided affairs of state,

plex kingdom, a well-organized land receiv

and all matters of war and peace. No one had

ing the imprint of a single, strong civilization. There were six main provinces, each presided over by a governor and centered on a royal capital, Mbanza Kongo.1 By 1556 Camoes was lauding Kongo, in his verses, as "the greatest of the kingdoms" on the shores of Central Africa." The ultimate origins of Kongo are obscure. It is believed that Ne Kongo, a culture hero,

3-4

says that he was a magnificent judge, that

the right to take

such

affairs into his own

hands.

The economic power of the king of Kongo rested upon his control of foreign trade, expressed in the tribute obligation of the pro vincial governors. There were two kinds of tribute. Vansina distinguishes "tribute of alle giance," of limited economic value, but enor mously important in terms of sacred symbol

came from heaven bearing the first healing medicine (nkisi) which he prepared in a ves sel made of earthenware set upon three stones or termite mounds.3 Hence, from the begin ning Kongo was immersed in a vision of lead

ism. Allegiance-tribute .included the bodies of pangolins and civet cats, and the skins of leopards. The spotted felines symbolized the power of the king to mediate matters, moving in two worlds, spiritual and real, even as the

ership and healing. Like Moses, the legendary founding king, Ntinu Lukeni, who was apparently contem poraneous with the early European Middle Ages, laid down the first laws of the land.4 He matched these gifts with the introduction of smithing and the arts of iron. Tradition also

lordly leopard crossed invisible boundaries separating forest from settlement. Hence, this was "money" tinged with spiritual power and intent. Actual economic tribute (mpaku), rendered in shells and other objects of value, did not redound to the sole benefit or advan tage of the central authority: the governors

->

-

..W, lil: \ '

.

:...

t >

*

«* %

*?

m

i

T

' ^■*¥**'*fc Fig. 5. Court of the King of Kongo, c. 1884.

received products to take home in exchange for their tribute in a process which Kajsa Ekholm. in his excellent book on the Kongo kingdom, says resembled regional trade.8 And even actual economic tribute could be tinged

tribute to the king. But values of reciprocity and kinship also were at work. The king's role as supreme judge was men tioned above, and will be discussed again in later sections. The king, like the queen,

with pervasive religious beliefs and concerns. Tribute was considered a kind of adding to the wealth left by the ancestors over which

embodied tremendous spiritual and mystic powers. In formal session, wearing a special cap with leopard-teeth ornaments sometimes arranged to form a miniature cosmos, he brandishes the fly whisk used in lawsuits, and

the king presided as the highest

and

most

legitimate representative of the noble dead.9 Fear of the mystic consequences of jeal ousy and social imbalances, arising where one economic security rested upon the insecurity of others, caused Kongo people to be careful to share largesse in feasts and other acts of redistribution, akin to the giving of person's

products to the governors in exchange

for

a splendid cane or staff. The staff (mvwala or

nkawa) was interpreted by Fu-Kiau as "that power which enabled the elder, the king, to stand up straight and walk strongly without fear to his death." The mvwala or nkawa staff was regarded as the "ford of the ancestors"

(nkokolo a bakulu), a tree across the water's

And by brandishing this path, a bridge. "bridge" the king put the living world mysti cally in perpetual communication with the other realm. The king wore a necklace of leopard's teeth or ivory and sat upon a leop ard skin in the midst of a kind of textileconstructed radiance (fig. 5) made up of spread mats woven in intricate

patterning

and designs,

of which directly proclaimed his own high, rich, important state. Virtually every royal element of office was at the same time a cryptic referral to unseen power. The combination of leopard skins, staff, necklace of leopard's teeth, the sword of the power of the lavishness

life and death (mbele a lulendo) as a mystical embodiment of powers of execution, strength, and wisdom, identifies the body of the king as

35

an active medicine, an extraordinary nkisi.

The king and the titled governors thus based their power, their right to take life or let live, on emblems of ritual force, like the mbele a lulendo— spiritualized instruments of sov ereignty. Even the course of a law trial could be shaped by spirit (mpeeve), arising from the dead, or coming down from God. The king, then, embodied political might surcharged with supernatural might. In a telling example, a seventeenth-century source shows that the religious aspect of the king of Loango involved the power of making it rain, which he could do by standing on his throne and releasing an arrow aimed into the sky." Thus, there were many marvels in classical Kongo culture, four of which were paramount: ( 1) traditional medicines and charms (minkisi. plural of nkisi): (2) traditional tribunals (mambu); (3) the ideal capital, Mbanza Kongo, with its protocols and art and architecture: and (4) Kongo ideographic signs (bidimbu).

These critical cultural formations are mirrored particularly in the structure and the nature of Kongo tombs and funerary art. The tomb of an illustrious person may simultaneously sug gest by additions of mirrors, vials, and other substances, various things: a medicated charm (nkisi); a point of argument or lawsuit, pre over by an icon carved in stone in a disputatious gesture familiar to the law courts or to the world of more private argument; a miniature Mbanza Kongo, complete with sim ulated royal enclosure of inserted bottles or stakes of wood and presided over by statuary which sometimes reflects the ideal roles and behaviors of the ancient ideal capital: and. finally, a field of ideographic forces, of signs (bidimbu). indicating a1 door upon another world, a ford across the water, a spiral indica tion of the time of the ancestors and of God.

sided

©=© The Sacred Medicines (Minkisi)

Lord Kongo prepared the first sacred medi cine (nkisi) in his vessel of earthenware set upon three stones or termite mounds. This legendary act illustrates how the healer and his charm have been associated with the sup port of the Kongo world, from the beginning. A traditional expert in the making and dis pensing of medicines (nganga) learns how to name and use the leaves which heal the fevers and assuage a troubled mind. And he also learns how to compose (vanda) emphatic charms by properly collecting, preparing, measuring, and combining leaves and other elements for placement within his speciallymade nkisi containers. The combined medi 12 cines and leaves are called bilongo. Without bilongo. the image is conceptually dead and void. But properly combined and measured, and strengthened

with associated

songs, drum

ming, and dancing, together with the taking of certain vows connected with the charm, the nkisi is believed to live with an inner life of its own. The basis of that life was a cap tured soul (either of an indestructible simbi spirit or some other kind of spirit). The owner of the charm could direct the spirit in the object to accomplish mystically certain things for him, either to enhance his luck or to sharpen his business sense. This miracle was achieved through the two basic classes of medicine within the charm, spirit-embedding medicine (earths, often from a grave site, for cemetery earth the

is considered at one with the spirit of

dead), and spirit-admonishing

objects crys

(seeds, claws, miniature knives, stones,

in the container, as spirit-admonishing ments,

tell

ele

the spirit to multiply (or not to

multiply), the stones to pelt (or not to pelt), a claw to grasp (or not to grasp), and so on. Often the connection between inserted object and desired action is achieved through sound association or punning— for example, pine apple herb (sakala). to make a person return to health (sakalala). The earths embed the spirit in a miniature mpemba (the white clay world of the dead), and the objects resting on the earth, or clay, tell the spirit what to do. Insertion of healing or attacking agents in ancient charms has influenced, or is structurally and historically related to. the way a modern healer builds in a patient the kind of confi dence which by itself can dislodge a psychosomatically induced condition or can lift de pression. In his prize-winning study of modern Kongo traditional healing, Janzen wrote: She then took him to the water, held his arms and asked him "Do you want to be healed or to die?". "To be healed." he replied. So she took an nlolo fruit and threw ii over one shoulder, saying,

Lolokolo mwana wait ("Forgive this child"), then she threw an mfilu fruit over the other shoulder, " saying Fidimika Mamonsono. buka nitu a m vimba ("Clarify all. heal the whole body"). Then she took a white chicken, held it up toward the sky and addressed God in heaven. "If the child dies, it will be the white chicken.'" thereby adjuring help to save his life. . . . Verbal punning over plant names endowed the fruits with power (e.g. nlolo fruit, means loloka. "forgive", "remove curse": mfilu fruit, means fidimika. "clarify").14

The concreteness herbalism

and seriousness

is immediately

of Kongo

suggested by a ground

plan of a mystical garden at Manselele

in north

ture grave, or house, the mystic key to which

Here a healer planted some seventy-seven different trees or shrubs about his residence for the purpose of medicine, sustenance, and ritual. Many of these herbs

the maker of the charm alone possesses. Seeds

relate to therapy and healing through wordplay

tals, and so forth).1'1

The earths captured the spirit in a minia

ern

Kongo.11

Fig. 6. Court of the King of Loango. c. 1668. 37

and punning invocations. The trees and herbs cluster about the healer's compound like stan zas of living speech and invocation.

That parlous multidimensional quality, embedded in the artistic rituals of Central Africa, to which an African professor of phi losophy alluded in the epigraph which opened this chapter, is never more clear than in the most famous of the figurated medicines of ,b

Emblems Kongo, the nkisin kondi. of legalistic speech cluster in iron about these images with the same serious and positive density of the plants and shrubs about the healer's home at Manselele. N'kondiare oathtaking images. They are covered with blades and nails and other pointed objects to sym bolize the various tyings or nailings of mambu. traditional

lawsuits and arguments. The specialist takes a blade and drives it into the wooden image to seal a particular covenant or to end an affliction by bringing destruction upon an antisocial being. To nail in one kind of blade can bring an end to an argument about palm wine; nailing a peg can "tie" a matter down: driving a heavy nail of iron deep into an object can signify some thing serious, like a murder. Often the blades and nails indicate that a particular source of

hostility has been lifted due to arbitration, and that the formerly opposed parties have

sworn in the name of the avenging (literally "hunting") spirit in the n kondi to bind them selves to peace and cooperation. As they do so (or swear to cooperate) they may lick the blade of iron before it is inserted in the image. Should they break the vow. the spirit in the image knows, through traces of the saliva on the iron (or by some other kind of tied-on clue), exactly whom to annihilate or punish, according to the seriousness of the oath or vow.

