You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘faces’ tag.
9,000 year old Neolithic limestone mask found in the Judean desert
We are coming up to Halloween and, as always, we will have a special week of horrifying posts concerning a theme topic (like flaying, the undead, or the monstrous brood of Echidna). Before we get there, though, let’s take a peak back through time to look at some of the other faces that our forbears decided to put on in the ages before “Joker” or “It”. The greatest masks are astonishing sculptures, but they were more, too–masks lay at the crux of ancient cults and ancient drama. We will never truly know what the makers of that first mask up there were doing with it 9000 years ago (human sacrifice?), nor will we know what the Etruscans wanted with their Charun-like mask (human sacrifice?). We truly can’t know what the mysterious Moche wanted with their mostrous mask (human sacrifice?), and sadly, I couldn’t find out about the Bornean & Congolese masks. Yet on a deeper level we do know: our hearts tell us what each of these masks is about as surely as we can read a line of emoticons on a phone or know to jump away from a striking cobra. Some things are instinctual even for humans. Although I am sure an ethnologist would chide me, it is hard not to look through the empty eyes of masks, both sacred and profane, and see the familiar dark places always within the human heart.
Borneo Mask Indai-Guru Mask Borneo, Iban Dayak
Kumu Mask: Congo/Central Africa
Etruscan mask in Archeology Museum in Cagliari.
Moche Mask, Peru, 6th-7th century AD, Silvered copper, shell
Mastiff Bat Vessel (Moche, 50-200 AD North Coast, Peru, Earthenware)
Longtime readers will remember that Ferrebeekeeper has a great fondness for the magnificent art and pottery of the Moche, a civilization noted for sophisticated agriculture, ultra-violence, and, um, magnificent art and pottery. The Moche lived in the rich coastal lands of what is now northern Peru. In the past we have written about their art of sea monsters and human sacrifice, and of waterfowl. Today we look at Moche bat-themed art.
Crescent-Shaped Ornament with Bat, C.E. 1 – 300 (from the Brooklyn Museum)
Double lobed whistling bat sculpture (Ca. 450 – 800 A.D.) the bat makes a chirping/whistling noise when water is poured out and air is blown in
Gold Bat Ornament (Moche)
Bats were beloved subjects of much pre-Colombian art (I owe everyone a post about the bat in Aztec art and myth). Although they were great artists, the Moche were scary people who were always sacrificing and garroting and flaying (more about that next week) and excarnating and hanging corpses everywhere. Yeesh… Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bats of Moche art are scary creatures with grimacing monster teeth and near-human expressions of malice and grief.
Early Intermediate (Moche IV), Mochica Molded stirrup-spout vessel, A.D. 500–700 Ceramic with red and white slip North coast, Peru
Moche IV ceramic stirrup spout bat form effigy vessel
Sadly we don’t know precisely what place the bat held in Moche mythology. In fact we don’t know anything about Moche mythology except what we can intuit visually. However there are lots of bats to visually interpret and it seems like a safe bet that they had a chthonic underworld meaning (as they do in Western art and culture). These bats are demons and monsters born of the dark night-side of the human spirit.
Moche Vessel (Early Intermediate period) Bat demon
Probably Moche (?) AD 200-500
All of these grimacing fanged bats with bared claws and anguished eyes make me think of the Moche people themselves—caught up in their centuries-long game of bloody worship and savage status. I wish I could help them, or even understand them, but they are gone. All we have are their skeletons and their beautiful dark art.
Moche – Pair of Gilt Bat Appliques. Loma Negra, Peru.
Gold Nasal Ornament with bat (Moche)
Oba Adémuwagun Adésida II ( photo taken in 1959)
Hey! Have you in any way been affiliated with or interacted with the internet in the last two decades? If so, you have probably received a heartfelt plea for assistance from a deposed/dispossessed/dispirited Nigerian prince. This famous email scam requested a small amount of money upfront in exchange for a big chunk of the royal treasury once the hapless royal heir ascended to his (grammatically shaky) throne. Since Nigeria is a federated republic (and since this was, to reiterate, a scam), nobody ever received the royal payola. However there is a kernel of historical truth within the confidence trick: Nigeria was once an assortment of kingdoms, emirates, and tribal lands which was annealed together by the British. Each of these principalities (or state-like entities) had a ruler, and, although they were stripped of legal power during the colonial era, the various eclectic potentates have held onto ceremonial, spiritual, and cultural authority.
Yoruba Ade
All of which is to say, there are no Nigerian princes, but there are prince-like beings, each of whom has a different set of royal regalia. These “crown jewels” take the form of thrones, statues, “magical” items, and royal outfits…including sacred headdresses. The Yoruba people (who constitute the majority of Nigeria’s ever-increasing population) vested particular authority in ceremonial “crowns” known as ades. An ade is a conical beaded cap usually decorated with beads and faces. The kings of the Yoruba people styled themselves as “obas” (an oba being a sort of combination of king, high priest, and chief). The symbol of the oba’s authority was his ade—his crown (or for a high obas–the “adenla” which means “great crown”).
Beaded Crown “Ade”
(ca. 20th Century; Glass beads, cloth, thread, and basketry)
Obas were the powerful rulers of the Yoruba and their ades were the ceremonial font of their authority. This power was connected to the numinous world of spirits, gods, and orishas (which this blog has glanced upon in talking about voodoo—the syncretic new world religion based on Yoruba spiritual concepts). To quote the British Museum’s culturally suspect (but nicely written) website:
Beaded and veiled crowns…are traditionally worn by those kings who could trace their ancestry to Ododua, the mythic founder and first king of the Yoruba people. The crown is called an orisha, a deity, and is placed upon the king’s head by his female attendant. Powerful medicines are placed at the top of the crown to protect the king’s head and thus his future. The veil that covers the king’s face hides his individuality and increases attention on the crown itself, the real centre of power. The birds decorating the crown represent the royal bird, okin.
Originally ades had long beaded veils to conceal the faces of their wearers, but European ideas about royal headwear influenced the makers, and many more recent examples of the craft resemble European crowns