Our example of thisgenre. ann'kondi from of Arts (fig. 7), stands with

the Detroit Institute

Fig. 7. Oath-taking and healing image (nkisi n kondi). Detroit Institute of Arts.

on hips, a position (pakalala) which symbolizes brave readiness to take on any lawsuit, no matter how severe. The image is richly studded with the iron relics of innu merable resolved conflicts. Each blade is a mambu, a condensation of the words of an argument or trial and the oaths which resolved the matter. The image wears its precedents and legal holdings as a kind of metal arma ture, and leads us, appropriately, into a dis cussion of Kongo law itself. hands

Lawsuits (mambu)

In Mbanza Kongo "a strong chief, supernaturally inspired, assures every honest citizen 17 his due." Europeans brought ruin to the polit ical power of Mbanza Kongo, starting with the battle of Ambouila in October 1665. "Nev ertheless." reported Robert L. Wannyn, in a book on the ancient metal arts of Kongo, "the grand court of justice in the capital, with its traditions going back for centuries, conserved its prestige in the eyes of the descendants of (S the clans of Kongo." In this century Laman reported that "a chief inheriting the kingdom of Vunda must see the mountain Ludi (the word in Ki-Kongo, the Kongo people's language, for "truth") in this country before his investiture, to enable him to judge (ludika) with impartiality. If a chief judges unfairly, he is told 'Ah, yaaya, go and look at the Ludi mountain, that your deci " ,9 sions may become just." In effect the king, once again, is transformed into a charm, to render ideal and perfect justice. He views the mountain as endowed with truth and imparti ality through wordplay and "takes" these qualities, with his eyes, into the innermost recesses of his consciousness. (Taking power

from the sky is the analogous nkisi-ritual described here: "If, for instance, someone looks fixedly at the setting sun and then closes his eyes, he will perceive a shimmer on open ing his eyes again and has thereby taken the sun."20)

Trials at Mbanza Kongo took place in the mbazi a mambu, the plaza of the tribunals, where the elders came to discuss matters of public interest and where markets also occurred when courts of law were not in session. Equity and fairness, it is said again and again, were the strengths of this court: "chiefs far and near sent their nephews to be brought up 'at the king's knee' i.e. at court, so as to learn its ceremonies, its etiquette in receiving visitors, and the best way of settling (legal disputes|."21

In this manner the spirit of the mbazi a was diffused throughout the kingdom, and there it remains wherever power or extra ordinary good judgment are manifest in the solution of an argument or civic struggle elab orated by the community in the traditional communal manner. Proverbs also spread the fame of the impartiality of the royal court and its strictures; for example, "the King of Kongo finds guilty his own kinsman and acquits the mambu

foreigner" (ntotila muna Kongo ubedisa yu wuwandi. unungisa yu ungani). The word for argument or lawsuit is mambu (literally, words, matters, affairs). In earlier times the plaintiff was called balombanga mambu, the defendant balombwanga mambu. Someone who lost a trial was a nlombolo ' mambu. the winner, a vwidi mambu. A late eighteenth-century description of an actual trial makes an interesting introduction to Kongo notions of court procedure and protocol: The crowd of those interested in the trial as well as spectators arrange themselves around a grand circle in the middle of which is placed a mat on which one disposes, at the cost of the

parties involved, a quantity of liquor in pro portion to the number attending. . . . The scene takes place in a spacious court or in the middle of a field. Each can speak in turn. Whoever has something to say is listened-to even if not directly concerned with the parties of the trial. This cir cumstance prolongs even more the hearing, for the argument is always accompanied by libations and a melee of songs.

But the observer's conception of what was going on distorts the significance of strata gems meant to imbue the decision with sub stance acceptable to the community at large, not just the winning parties. The fact that anyone from the community had the right to speak was not a waste of time. It was a sacred right. Here, from the inside, is a Kongo per son's view of the mambu: Beneath the shadow of a tree . . . the court of judgment, kiazala kia mfundusulu, was arranged. Under this tree experts investigate the issue, its ramifications, and its effects on the community life. The debate is carried on dialectically through diverse songs, slogans, proverbs, mottoes, ques tions and answers followed by comments. The accused (is| seated within the circle. Any com munity member is allowed to ask questions to the accused. The main goal of this procedural inves tigation is to understand social problems and conflicts through the accused and therefore |to| try to find a remedy to cure him as well as the entire community.25

The whole purpose of this kind of trial, then, was to cure the person of his bad behav ior and, in so doing, to reintegrate him into the community. However, hardened criminals or murderers were put to death. Western lawyers cite precedents and hold ings in point with the particular case which challenges their expertise. So do Kongo advo cates. The difference is that their precedents, holdings, and jurisprudential examples are often condensed in song texts, proverbs, and slogans, serving as verbal bombardment. The

39

Western lawyer tries to sway the judge and jury by ingenious shaping of the facts. Similarly, in Kongo, the advocate most able to string together a series of proverbs which comment tellingly, at various levels, on what happened and why, is very likely to win. As MacGaffey

wrote: "Tradition is in fact not enough: cases are won by oratorical ability and grasp of the "26 law as a system. The "melee of songs" and rapid-fire displays of proverbs which inter rupt the course of the proceedings constitute aesthetic holding-patterns, meant to give the opposing groups room to maneuver, "while the

hard

facts and precise statements

might have made compromise impossible

that | are |

carefully avoided." A law trial in Kongo can turn religious consciously, for "any decision arrived at would be ... a function of the spirit (mpeeve)."' Note that interpretation of a trial from the inside alludes to the healing of the defendant and the community, which implies therapeu tic dimensions. Hence it is not surprising that some of the more frequent gestures of Kongo medicinal staturary (minkisi). the gesture with arms akimbo and the stance with one hand on the hip, the other hand gesturing, are also legal gestures. The first gesture challenges or takes on a matter, the second one ends a law suit (biika mambu) or prevents the suit from

taking place (kaka mambu). The intersection of law with cosmology and world view is dramatized by a motif found on a figurated walking stick (lusumu) in the collection of the Musee Royal de TAfrique Centrale at Terviiren. It is a sign of two op posed arrows (bitooto). The motif conceals multiple levels of allusiveness wherein law suits are defined as a miniature form of dying, and the existential question of why we die

of the person who healed him. Similarly, a person afflicted with a mystically imbued ill ness or disorder aroused through the negative effects of the jealousy of others, might be initiated water. Man stands here and tries to under stand his present life and tries to foresee the future. He uses an ultimate advocate, the nganga kambakana lit. "who squeezes in be tween," who tries to explain the meaning of the mambu from this context. The arrow sym bolizes survival in this sense: it explains why man dies. When something is very wrong, like calamity or death, persons have to go back to the com munity and discuss the problem, for every problem is a symbol of death.'8

A lawsuit is a petty death; a trial is a form of dying. This interpretation helps us to com prehend the crosscuts between law, medicine, and the imagery of the tomb. To the mystery of why the peace should, every now and then, so meaninglessly shatter or fall to pieces is linked the mystery of death itself. Kongo philosophy, in its genius, pro poses a double solution to the riddle, by explaining why we die: tufwanga mu soba dimbu kia bununu kiambi kitunatanga mu ndumunu. we die to change the nega tive signs of age which we carry in our decline.29 By this mystic argument,

grey hair tluvemba)

is like a crown of fire: some people will with stand it for many years, and then die: others

will succumb far earlier. In either case one dies to redeem oneself,

through

purification in

the other world of gross impurities acquired in passage through the living world.

is posed:

In traditional times, a Kongo person falling ill might become a priest specializing in heal ing persons from the very disease he had sur vived. This is an example of a small death followed by the purging of negative elements

Between the arrows extends the unseen level of Kalunga. line of life and death, opposed by

acquired in living and the professionalization of his experience of survival and the insights

4(1

into the great Lemba Society of north

ern Kongo. Lemba would redistribute the sick person's

wealth in massive

and very expen

sive feasts and thus reintegrate him into the

community, healed of his "impurity" (excess wealth), and proven to be a brother unafraid to share.30 In both cases the person acquires luvemba: conceptually speaking, he "dies" (falls ill, suffers grave misfortune) and then, through initiation, is led back pure and whole again to join the community. It is as if he had wheeled into the other world at the moment of his falling down in misery or humiliation and then wheels back, in ritual channels, to be reborn.

This image of rebirth takes on dramatic coloring in mambu. A lineage head who wins a land dispute may brandish a scepter, a fly whisk, a ruler's bonnet, a leopard skin— all these chiefly things are placed upon him in his moment of glory , and more . as the women rush up to tie cloths about him.'11 For a few fleeting moments Mbanza Kongo is reborn and the winner is the king in court. His color less village takes on the trappings, in his per son, of the royal center. The vwidi (literally the owner of the mambu). the winner, having died the small death of the humiliation or suffering which caused him to bring suit in the first place, has seen those abominations washed away in justice and triumph. He stands as if he had both visited and brought back Mbanza Kongo, at the moment of the awarding of the decision. In other villages, the winner may be anointed with white clay, mpemba. the color of exon eration, signifying innocence and purity. But this also suggests return from "the white," from Mpemba itself, from a sojourn among

the dead who enact and remember the ideal,

perfect justice of the ancient capital. It is amazing how many times the image of the vanished capital returns, like a shimmering chimera, in the disposition of judgment and decision in the mambu. One final example is a lawsuit where the representative head of a descent group got up and danced, and again -

women tied cloths about his waist. This strik ing interlude brought back the image of the king of Kongo dancing with his anthropomor phic sword of the power of life and death (mbele a lulendo). In the old days the king, so caparisoned, while dancing, at the height of his ecstasy, would suddenly

announce his deci sion and let the verdict (nzengo) fall, like the cut of the royal blade of the mbele a lulendo. "one of those terrifying decisions that mark the true chief.' This is the dark side to the proverb about the ideal king who, should justice so demand, will sentence his own flesh and blood, while acquitting the stranger. The frequent reconstellation of aspects of Mbanza Kongo in the proprieties of victory and final decision in a lawsuit is a prelude to similar acts of intensive aesthetic miniaturi zation in the plan and embellishment of the tombs of important people. In fact, one of the words for tomb, mbanza, means "city ceme tery" and. by extension, royal grave.34

Mbanza Kongo: The City and Its

Art

If the law court of

passed between high grass fences to the "judging place" imbaji a kongoi in the middle of the town, where a huge wide-spreading tree was growing . . . we came to the first entrance to the King's enclo sure (luumbu) which we found to be a miniature maze, as we had to negotiate four fences before we arrived at the central space where the King's house stood. On entering the first opening in the fence we turned to the left, and then to the right, then to the right again, and found another opening; then by turning once to the right and twice to the left we worked our way back to a position near the first entrance, where we discovered the third doorway in the fence: then turning to the left and again to the right was the entrance leading into the court yard immediately in front of the King's house. There was a 5-feet pathway between the fences. The King's house was large . . . the walls were of closely-fitting

planks and the roof of ordinary thatching-grass. Along one wall was a high, wide shelf covered with ewers, wash-hand basins, decanters, jugs. mugs, vases, and gaudily-painted china images— the profits of trading, and presents from chiefs and others. . . .x

This deliberately spiraled journey to the king has been compared by some Bakongo to the journey of the king as a second sun. The plan and architecture of the luumbu are charged with an air of mystic completion and circularity. The circling corridors between the fences portray the world of a man who has made a revolution through this world and the next and who has come back spiritually armed with extraordinary vision. In I960,, at the time of independence from Belgium, many of

the capital was fabulous, so

was the enclosure of the king. John H. Weeks

describes the luumbu, the enclosure of the monarch, as it was in February 1882: We made our way to the center of the town where the King's enclosure was situated. We

the women in Bakongo country dressed their hair in a special spiral-form design called the "royal courtyard of Kasa-Vubu ("luumbu Iwa Kasa-Vubu). "so called and so arranged, in the form of a snail-shell to recall the Court of the Kongo," or: "Kasa-Vubu was able to sit on his throne-and rule because he had first made a tour of his state."36 The array of glassware and faience which

struck Weeks' fancy was stored in prepara tion for the death of the ruling monarch, in triumphant expression of his wealth and power, according to the proverb, luumbu ifwa sa iziamina nkama malafu (the day of my death I shall be buried with lots of jugs of palm wine — implying that the rich can secure a beautiful burial).3' The luumbu was thus a theater for displays of possessions meant to underscore the glory of the departure of the ruler to the other world. It was also a stage upon which treas ured expressions of Kongo gesture and bodily styles of presentation continuously unfolded: "Ordinary men approaching the King had to kneel three times, once just inside the last entrance to the King's enclosure, then near the door of the palace and lastly immediately in front of his majesty . . . handing anything to, or receiving anything from the King the per son always knelt, and put the palm of his left hand under his right arm just below the elbow, or if the article was too large for one. then both hands, palms upward and slightly arched were held out to offer or receive the proffered object. And in delivering a message to the King, or while receiving one from him, the messen ger had also to kneel."38

Mercier Gamble's photograph of "the pres ent King of Kongo in state" (fig. 5). published in John H. Weeks' book on Kongo in 1914, the clustering of people in Mbanza Kongo about their highest lord.1'* The king sits upon an elegant imported throne, but his feet touch the traditional leopard pelt. Chief tains, in mpu, or noble bonnets, kneel before him in the ancient manner. Other followers are standing, handsomely attendant. In the shows

background appears the luumbu. the enclos ing royal fence, marking the boundary between the world of the monarch and other worlds. This photograph can be matched, in many interesting respects, with an engraving, dated

41

1668. published in Olfert Dapper's famous Description de I'Afrique (fig. 6).40 The engrav ing illustrates the court of a northern Kongo king, the ruler of Loango. Key details— dais: spotted pelts, symbolizing the power of the ruler to take lives if need be and to move, as grand mediator,

between worlds, like the lordly

enclosing luumbu— these and other observed cultural elements attest to the essential continuity of the Kongo notion of the ideal king in state, across the centuries, from antiquity to the modern age. In Dapper's engraving we also view per sons kneeling at the court, striped wrappers, stalking leopard;

mats, or cloths emblazoned with hard-edged

patterning, consistent with modern matwork and raffia velours, and the apparent granting of tribute, mpaku. in ivory and feline pelts. Fly whisks and a fan for the royal person hang from a staff, immediately to the left of the ruler's throne. There is a kind of shield or decorative blazon, behind the head of the king and this shield-like device is garlanded with two small protective charms or packets (futu). The king himself, cloth on head, rich beads in strands about his neck, leopard or wildcat skins guarding either shoulder, is every inch the living charm (nkisi) of good govern ment and mystic vision. The raffia weaves which illumine such courts were, in fact, one of the first aspects of Kongo cultural greatness to impress the West. Duarte that, "in cloths of palm leaf as soft as velvet, some of them embroidered with velvet satin, as beautiful as

to unite for political self-determination, seek ing independence from European control of

their destiny and for activism and Crawford Young from their potent

their lands. Their capacity unified political action, as has shown, stems in part

sense of self and history.4" Bakongo pride rests on many things, and one of these is the ability to notate in tradi tional ideographic signs, or with traditional

mnemonic aids, the complicated issues of a world of towns and legal convocations. The later aspect of their culture entered Western history no later than the sixth of June, 1491. when the queen of Kongo received mission aries from Portugal to her court: "She received them with honor, and posed many questions about the |Christian | faith. And while a Father gave her explanations, she placed on the dais upon which she was seated small stones, saying they would help her the better to retain her lessons."43

Historians have noted this small fact with out comment. Actually, what the queen of Kongo had done was to make use of one of the classic mnemonic techniques of the Kongo courts of law, as Laman, the famous Swedish ethnographer, described it five centuries later, in northern Kongo: "During legal proceedings, each count of the indictment, or each ques tion to be answered is usually marked by setting aside a palm kernel, a pebble ... or something of the kind."44 Often these "stones"

Pacheco Fereira wrote in 1505/08

today

this kingdom of Congo they make

they are placed on the ground, conceptually,

any made in Italy."41

Secure in the memory and certainty of such the people of Kongo have the sense of a special cultural and spiritual mission, a cultural self-confidence which has carried them solidly into the modern age. Not by accident were Bakongo among the first African people greatness,

are actually crystals (ngengele),

and

to "tie" the points of a given lawsuit, mne-

monically. The name of this custom is koma "nailing the affair." The healer "nails" disease by planting a palisade of herbs and medicinal trees about his residence: the ritual specialist "nails" disorder by driving a multi tude of blades into a standing miniature image of a lord in readiness.45 And finally, a queen, challenged by the advent of the Holy Bible mambu,

and the catechism, "nailed" complicated points of doctrine, faith, and dogma, capturing each point in memory, by associating it with stones of different shape and color. This happened in 1491 and it shows that, from the beginning of Kongo's long and arduous contact with the West, there were indigenous instruments of mnemonic notation and transmission. The Kongo taste for cosmology and legal battles demands some form of notation and it is to this fascinating world, the signs of time and mediation, that we now turn.

Bidimbu: Kongo Ideographic Signs

MM

By one and the same gesture, |alphabetic| writing, instrument of a speech dreaming of its plenitude and its self-presence, is scorned, and the dignity of writing is refused to nonalphabetic signs. — Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology.

An

eighteenth-century European voyager of Kongo assumed that he had arrived in a land "without any kind of writing, without hieroglyphs, without monuments, in short, without any symbols which could per to the coast

Actually, as Laman observed of northern Kongo in the early part of this century, "traditions and notable events have been transmitted with a remarkable degree of accuracy through various media."48 Since antiquity, Bakongo have notated aspects of their thinking about the fundamen tal issues of the land, cosmos, medicine, law, authority, and the power of the dead, in ideo petuate ideas."4.

graphic

signs called bidimbu (singular:

dimbu).

Ideography is usefully defined in Diringer's history of the alphabet as pictorial represen tation of ideas: "In this system , the pictographs not so much the things they show as underlying idea associated with those

represent the

in

a

a

it

is

a

,

circularity which bursts into full view where snail shell spirals at the center of one cruci form or, in another instance, where circle The spins around the endings of the cross. existence of the Kongo cross as cruciform within "wheel" should make clear the rhe torical point of its existence, as forever dis tinguished from the standing emblem of Jesus Christ.

a

a

is

is a

a

(

a

=©

In Kongo there scarcely an initiation or ritual transformation of the person from one level of existence to another that does not take its patterning from the circle of the sun about the earth. Fu-Kiau wrote: "Man through is

themselves, but the characteristic modes of embellishment associated with funerary cloth mannequins, terra-cotta stelae, stone and wood images, and others, include allusions which are ideographic. In this section we survey bidimbu in four aspects: (1) cosmological— signs of the trajectory of the sun. cosmic mir

Fu-Kiau's diagrams illustrate the fundamen tal circularity of the Kongo sign of cosmos,

Tendwa kia Nza-n'kongo: The Kongo Cosmogram ("The Four Moments of the Sun")

©

The understanding of bidimbu is, conse of Kongo funerary art. Not only are objects placed on graves interpreted as bidimbu, as "signs" in quently, critical to the comprehension

life acquire new freshness of existence and reenter the world, as spirits reincarnated in grandchildren or, in the highest instances, as indestructible, immortal simbi spirits. ,

in

a

ography.

world. In the world below, called mpemba, land of kaolin, land of things all white, the lordly dead, through powers commensurate with the relative goodness of their life once lived on earth above, lose the impurities acquired in

a

Sign of the Chameleon and His Cane

one strikes the hand of medicine and knowledge against the hand of the environ '° ment. The result creativity and affirma tion. Wielding their pointed "scepter-slates." great leaders held distillations of portions of their heritage and culture in their hands, texts which could be used both to illuminate and to measure social worlds, hence the ending of this section with an intensive reading of one of these remarkable examples of Kongo ide depths

follows the sun. because he second sun."M Thus the Kongo cosmogram mirrors the birth of person, in the rising of the sun; the maximal power in vertical line which culminates with the sun at noon; the death and decline in the lowering of the sun and its disappearance beneath the sea or earth. Then, when the sun achieves its matching zenith (mbata) in the other world, the noon of the dead, our midnight himself

a

Ye Mvwala

upon

his initiations

a

Tendwa Kia Lungwenya

richly figurated "scepter-slate" (lusumu) which was carved symbolic manifesta tions of authority and argument. itself Bakongo believe that reflection kind of writing, and their elaboration of mir rors and echoes as the very soul of mediatory writing conveyed in the traditional notion of initiatory knowledge as handclap (mbata). In other words, to comprehend matter to its (4)

is

It

it,

All of these qualities are gathered again at still another level of exposition, to indicate care and delib eration devoted to matters of enlightenment and teaching, as summarized by the proverb: "slowly, slowly, the way the chameleon goes" (malembe, malembe. mwenda lungwenya). slow manner of locomotion.

writings (sona) among traditional populations of Angola, notably Tu-Chokwe and Lunda, and the oldest known document of this writ 1645-1667), now ing, the Araldi Manuscript Modena (here we concentrate on sona signs which are cognate with bidimbu); and

is

to matters of metaphysics and spir itual mediation, exceed this definition by far. For in Kongo an entire semantic field, as opposed to a single underlying thought or concept, can sometimes be triggered by a single sign. Thus a program of rupestral signs at Lovo, a Kongo cave in Bas-Zaire, includes a stylized representation of an elder with his cane.MI This dimbu symbolizes not only old age, as such, but also the mode of walking with also associated slow but certain. symbolizes the chameleon, and its careful, addressed

rors imparting infinite reflection to the opposed worlds of the living and the dead; (2) rupes tral— sampling of signs from the caves of Bas-Zaire; (3) artistic sand Lovo and Mbafu

in

In fact, the sophistication and rich

a

things."49

ness of Kongo ideography, especially where

Dots or small circles added to the intersect ing arms of the Kongo cross indicate men or women as second suns, moving through time and space, following the circle of the sun from east to north (noon) to west/6 The cru ciform emphasis of this all-important sign breaks into myriad sub-phrasings, including

43

nfn^^fflE quartered diamonds, quartered squares, and quartered rectangles. This tradition has under gone

myriad permutations, including a sim

ple rectangular

design (pa) bisected to indicate

two worlds. In other words the curving power of the sign of cosmos is so overpowering that it can even be sensed in hard-edged and straight-lined geometries of expression.

symbolize growth and change. Thus a single sphere may indicate, in certain contexts, the building of the founding enclosure (luumbu) of a settlement. Subsequent generations build their enclosures around the royal nucleus indi cated, in bidimbu writing, by drawing larger concentric circles around the originating sphere. This becomes the sign of the enclo ' sure of the king (tendwa kia luumbu Iwa ntinu): The simplest ritual space in Kongo consists of a cross written on the earth, the top quad rant indicating God and heaven, the bottom, earth

and

the world of the ancestors.58

To

stand upon this cross is to swear both on God

of the cosmogram into social space can be even more abbrevi ated, as in the instance of the frequent usage of a crossroad, or a branch in a path, as a site for communication with the other world. These sacred intersections can be miniaturized fur ther, as a forked stick, cosmos-compacted. Hunters, ever susceptible to shifts in the environment, have a highly developed "cross and the ancestors. Extensions

The whole perspective of the Kongo cosmogram

emphasizes

that man, as such, moves

in God's time, not his own. In fact, one por tion of the cross takes the name of God —

Kalunga. This is the horizontal line, the "Kalunga line." the ultimate Kongo ideograph. In a schema rendered on this page I have marked the Kalunga line with a horizontally dotted line. In Kongo cosmology, it is inter preted as water, the water of the river or of the sea. Above the Kalunga line extends heaven (zulu). and below is found the earth (nsi). Between heaven and earth stand the mirrored mountains, the mount of the living (nseke). and the mount of the dead (mpemba). This completes our understanding of the design as a classical element, with each part named and reasoned.

H)

©

The snail shell spatializes time. Shells thus become visual synonyms for persistence and the immortal spiral in the sky, the journey of the sun. emphasizing that traditional Kongo time is circular. Concentric circles may also

44

roads mentality," and they use charms (n 'kangi kiditu) which take their form from Christian crosses but add vernacular nuances.59 They associate these charms with luck in hunting, a custom cognate with the planting of a forked stick at the crossroads. Among Basuku. this is also used to enhance a hunter's luck and to secure other forms of blessing. This widespread coining and recoining of the sign of the cosmos should convince us of its indigenous, deep-rooted antiquity. How ever, some authorities trace all Kongo crosses to the crucifix. Yet it is the consensus of a variety of scholars who have studied the motif in cultural context, that the sign of the four moments of the sun predates the coming of the Portuguese. A. Hauenstein sifted an impres sive amount of ethnographic evidence from Angola, in a classic study entitled "Remarks on the Motif of the Cross and Cruciform

Rites and Gestures Among Certain Traditional Groups in Angola," published in 1967. His conclusion was that "the Christian cross blended with more ancient |African| notions of the motif . . . which explains the facility with which from the beginning of colonization the symbol of the Christian cross was trans formed into a Kongo sacred medicine."60 Hauenstein collected nuances of the form,

among the Mbundu of Angola, which over lapped Kongo meanings or "truth"61 (which recalls the act of standing on a cross in Kongo to swear that what one says is so) and the 62 cross as a "place of the meeting of spirits." He discovered other symbols, in Angola, which we will meet again in Kongo cemeteries— the seating of noble force upon a cross or circle, and

a basket

turned upside-down marking

death's power of inversion. Noting that it was

impossible to restrict the cross in Angola to a single meaning, Hauenstein found that in dif ferent rites it incontestably symbolized quali ties of "equity" and "justice" which resituat.es the ideograph within mambu, the familiar law court settings. Jose Redinha worked in southeast Angola, among the Mbwela peoples, and reported his findings in an important study: "Rupestral Engravings of the Upper Zambezi and A First Attempt At Their Interpretation," published in 1948. Investigating ideographic patterns cut into rock in eastern Angola, he found that the signs were of appreciable antiquity because of the patina on the signs.63 The elders of the area rewarded him with remarkably consis tent and accurate interpretations, the accu racy of which can be appreciated by their direct cognate relationship to documented Kongo cosmic signs. Angolan informants told Redinha that a circle connected to another circle by a dou ble line represented the journey of the sun across the sky. from dawn to the end of day, a

reasoned motif which overlaps forms and meanings documented by Fu-Kiau in his impor tant study of Kongo cosmology:'"4

they say that "every sign has its history" (konso

cate the abiding Kongo concern with signs of

the "signs of the secrets of the land are hidden

the cosmos as a mystic centering device, as a

in writings

Kongo Bidimbu (after Fu-Kiau.

1969)

maswekwa

in a cave" (mampinda

ma nsi

mu nsonokono za kii nsia nlitka).

There are caves in what is now Bas-Zaire. an area where Bakongo have lived since antiq

Nseluka Ntangu Ye Sinsu Kiandi (sunrise and its sign)

Many bidimbu in the Lovo cave communi

ma kienaye kiandi kikulu). They also say that

uity, in which there are amazing galaxies of and painted motifs. In an important study published in 1964 Paul Raymaekers and Hendrik van Moorsel discovered, copied, and design

analyzed

682 designs

and

rupestral engrav

point upon which to build concepts of truth There are signs which Fu-Kiau interprets as cosmos divided by the Kalunga line of water, which MacGaffey was told signified a grave with a body in it. inter pretations which are not at all contradictory but. on the contrary, bring to our attention a vibrant intent to convey treasured points of and spiritual renaissance.

privileged communication between

ings scattered in 52 different sites within a The site cave called Lovo in Bas-Zaire.6', Ndumunu A Ntangu Ye Sinsu Kiandi (sunset and its sign)

Mbwela and Other Angolan Signs (after Redinha. 1948)

0

-0

The Rising and Setting Sun (from a rupestral engraving. Calola. Angola)

included a necropolis which has recently been h dated archaeologically to the 1600s. Lamentably, space cannot permit a full rendering here of the visual treasury of Kongo ideography hidden in the Lovo cave. But the following sampling of signs, many with inter pretations given by Fu-Kiau. or recited to MacGaffey in the field, suggest Lovo as a significant monument in the history of Kongo iconography. Signs are illustrated here with their original numbers from the Raymaekers and van Moorsel publication.

worlds:

LOVO: 1hi pa (rectangle) with Kalunga line: mvumbi

LOVO: 165/0 pa (rectangle) with Kalunga line: n'kangi kiditu

Wherever in the history of Kongo art a motif tdimbu) occurs and recurs with formal ized insistence, there is every reason to sug gest deep iconic import. Therefore, I end this

The Rising. Noonday, and Setting Sun (Upper Zambezi tattoo)

LOVO: 1K4 ngonda mongo

LOVO: 186 ngonda mongo

LOVO: 245 R mpamba a nzila

The engraving of these characters on the stones of the Upper Zambezi . the related iconic

In 1965 MacGaffey was given meanings for

findings of Hauenstein among Mbundu in northern Angola, and the correspondence of these motifs with form and meaning among

many of these signs, including the sign of the

Bakongo. attest to the traveling of these signs In short, their geographic distribution suggests a measure of antiquity. in time and space.

Bakongo themselves are aware that their cosmograms reflect an ancient source, and

moon or mountain t ngonda/ mongo ): the sign of the crossroads (mpamba a nzila). showing a fork in the road with a diamond-form glyph in its center restating its importance as a sign of the cosmos: and various signs suggesting the corpse (mvumbi) within its grave (signs 192. 252,313).'*

brief sampling of the richness of the Lovo finds with signs found not only in the Lovo cave, but also in the Mbuzi cave of the Mbanza Ngungu region, the Mvangi cave in BasZaire, both in Kongo, and "Tshitundo-Holo" signs in Angola which J. Camarate Franca recorded in 1953. Fu-Kiau has glossed these particular signs as a language of mediation. The general currency of his interpretations, from indigenously determined argu ments and elaborations, is attested by the fact

emerging

that many of these signs reappear emblazoned on the chest of niombo "mummies." as if that

which was written in secret within the earth was consciously intended to be sent back into the earth by the burial of these great bidimbu

45

decorated forms. Lovo, Mvangi, and Angola sign repertories yield interesting spiral forms—

LOVO S(GN

MVANG( S(GN

TSH(TUNDO-HOLO S(GN

These are motifs of spiritual return, "the sign of the shell" (tendwa kia kodya). They were used, and continue to be used, in the prepara tion of niombo decorations in this century, to symbolize the arising from the other world of spiraling spiritual powers of leadership and governmental inspiration. The sign of the elder/chameleon with his cane, teaching slow but certain accumulation of communal insights, was examined at the beginning of this sampling of grotto signs. This sign is linked logically to a dimbu which has been discovered in the Mbuzi. Lovo, and Mvangi caves:

MBUZ( S(GN

LOVO S(GN MVANG( S(GN

The meaning of this glyph, according to Fu-Kiau, is essentially cosmological. It is the "sign of the good leader," or "the sign of the ruler's walking-stick" (tendwa kia mvwala). The ideograph is formed of a vertical axis to which a loop has been attached on the upper right-hand portion of the vertical axis. Also striking is the fact that the axis mundi, as such, here tilts down in the direction of the land sunset

of the dead, beyond the point where normally is rendered in the essential

Kongo cosmogram. Fu-Kiau says that here "the Kalunga line is down," that is, the leader will win a justly honored place within society, for the bending of the Kalunga line below the level of the horizon means that "even the dead are with him."72 Similarly, by a mirroring cosmological interpretaion, the right-hand loop means that the leader came into this world having already accumulated knowledge from the spirits below the point of the sunrise. Finally, a small crescent in the lower right corner of the sign emphasizes the power of the dead and their connection with this mighty avatar of authority. In sum, the signs of Lovo, Mbuzi. Mvangi, and other sites establish the existence and importance of Kongo ideography. They also will help us place in greater per spective the fact that Kongo cloth manne quins, terra-cotta columns, and stone statuary, are signs themselves. They mirror, in ways

suggests

an oath-taking or vowing situation,

as does the repetition of the motif of the cross

upon the block (kikulu) on which he stands. The pedestal, a pun on the Ki-Kongo word for tradition (kinkulu), elevates the leader upon a sign of the support of the Kongo peo ple and their heritage.71 This sitting figure on a pedestal lifts on high two staffs. He lifts a small one with his right hand, and with the other hand, he raises a heavier, clublike staff. He strikes the zangula

mvwala ku zulu pose. This refers to the lifting up of scepters to the sky. Some say the image displays his emblems of authority in a cere mony designed to bring on rain.74 Alternatively, '5 the gesture graces a ceremony of investiture.

the immortal Kongo

By this argument the person takes his staffs of office and brandishes them aloft to demon strate that he takes his power and directs it. "before the face of heaven and the earth" (va tadisi zulu ye ntoto). In other words, he

issues of leadership, law. medicine, and cos

sends his words towards cosmos, where God

mology. However, there is one further Kongo cave we should consider before viewing the red cloth mummies, terra-cotta stelae, and stone statuary. This is the painted cave of Mbafu,

and the ancestors will judge him by his deeds.

yet to be fully deciphered,

located south of the Kinshasa-Matadi road in Bas-Zaire. Mbafu is a spectacular grotto set ting, peopled with shadowed stalactites, and characterized by flowing, rupestral surfaces. Here we can concentrate on perhaps the most important figure, situated in the center of the cave. This painting, of a person sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the cave, symbolizes authority. Indeed, the figure suggests author ity, with details of gesture and elevation. Below the naked chest, waist and legs are covered with a traditional form of wrapper (nlele). A small cross, indicated faintly on the chest, is perhaps a diwa, a cross chalked in white upon the chest in contexts of initiation. This possi bility fits the fact that the gesture of the figure

Mbafu

Cave:

Image of a person standing on a pedestal and lifting his staffs to the sk v

Ideographic establishment of signs of truth by the tradi tional peoples to the south of Kongo in what is now the Republic of Angola, principally the Tu-Chockwe and Lunda peoples. How ever, their traditions of ideography are phrased in a different style. Tu-Chockwe and Lunda signs are composed in interlace, essentially and power is a privilege shared

made up of nucleated loops and nucleated lozenge or diamond forms. Tu-Chokwe call this mode sona or lusona— "signs, writing." Albert Maesen reports that the dots are called

matongela and the enclosing lines mufunda. It is a mode of ideographic writing essentially given over to the medium of sand drawing, a Reflections of play of forms and meanings. this elegant formal language are also found on house fronts (fig. 8) and other artistically elaborated or important objects.77 Maesen ran full tilt into lively performances of Tu-Chockwe sand drawing in this nucleated mode in the village of Mukwanjdanga, in what is now Zaire, 8

He saw the Tu-Chokwe artists first make dots within the sand, and then inscribe, very . very quickly, the curving loops in

1954.

or squares around these dots with the ring and forefinger of the right hand. One of the sona he documented in this village was clearly cruciform and bore the traditional name of kayanda ka mungongi. Tu-Chokwe Kayanda

Lusona:

Fig. 8. Tu-chokwe Bastin.

wall with sona; muyombo tree in interlace, seat of ancestral spirits. Photo: M.-L.

Ka Mungongi

after Maesen, 1954

vertical device. The Araldi Manuscript, writ ten by Cavazzi— a missionary in Kongo and

Kongo, Mbafu Cave: Figure with nucleated squares

The orgin of this elegant mode of nucleated and loop mode of script is obscure. But it must be ancient in Angola. Cognate lozenge

shards of this contrasting mode turn up among

Bakongo caves. An example of this is the Mbafu paintings where, far to the right of the rain-making figure on a pedestal, can be seen a device characterized by a repetition of nucleated squares within a pointed, bladelike

Angola between 1645 to 1667, is another impor tant source of this mode. During 1664-1667, when Cavazzi was supe rior of the convent at Luanda, he continued to write notices of an ethnographic character about Angola. His manuscript reached Europe, where apparently it was lost. The document surfaced in 1969, when a scholar discovered it in the collection of the Araldi family of Modena. hence its present name.79 Ezio Bassani, an, Italian Africanist. charac terizes this source as "in all probability, the first graphic representation in the West of the musical instruments of Black Africa taken from field observation."80 It is also probably our first reliable document of sona in Angola,

proving that the tradition was fully in exist ence in 1667. The Araldi Manuscript includes a drawing of Angolans listening to a pluriarcplayer. In this scene there is a box, serving as a mount for an important crown, on which two sona have been drawn. There is another drawing, of a smith, a forge, and a pluriacplayer. again with a box. which is similarly marked. And finally in another drawing a woman appears, bearing on her head a box the top and side of which are emblazoned with sona signs. These are signs of the cosmos, phrased in the manner of Tu-Chokwe

and Lunda sand drawings. As such, they "sign" these coffers with intimations of truth (precisely the mean ing Hauenstein discovered in certain Mbundu interpretations of the cruciform) and the meet

47

ing of two worlds. It relates to the sign of God

(Kalunga), in Tu-Chokwe sand drawing, and the sign of the world of the dead. That this motif, formed in interlace, decorates impor tant boxes probably identifies them as coffers for the collection of royal tribute or other forms of chiefly wealth. In indigenous think

Tu-Chokwe Sona Sign of the Monkey (hundut after dos Santos, 1961

ing, tribute (mpaku. in Ki-Kongo) can be interpreted as a continuation of things given by the dead, hence the crossroads sign: "the bequeathed us things and we have to build for our own offspring, hence the obli gation of paying mpaku to the king."si Dots inside each loop or lozenge stand for human beings, each within a world: "and none can get inside those worlds without appropriate permission — in other words, open this box without authorization and you instantly in volve yourself in mambu."*' As time goes on. the sona artists of Angola have added deft pictorial touches to their calligraphic forms, such as a dotted circle for a head, and separate long strokes to suggest a dead

tail and legs. They can soften

field of nucleated lozenges

Sona Sign of the Python (mboma) after dos Santos. 1961

Tu-Chokwe

Sona Sign of the Cemetery. Tombs of the Elders & the Young tmafuka

Tu-Chokwe

a makuluana nhi a tuanuke) Fig. 9. Scepter-slate (lusumu). Tervuren

As we end this survey of Kongo ideographs it is useful to review the materials which have

a hard-edged

been marshaled and to contrast them with yet one more manifestation of the power of Bakongo to render in symbolic forms their thoughts and aspirations. First, there are myr

and wonderfully

create the outline of a monkey (hundu).** But

of sona in a study of Kongo funerary art is that some of the primary motifs sharpen, by cognate expression, our under standing of two fundamental Kongo ideo graphs: the sign of the python, emblem of power and longevity: and the sign of the cem etery, a diamonded field, where each dot the main relevance

17th-Centurv Angolan Sona Patterns, 1645-1667. from the Araldi Manuscript

48

Sona Signs

Secondly, we should recall the "mate

traditional, medicine and charmmaking, where ritual experts add certain objects— a claw, a horn, a seed, a mush room—to the making of a charm to admonish, through form and sound, the spirit believed to be captured within the charm. Thus inser tion of a mushrom ttondo). in a kind of material-ideography based on a play of words, on Kongo

Kongo Sign of the Python iMboma

for God

iad geometric manifestations of the cosmogram.

rial ideography" which we met in the section

within a diamond signifies a spirit.*4

Kalunga or Nzambi. Tu-Chokwe

Museum.

Ndongo)

Kongo Sign, with dots said to represent the missing members of the clan united in Mpemba ( imnz diboondo. 75.389.42)

invokes the spirit in the charm to be grateful Honda) to the maker of the charm and do his bidding. Third, there runs through the art of Kongo, like an alternative thread, a tendency

towards hard-edged named

interlace

patterning,

often

and nucleated. These motifs can be

used to convey proverbs and meanings which in some cases are shared, formally and seman-

tically. with basket, mat-making and "raffia velours" patterning and design. We end the survey with a fourth and fasci nating figural dimension, the Kongo power to show, in the words of a Portuguese scholar "synthesis, intuition, and spirit of observa tion,"s6 in the use of ideographic signs, of per sons and objects, carved in full or low-relief

This figurated mode appears on pot-lids tombs, and special staffs with a flat surface The latter objects are called lusumu. Scholars have devoted considerable attention to Kongo symbolic signs carved in low relief on the wooden lids of pots: from Bittremieux, Sym-

bolisme in de Negerkunst (1937), through the richly documented volumes of Jose Martins Vaz and Joaquin Martins, to the recent, excel

But lently detailed study by Joseph Cornet. the illustration of proverbs and moral admoni tions by figurated pot-lids (mataampha: mabaya-manzungu) is but a fraction of a larger symbolic universe. This world includes objectideography in charm-making, and the dec oration of grave surfaces with materially rendered signs— stones, implements, and so forth. There is also a little-known but impor tant form of Kongo communication, the lusumu. which I am calling a "scepter-slate." Lusumu combine the function of a walking stick with that of a slate, the latter emboldened with ideographic symbols in low relief. The word lusumu also refers to ordinary staffs, the sym bol of an elder in Kongo terms. What is apparent from lusumu in the col lections of ethnographic museums at Terviiren, Rotterdam, and the Vatican, is that the defin ing element of the object, besides

the figura

tion, is its ending— a sharp, narrow point.

The ending confirms indigenous argument to the effect that the term lusumu derives from the verb suma— to dig with a pointed stick, to pierce nkunza leaves, to probe the earth. The root meaning of suma, in relation to lusumu, is therefore "to discover." In other words, scepter-slates

are highly specialized objects

by which elders "discover" the hidden issues

of the past and bring them into the light of the present.

89

If Lovo

signs enrich our comprehension of antiquity and importance of bidimbu painted on the chests of niombo "mummies," similarly, the lusumu at Terviiren (fig. 9) clarifies the fundamental importance of two the

in Kongo funerary art: the stance with arms akimbo, and a gestural design with the left hand on the hip. and the right hand

gestures

up.* Figures on the Terviiren lusumu (which probably dates from the nineteenth century)

44

reveal their stressed meanings through recur rence. The gesture with arms akimbo signifies

spiritual readiness. The stance with one hand on hip and the other gesturing above or before the body conveys spiritual authority. There are further symbolic attitudes to consider here. From direct observations in the latter portion of the eighteenth century Degrandpre illus trated the transport of a courtier in a ham mock (kipooyi) borne by his followers, all in elegant wrappers finished with an honorific wildcat skin about the waist (fig. 1 But it is interesting to note what hap 10). pens when Bakongo render the same theme, of the carriage of an elder in a hammock, as one of the motifs of the Terviiren lusumu (fig. 11). Here the chief travels from one place to another in a deeper sense. He is dead. And we know that he is dead because of the nature of

'dressed

Fig. 10. A courtier of Malemba. in hammock fkipooyi). c. 1787. Terviiren Fig. 11. Lusumu, detail of dead chief in kipooyi

50

Museum.

at least one of the signs above his hammock.

There we find an empty disk (mpavala), the void, signifying death, and a crescent ibika), which has been alternatively interpreted as bika, the reappearance of the moon, meaning that the departing lord is beginning a new life

below the Kalunga line; or an nlunga, a brass of authority identifying the dead man as a person entrusted with the transmission of these and other precious aspects of authority. To the right of this scene of final leave-taking, a man points towards the hammock with right hand and rests his left decorously on his hip according to the Kongo protocol of deport ment which we shall examine in detail later. This man is possibly an mpakaladi, a person who directs the procession of a funeral. The Terviiren lusumu is drenched with the atmosphere of an nzonza, "a very hard mambu" an extremely serious legal gathering.92 Some thing terrible has happened. We know that death is one of the issues, probably compli cated by accusations of witchcraft or clan conflict arising from a change in leadership and balance. One person indicates another with a pointing gesture, possibly to accuse him. A pair of persons point at one another (fig. 12), which Fu-Kiau says is a sign of "mu tual critique" (nzila mu bangula ndwanasani mu luzingu, a way to explain a circularity of bracelet

In either case, the fact that his reactive pose is linked to something serious is almost certain. We find in one portion of the slate what appears to be a group of persons grinding maize or some other substance in a mortar (kisu) for a major feast (fig. 13). And there are relatively depictions of a person pointing straightforward to a cosmogram (drawn on the ground before him in an oath-taking situation?), "trying to explain what is happening in the physical world." In the midst of this cosmologically dramatized perspective, human actors seem cast into duality and that is why Fu-Kiau believes that there is an apparent matching of one person indicating the sign of the four

Fig. 12. (right) Lusumu. detail, two men making sign of mutual critique. Fig. 13. Lusumu. detail, two men indicating cosmos, cast into duality.

argument).93

One section of the world encompassed in slate falls under a rectangle obliquely hatched, said to constitute another pattern of and death, hence deepening the emptiness this

general air of emergency which colors the figuration. There is yet another silhouetted person with hand on hip, the other gesturing. He appears under the rectangular statement of death and next to an empty disk which says the same thing. Yet it is difficult to say whether he indicates gesturally the preventing of a lawsuit (kaka mambu)

emerging

from this seri

ous issue, or brings it to an end (bika mambu).

51

tion .ideal persons of authority close the door and open the door to social reintegration and continuity. Such an ideal person stands before us on a pedestal in the Terviiren lusumu (fig. 14). Hat on head, left hand on hip. right hand extended, he holds in the latter hand an object which suggests a kind of sacred medicine (nkisi funda) con nected with assuagement and the restoration of calm within the clan. Whatever the inner meanings of his gesture

of cloth reached a climax in the niombo (cloth-swathed funerary bundle) custom of the Bwende. particularly about the village of Kingoyi. as well as the fascinating miniature expression in the muzidi or kiimbi (reliquarymannequin) tradition among the Bembe of what is now Congo-Brazzaville. These customs represent transformations — intensifications, in the case of massive niombo images— of ancient tradition, whereby

and his proffered object, we take assurance

textiles and cloths, corresponding in numbers

from his stance and from his symbolic eleva tion. His presence there, like the rainmaking or kingly figure in the Mbafu cave, tells us that calamity or change can summon the fin est men. the finest women, to mount the ped estal of tradition and mend the situation. This

and quality to the importance of the departed person — his wealth, the means of his com

is the essential

La fondation de la mission des Capucins au Royaume de Congo (1648). reports from Mbanza Kongo that. "If the dead person is noble, they wrap the corpse in a carefully

on witchcraft

message

here.

The same message, of ideal restitution of things lost, is conveyed in a different way in northern Kongo. There massive "mummies" are sent into the other world to represent our deepest interests as advocates

Fig. 14. Lusumu. detail of person on pedestal.

and, conversely,

reliquary-mannequins are fashioned around relics of the dead to serve as judges of the living. We now address these remarkable figures.

moments of the sun with another, indicating the same sign, upside-down.

And so bidimbu here address "very great issues of death," a "mightly mambu within the community."94 We find signs of argument and conflict between worlds, in addition to less heightened motifs of food preparation and traditional transport. It is said that an elder would take this staff and read back, from its signs, the wisdom and the major

happenings of the past to the members of the present world. When one world seems at war with the next, when the world is thrust into a critical situa

52

Niombo and Muzidi: Grand Advocates for the Other World, Judges from the Dead

00WWWW00W Wrap me up well in the cloth that I leave, and shoot off my gunpowder. — last wishes of a Kongo man.

In the north of Kongo, among the Bwende and Bembe clans, the ancient custom of honoring the dead with lavish sacrificial gifts

the important dead were wrapped in various

munity, and the respect which he engendered. The relative antiquity of the concept of the funerary bundle in Kongo is attested variously by the sources. Jean-Francois de Rome, in his

sewn

white linen cloth: then, having placed

him in his coffin, covered with a black cloth, they carry him to the church with a numerous

If the dead person is poor, they wrap him in a coarse country cloth, then cover over that with a mat. and in that same mat % bury him in the cemetery." Already by 1648 the particular cloths used (linen and. probably, the black mourning cloth) were in some cases imported, but the concept of sending the dead person to the other world in an envelope made up of cloth and mats is indigenous and quite ancient. L. Degrandpre's Voyage a la Cote Occidentale d'Afrique Fait dans les Annees 1786 et 1787 includes two remarkable engravings escort.

16) which suggest

how compli

(figs.

15 and

cated

the custom of honoring the departure

of important persons with offerings of cloth had become by the late eighteenth century. Degrandpre illustrates "the mourning of the

Fig. 15. The mourning of ihe Ma-Kayi of Cabinda. c. 1787.

Fig. 16. Burial procession for the Ma-Kayi of Cabinda. c. 1787

Ma-Fuka, Andris Poucouta, Ma-Kayi." MaKay i is a chiefly rank; the Ma-Fuka title iden tified Poucouta as a member of a king's inner most entourage, a kind of "minister of com merce," also charged with maintaining order in the markets. This important figure lies in state on a textile-decorated bier, under a spe cial porch situated in the middle of a large and spacious luumbu (fig. 15). The cloths which decorate the platform upon which the dead man rests are brightly embellished, some striped, others checked. A pair of long, nar row ndungu drums provide percussion for the mourners, who dance in a broken counter clockwise circle. They are bare-chested and dressed in wrappers composed of trade cloths. Some trail lengths of cloth attached to their waists, allowing these trains to drag along the earth.

What happened to this proud display of cloth for the Ma-Fuka is suggested in another engraving (fig. 16). This shows a procession of followers, carrying an enormous bundle, richly

finished

with

even-striped,

striped-and-

banded, tattersall, and other plaidlike printed cloths, all sewn together to make a gleaming envelope for the dead person. Degrandpre elaborates: A famous person died during my sojourn in Kongo. His name was Andris Poucouta; he had been mafouc. and then macaye in Cabinda. I was curious to see him buried. The accompanying engraving will give a precise idea of these funereal customs. The mass that represented him was at least twenty feet long, fourteen high, and eight thick: it was surmounted by a small head, meant to designate that of the dead person. It had taken them a year to |smoke-dry and| wrap the corpse and to mourn him

....

carry the cloth bundle to the grave

...

European carpenters constructed a kind of carriage ... to in his tomb

they mired two magnificent elephant tusks. On

54

the part of the tusk not inserted in the earth the carpenter of my ship engraved, very deeply, these words: Mafouc, Andris Poucouta, Macave. This no monument is still to be seen today.

An inner core, rendered in the ancient style of covering with mats and raffia cloths, was thus finished on the outside with splendid edge-sewn strips of linen, cotton prints, sheets, and silk goods.

Among the lords of Teke country, north east of Kongo, chiefly control over imported

The son of the deceased

takes responsibil

ity for the building of the memorial structure and for the commissioning of the muzidi or

kiimbi image. When the structure has been prepared (and finished in brick with sheetmetal roof, in more affluent instances), the old grave is opened. The bones of the elder are disinterred. Then these precious relics are wrapped carefully in a parcel and inserted within the prepared muz/di-mannequin.1 The mannequin itself is made of a cane

notables of the land were wrapped in raffia textiles and indigenous mats, plus "up to five" bankami, locally famous red blankets, signs

often stuffed with dry banana leaves and sheathed with red or blue cotton cloth. The soba nlele technique, which refers to the sewing together of different cloths, as in the bundle enclosing the remains of Andris Pou couta in the late eighteenth century, contin ues in the making of some of the more elegant

of leadership and authority." The Teke funeral bundle of a chief took an abstract shape of impressive mass, similar to the transported bundle of Andris Poucouta of Cabinda. In the case of a Teke king, the bundle might use up hundreds of pieces of trade cloth.100 The Bembe live on the Mouyondzi pla teau and many of their clans are settled in that region of what is now the Republic of Brazzaville. Bembe honor their dead with cloth

muz/d/-mannequins, such as the magnificent specimen accessioned by the Musee de L'Homme in 1930 (fig. 17). Others are more simplified, and are essentially covered in a single kind of cloth. The dignity and importance of these images is established through their attitudes and ges tures. Kongo chiefs often rest within their graves in sitting or even standing positions, whereas ordinary persons repose horizon-

mannequins which they make to enshrine the relics of their ancestors. This custom includes architectural and jurisprudential expressions. Bembe bury their notables under an impro vised structure made of poles and thatched grass. Thereafter, however, should the village suddenly experience bad luck , it is sometimes said that the dead person demands a more fitting site, a permanent structure. In such cases it is also said that the dead man wants

ally.103 The placing of important persons

European red cotton goods was similarly reflected in funereal display and pomp. In this important civilization, as in Cabinda, the

his remains exhumed,

to be specially

enshrined

within a muzidi cloth mannequin. The Bembe also refer to these textile images as kiimbi, a word which in Ki-Kongo variously means hawk, ,01 coffin, and corpse.

armature,

in

enthroned attitude within their tombs explains, in part, the strict senguka or sendama seated positions of these mannequins, often disposed with the legs stiffly positioned parallel m The to and before the body (figs. 18, 20). bones of the elder once traced the outline of a person seated within the earth, so it is only the

logical that they should recrystallize within the same position in the making of the muz/d/-mannequin. Sendama,[0S moreover, liter ally refers to sitting in pure repose, without moving, which nicely augments the feeling that one has come before the dead, when contemplating muzidi images.

These well-anchored seated positions sug of great and noble persons, in this case elders revered and honored as moral arbiters or judges. Bakongo listen very carefully to the last words of a dying lord, lest gest the presence

from his grave he strike down his survivors, punishing them for thoughtlessness or disre spect. Sometimes old men make full use of the belief that they are about to be transformed

into larger, more awesome beings in the other world. They sometimes direct or shape this belief for the sake of sharpening social con among the members of their com munity. Thus, a dying elder may command his fol lowers to protect his children, who are about to be orphaned: "Look after my children well and do not treat them just anyhow. If you do not do this. I shall fetch you and you will not 106 Thus, he become old here on this earth."

sciousness

begins a role of conscious moral surveillance and intimidation, a role which he will play forever after, below the Kalunga line. The function of some muz/d/-mannequins, as judges in a mambu, marvelously extends the belief that departed elders continue

to shape

behavior by an unseen hand: In almost every courtyard in the villages near district, there is a grave

Kolo in the Mouyondzi

house, generally of better quality than the house in which the survivors live. . . . The muzidi may be taken out now and then, if there is a difficult matter to settle. When the survivors want to have a decisive answer concerning future events or are concerned about how they should act in a difficult situation they bring the muzidi out, pose the question in such a way that "yes" or "no" is the only possible answer and then balance the muzidi and observe whether he seems to answer "yes." by nodding, or "no," by dipping over.

The symbolism is direct: to nod, in approba tion, means yes. To fall over, breaking equi-

& Fig. 17. Bembe cloth mannequin (muzidi}. Stephan Chauvet Collection.

Musee de l'Homme.

Paris. 55

56

wisdom. The nkasunga cicatrix is represented as a chalked line from brow to nose (fig. 18, detail). In real life nkasunga is made to prove the courage of a man, his ability to master pain, to receive unflinchingly the needle of expert while he pricks him with the painful acid of the oil of the nkasunga nut. The wearing of this mark upon the brow, the cicatrization

conceptually the seat of the soul or the "mid dle of a man," measures his resistance and vitality at a most visible point. It makes a reassuring counterpoint to the gravity of his ' Related marks of cour measuring gesture. age are found to this day on the noses and foreheads of illustrious living chiefs, as in the case of Makanzu Kinkela of Kidiaki, among the Mboma clans above the port of Boma (fig. 19). Finally, this compact little figure is cov ered in cotton, dyed deep blue. This fits infor mation collected by Bertil Soderberg to the effect that blue cloth forms the traditional 111 wrapper of Bembe men. The second muzidi mannequin we will Fig. 18. Kolo region muzidi. detail, forehead and nose, showing nkasunga mark. Fig. 19. Portrait of Makanzu Kidiaki. summer 1980.

librium, means no. The seriousness of the role of the muzidi as final arbiters of certain mambu. is extended by frozen gestures of the hands. In some cases the hands are positioned before the body, forearms vertical, above sharply angulated elbows. This is a gesture full of argument and full of words, as demon strated by a muzidi image from the Kolo region on the Mouyondzi plateau in CongoBrazzaville (fig. 18). This is the teeza ges ture, a pattern of the hands used to mime the testing, weighing, or measuring of an object, an action well-suited to a judge in session. Teeza also refers to speaking prudently, and to the power to predict the future.""* Fu-Kiau says there is also a somber dimension to the

Kinkela,

chief of

teeza gesture — the measuring of a coffin or a

plot within a cemetery: "even if you were very powerful in the land, when you die you go into a small portion

of the land.""w In other words, teeza measures the minuteness of our ultimate point of residence, a thought which adds to the deliberate power of moral intimidation which elders cultivate for the good of the community. It is a way of saying look after people properly, or you will be measured in this final way. The seated lord from the Kolo region has traces of yellow ochre on his chest, symboliz ing a body from the other world, the earth of mpemba. His beard (nzevo) indicates his years, hence, by extension, powers of judgment and

Fig. 18. Bembe cloth mannequin (muzidi). Kolo region, north of Kingoyi. Terviiren Museum. 57

consider was made by Mahungu. an artist of the village of Malimi, according to informa tion collected in the field by P. Timmermans "2 in the summer of 1963. The senguka or stiff-legged seated posture is repeat ed, but the arms hang loosely by the sides (in

sendama

the accompanying photograph they were arbi

trarily placed over the legs of the figure by the photographer) (fig. 20). The spectral quality of facelessness which defines this image, relieved only by the merest semblance of a beard, and the long thin arms and legs, as if reflecting a state of emaciation, are particu larly affective. It is as if a wrapped corpse, direct from its grave, had arrived to view or comment on a mambu. In sum. muzidi medi ate qualities of eternal wisdom (represented by the beard), and repose (the seated posi tion), and further qualities (communicated by gestures of the arms, or facial decoration). Tokens of the eternal wisdom of the dead, they can be miniaturized considerably. The specimens decorated in plain blue cotton,

which we have just seen, lack the mediatory signs which decorate the chest of the niombo

muzidi red cloth figurines, which we will examine below. Unlike the cloth mannequins of the Bembe. a niombo is a massive "mummy" meant to be displayed, wept over by descendants, and then and

perambulated on in glory to its grave. Only the powerful and most famous chiefs among the Bwende clans about Kingoyi were trans formed into niombo when they died. These towering, massive, gigantic presences (fig. 21). larger than life, loom over the persons escorting them to their final resting place. In principle, these striking forms, wrapped in crimson blan ket cloth, should be keyed to the introduction

of red blankets from English and other trad ers of the nineteenth century. They recall the

mummy bundles of the kings of the Tio, made with as manv as five bankami. or red blan-

Fig. 20. Bembe muzidi. attributed to Mahungu of Malimi village. Terviiren Museum. 58

Fig. 21. Model of a niombo. by Makoza. Goteborg Museum

59

Fig. 22. Makoza of Kingoyi with two of his miniature niombo.

kets. specifically associated

with chieftancy

and power.

In this century one of the masters of the niombo tradition was Makoza of Kingoyi. Makoza is a nickname which humorously refers to the great niombo maker as the "darling" of his village." Apparently he flourished dur ing the first three decades of this century at Kingoyi. A photograph taken by the Swedish missionary, Karlman ( fig. 22). shows the artist with two of his miniature niombo, both em blazoned with ideographs upon their chests.

60

The niombo at right, upon which the artist rests his right hand, was mentioned in a letter by Karlman dated 19 May 1934. It arrived at Terviiren in the summer of the same year. Many of his works were connected with an intensive period of n/owibo-making during the first two decades of this century. Although there were apparently other master niombo makers among the Bwende in the late nine teenth and early twentieth centuries, it is said that when the Swedish missionary Ohrneman visited

Kingoyi in 1926. Makoza was consid

ered to be the only man left in the region who

still knew how to make fine niombo. Sev eral works by his hand are illustrated in this book: a head collected in 1903 (fig. 23), a niombo made before 1931 (fig. 24). another made before 1934 (fig. 1). and two others (figs. 25 and 26).

When an important Bwende chief died Makoza might be summoned to his house after the mats and cloths had been collected in the dead man's honor, recalling the scene Degrandpre

documented

in the late eighteenth

century at Cabinda. There Makoza studied the body carefully, to see if his teeth were filed and whether he had distinguishing tat toos."^ Makoza kept his actual shrouding pro cess secret. But we know that the smoke-dried body was wrapped in raffia cloths: brightlycolored European blankets of cotton: red blan kets: decorative nkwala-mats. the designs of which, as we shall see. are said to have been

in Kongo in the first quarter of this century, specially

of Kongo art. There is in the niombo style of figuration, head and body, a confidence and clarity of line which bespeaks considerable stylistic history and tradition. The origins of the Kingoyi mode of niombo figuration are obscure. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable resemblance between this mode and the style of a figure rendered in brass, attributed to Bembe. once a famous center for the making of artistic objects in Kongo, located south of Mbanza Kongo and east of Ambrizete in what is now the Republic of The latter figure forms Angola (fig. 27). part of a finial for the scepter of a chief. The whole of the finial is rendered in brass: within a frame, mounted upon a pedestal, appears

"cited" sometimes by the makers of maboondo or terra-cotta stelae for the dead "in hun dreds of layers until a colossal bundle swells out. hiding the remains of the deceased in its midst."1

16

The artist then constructed a reinforcing frame of canework. He built the arms, trunk, and legs of the outer image in cane work . over the mummified, heavily wrapped body at the core. The outermost covering was finished in cloth cut from red blankets. Striped strips of blanket cloth were used inventively, in some instances, to enliven the vertically of the figure's

It shows the same round head, round ears, spoollike neck, relatively long trunk, and short legs which characterize, roughly speaking, the niombo style range (cf. the figure.1"1

figs. 26 and 27).

legs (fig. 26).

It is not being suggested that Makoza's style

Size and bulk are the amazing characteris tics of the larger niombo. Advard

Karlman

burial at Kimbenza in 1925 where the image stood three meters high and comprised one hundred and fourteen pieces of cotton cloth, together with masses of raffia mats. Alden, another Swedish missionary,

was inherited directly from Bembe. But the

saw a niombo

reported

Fig. 23. Head (zizi) of a niombo image, attributed to Makoza. collected 1903. Private collection.

in a niombo figure.11'

But whether the bundle was enormous, the distinguishing element was the head tzizi), recalling the fact that the abstract column of cloth, in which Poucouta of Cabinda was wheeled to his grave, was specially

embellished

emblem. Not that the

head was a "portrait"; it was a generic image,

with details of cicatrization or filed teeth redressing the balance in the direction of closer resemblance to the actual departed person. An important man might actually commis-

correspondence does suggest that the niombo cloth figures, however different in medium and apparently in efflorescence, stem from ancient formal solutions in the history of Kongo art.

that some 200 blankets were absorbed

with a carved head

praised niombo heads as masterworks

in the realm

sion the head to his niombo before his ]W In Kongo there were displays of death. faience and glassware in an area of the royal enclosure. These specially prized objects, like a head or figure in stone or other media, were intended to be used later to embellish the surface of the royal grave.

Makoza of Kingoyi made such a head, an early work (fig. 23). A Swedish missionary collected this work at Kingoyi in 1903 and it is now part of a private collection in Europe."'' Manker. another Swedish missionary stationed

The niombo head of 1903 (fig. 23). sewn from red blankets and stuffed with soft grass and cotton, bears symbolic markings (bidimbul concerned with communication of ideally embodied powers and responsibilities. Thus the signs of tears (mansanga), indicated by two vertical lines drawn in black beneath each eye, are intended to communicate a kind of prayer: "go with our tears, wet upon your face, and represent our problems among the dead: be our medium." By similar interpre tation, the open mouth, with the lips rendered in relief, symbolizes the leader speaking to

61

"the funeral is over and now he is talking in the other world. All niombo should have open mouths. This means: there is speech in the other world." The arbitrary lozenge formation of the eyes, sharply angled and flashing white, yields a message which dove tails with the rest: "the four corners of the niombo eyes tell the people that the person in the niombo has completed the four corners of And, finally, the strong shap his existence." the dead:

ing of the neck (nsingu ya ngolo, strength")

"a neck of of the power commemorated by the

is a striking expression

of the personality cloth-swathed image. If the open mouth of the niombo brings parlance into the other world, and tears code messages of shared concern, the towering ges ture of the niombo. right hand up, left hand down, is similarly significant. It maps the boundary to be crossed; it identifies the cord connecting life to death; it is "the crossroads pose."

This gesture is probably ancient. It appears on old swords of authority imbele a lulendo). which are one of the more famous aspects of the regalia of Kongo rulers (fig. 28). We illus trate an example which Wannyn dates to the 1500s.1 The pommel (simbulu) recalls a human head with staring eyes, surmounted by a miniature royal cap. A long neck leads to the blade proper. The hand guard (nkaku), in a powerful S-curve. suggests the gesture

with

one hand up, one hand down, of the niombo.

In this case a "crossroads pose" embodies terrifying connotations. Mbele a lulendo sym bolize the power of the king to kill convicted murderers or other felons. The sword chal lenges all evil at the boundary of life and death.

More symbolism clusters about this rich, communicative sword. With its upward ges ture the weapon "hails the law" tyamba mambu). With the downward gesture it "cools Fig. 24. Miniature

h2

niombo, collected in Dondo country. Terviiren

Museum.

the community" (lembika kanda). In other words, to "kill a criminal gives back to the community the peace the criminal destroyed — in that sense it cools." Hailing the law with one hand and completing ("cooling") it with the other recalls aspects of chiefly protocol still to be observed: when a chief is discuss ing issues with his sword of state, he holds the mbele upward. Then, when he is finished talking, certain that what he has said has been understood, 127 peace.

he lowers the weapon— this means

The complex of meanings surrounding the on the sword establishes its impor tance in Kongo symbolism. It is a sign which apparently appears among the Lovo signs,

gesture

where there is a square-sided

emblem

bisected

by a vertical line which itself is crossed by a

kind of horizontal S-curve. This painted em blem recalls to some the hunters' cruciform charm (nkangi kiditu); to others it seems a sign of two worlds (a pa — design — with the Kalunga line). Both interpretations fit a cross roads reading of this sign.128 DIMBU AT LOVOI177)

The niombo gesture (fig. 26), also marks a person's transition from this world to the next.

On behalf of his community, niombo hails the heavens and the horizon line: When you die you automatically become an ances tor. But not everyone is made into a niombo. Being buried in a niombo figure means the community believes this person will become our medium. Here | fig. 21 | with her gesture, the woman is saying to our ancestors. "I am their mediator. 1 move be tween worlds." With her right hand up she invokes Fig. 25. Miniature

niombo. attributed to Makoza.

1mNZ.

63

God and the sky. With her left hand down she in vokes the line of the horizon (koko kumosi ku zulu ye kwankaka ku lukongo Iwantoto). In other words, she indicates the door fmweelo viiu) be tween the living world and the dead.129

The uplifted hand carries further symbol ism. It not only hails the law fyamba mambu). in the manner of the figurated handguard , but it also symbolizes blocking witches ikakidila

m kindoki). Speaking of the mammoth niombo of a woman, now in the Goteborg Museum (fig. 21 ). Fu-Kiau said: "She is going to Mpemba. where she is going to seek the law. separating truth from falsehood, and. at the same time, the advance of witchcraft against the living members of the community. This is the 131 message of her right hand." «The crossroads gesture cosmologizes the niombo image. Moreover, the length of the niombo body, head to feet, often is equal to stop

the length of the arms. This inscribes a cross, a hidden sign of the four moments of the sun. within the anatomic coordinates of the fig ure.

Enormous reserves of power lie incar Hence, it is said that

nate within this sign.

"not everyone in Kongo has the right to place the hands this way." Red, the sign of media tion in Kongo color symbolism, is the normal color of such niombo. This makes a perfect final deepening of a vision of two worlds. The signs which decorate the heart and of niombo communicate the faith of the community that, through good works, this great leader, like a simbi. has earned the chest

power to return and shall rise again. For example, a miniature niombo collected in Dondo country between

Kingoyi

in what

Mouyondzi

and

is now Congo-Brazzaville,

and made before September 1931 (fig. 24),132 apparently

Fig. 26. Miniature

64

niombo with spiral of return, and other Kongo signs. Terviiren

commemorates

a brave male leader

who wore the nkasunga cicatrix across his brow and nose. But the main area of commu nication is the front portion of his trunk. There Museum.

Fig. 29. Detail, back of figurated Bembe nkisifigurine. Terviiren Museum.

Fig. 27. Detail of brass finial for a scepter. Terviiren Museum.

we find zig-zags

cates the "curve of the upper world" [vunda

flanking a vertical piece of

trade cloth. The zig-zags have been interpreted

dia nza a bamoyo, the arc of the universe of

consistently as representing the python motif (mboma ndongo). Pythons, in turn, refer to longevity and serious matters of life and death. (The same motif appears at precisely the mid dle of the back of a carved figurated nkisi in wood collected among the Bembe of CongoBrazzaville and now in the Terviiren Muse um) (fig. 29). The bottom of the python touches a lozenge which indicates the navel, center of the lower world, in Kongo symbolism. Across

the living). And this curve is sectioned

by divid

which have been interpreted in this way: the man arrived, progressed from Two level to level within his life, then died.1 ing lines (nkabulu)

Fig. 28. Kongo sword of authority (mbele a lulendo). Terviiren Museum.

further ideographs remain to be considered. One takes the form of a concentric rectangle enclosing four horizontal lines: the other is a crosshatched diamond recalling, it is said. nkwala mat design. In sum. the zig-zags sug gest the python which, in turn, seemingly con the world of the living (the

the heart of the figure, at the top end of the

nects

python, appears a domical motif which indi-

death and darkness (the navel).

heart)

to

65

Fig. 30. Detail of signs. La Rochelle muzidi.

Commander Briaud. a French colonial offi cer, collected a lively muzidi-mannequ'm (fig. 30) in the field, in Bembe country, in the bend of the River Niari. In 1923 he gave this image to the Musees d'Histoire Naturelle et d'Ethnographie in La Rochelle, on the west coast of France.114 The sendalala position, sitting with out in front, is surmounted by the familiar crossroads gesture of the arms, thus surmounting niombo tradition over muzidi. There are many pressing spiritual questions daubed posed by the symbolic embellishments in black and white upon the body of this striking red figure. Tear marks, in this instance, relate to an nkisi (nkisi bamba). itself related, legs straight

by pun and concept, to the idea of mourning, as in the phrase "to adorn one's face with the

clay of mourning"

( bamba

fmdi).

Nkisi

Fig. 30. Bembe muzidi mannequin. Musees d"Histoire La Rochelle. France. Naturelle et dEihnographie. 66

bamba "cries for the life of a person," hence subocular markings here boldly identify the figure as connected with the work of a spe cialist who deals in mambu between the living and the dead.

There are extremely complicated aspects of Kongo ideography marked on the chest and belly of the figure, as well as symbolic rings of cloth or rattan on the arm and presti gious brass anklets on either leg, all of which inspired the following partial exegesis: The |strongly outlined| diamond and rectangle in the region of the heart represent two worlds, liv ing and dead. Both are empty. They do not have a dot, a sign of the sun (ntangu), the light of the spirit of this departed lord.

All the circles on his belly are open, symbolizing mambu menayeto mukanda, "we have problems within the community."

Death is a moment in

which it is easy to destroy a community. . . . Above the two broken circles or broken ellipses there is a semi-circle which represents a totally broken circle. This intensifies the feeling of danger and loss occasioned by the departure of the leader for the other world. The brass rings are nlunga, signs of leadership and performance. Cloth or rattan wrapped around the left arm of the figure are nsungwa. signs showing that the living are sending a message, with this figure, into the kingdom of the dead.136

The gist is that a very prestigious person, awarded nlunga for his talents and authority, has broken out of the circles of his world — has died— and, as an honored medium, has taken messages from our world to the next. Finally, his fine little beard (nzevo) is a wisdom sym

bol, "a wisdom which is ready to be passed on."137

One of Makoza's works (fig. 25) is found in collections of the Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire, Kinshasa. It is marked by the

a shield of chevroned cloth appliqued upon

the surface of the body from the navel to the

The dot in the middle of the lozengeindicated navel indicates "the sun," the flash of the departed person's spirit, "at work for the community below the earth."138 There are further motifs on the abdomen, left and heart.

right of the chevroned swath of cloth. These blocks of design were identified as nkwala mat designs, and further interpreted as "man standing up between two realms."139 It is known that nkwala mats are sometimes the first thing to be wrapped about the niombo corpse. After such mats have been properly secured, the artists stretch out the arms of the dead man's body, to form the characteristic gesture bridging worlds. Hence nkwala pat terning on the belly of the image may well intensify the idea of sending the person off properly, aesthetically armed and caparisoned. With two final niombo figures we witness an especially dense and fascinating field of signs. These endow the images with specific mediatory roles. For example, the people ask the first figure (fig. 26), by means of a spiral shell (kodya), traced about one nipple, that he send his knowledge back.140

The same between

thought is said another way,

the navel and the heart, by means of

the sign of the arrow (tooto). spine 141

(tooto). This richly nuanced medi atory symbol recalled, for one informant, the words of a powerful spiritual leader: "I will continue to send up to the community every thing I know, even things I was not able to tell 142 Via the arrow, spine, you when I was alive." and staff (tooto).

or staff, he will send these messages from the world below, the latter indicated by the nu cleated diamond about the navel. Concentric diamonds, centered by a small cross, at left, indicate the leader; the cross, wheeling back in human time, indicated by two generations, indicates the two concentric borders. Similarly, at right, multiple generations, indicated by

concentric squares, are united by the crisscrossing force of the departed leader's

several

mind.143

The grand mediatory impact of the niombo is pleasurably displayed by a particular mas

terpiece within the genre, a miniature col lected at Kingoyi and sent to Terviiren in the summer of 1934 by missionary Karlman (fig. 31). Kongo certainties of the immortality of the righteous illuminate this image with a display of signs and ideographs which reveal, isolate, and intensify the primordial themes. An nsungwa band on one arm carries mes sages into the other world. A kodya or mwekese about one nipple brings vital speech and insights

back from the other world. A bisected rec that the upper world, tangle (pa) communicates the top half of this sectioned area, is empty because

There

the chief is dead.

two richly elaborated signs, embroidered signs in strings, plus, at left, an appliqued strip of cloth bear ing rippling, almost electric zig-zag patterning. These squares remain to be deciphered. They flank the sign of the python (mboma ndongo). a series of nucleated triangles balanced on either side of an ascending axis, rising from the navel, and ending at the heart. Mboma are

squares displaying

ndongo is the symbol of longevity, "very long ways," "the bridging of enormous distances."

(44

In other words, however far away the spirit of the departed leader has gone, in the under world symbolized by the navel, he is immortal and will come back. The sign of the python leads us to a final emblem. It is a blazon, a square of paper pasted and embroidered

over the figure's heart.

The paper is crisscrossed emphatically, with string and ink, creating four sections, three of which bear the hemispherical rendering of a rising sun. This means the light of the lord will be visible, not only at his points of birth and death but even in the underworld, as an unbro-

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Fig. 31. Miniature

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niombo. cosmogram on heart. Terviiren

Museum, (see fig. ()

other realms. And yet, because this message is rising from another world into our own. it

full funereal context, including associated musi

of gesturing looming persons, were played in a hocketing mode, one or two notes to each performer, the pulsations merging in a pro pulsive interlock of sounds. The niombo pro cession had been readied.144 Women then assembled, some with chil dren on their backs. They bid the figure fare well, chanting praises, wailing, voicing stylized laments, and, in a few cases, stepping up to

cal instruments.

the figure and touching the chest affectionately

In the old days, if a paramount chief died in Yombe country, he had to be buried on the morning of the second day. During the night his followers danced, "so that the chief will

with the palm of the hand. After the women had shouted and wept and caressed the figure's arms and chest for a final time, a shot was fired and the funeral procession. often made upof several hundred

should be used someday, there should be some

here, to discover and decode it."146 In other words, it is a dream alphabet, to be read in ecstasy by seers yet to be determined. We come now to the final remarks on the niombo image. In this section we place it in

one

not be angered on his journey to the grave."147

In the morning they beat drums and perform "all kinds of antics," "so that the chief will not set off in wrath and sorrow to the woods and take others with him."148 Everything is intensified in the niombo cer emony. Here, when the burial day of a niombo chief was fixed, there was dancing in his vil lage, and even other villages, for nights in succession. However, on the day of interment, at a Fig. 31. Detail, cosmogram, upper quadrant filled with "messages from other realms."

white and black lines, again, are "generations," given unity by the crisscrossing lines "of the power of the ruler."145 The uppermost segment of this shield or ken guiding presence. Concentric

blazon (fig. 31, detail) represents the living world. It is written over by mysterious signs in ink, a never-never script, a form of visual glossolalia. It is a dream script which pro claims, like a modern Kongo prophet speak ing in tongues, "messages which we can't explain because they come to our world from

signal the dancing, which had continued for days, suddenly stopped. All persons who had sacrificed expensive blankets, nkwala mats, and cotton cloth towards the making of the collosus, were richly regaled for their gener osity with a large feast of meat and drink. After the feast, men lifted the niombo up onto a bier (fig. 32) composed of two or three long carrying poles, reinforced with crossbars. The feet of the enormous niombo figure were secured to the crossbars. If the cloth-swathed image was so massive that it could not negoti ate the doorway of the house in which it had been assembled , then a wall of that house was torn down to make way for the passage of the figure. A slit gong was struck, ngoma drums sounded. Strange flutes made of roots, and vertical life-sized

trumpets, carved in the shape

persons,

At

was under way.

their tasks. They carried the niombo to his final resting place. Their work is an exciting mixture of dance, athletic lifting and sharing of weight, argu ment, and joking. Portions of a rare film of a this point men resumed

niombo ceremony, documented at Kingoyi in the dry season of the summer of 1926, are reproduced here for the first time (figs. 33 150 and 33, detail). The frames (fig. 33) show the guiding of the niombo to his grave. The detail clearly illustrates members of the fam ily of the great, deceased lord marching beside him, carrying his niombo. There is a person at the left in a hat, pointing and directing this final segment of the action . perhaps a nephew of the deceased. It is easy to see the kodya sign marked around a nipple, begging the image to send up messages from the dead, and a divided pa. with cross, indicating a yowa kondwa ntangu. cosmos without the sun , an empty world . tast ing bitter, because of the absence of the lord. These signs imply the necessity of choosing someone to replace the person in the shrouded figure. This need has become acute. The leader makes certain that the niombo is placed prop erly in the burial hole (bulu ndiamu) so that

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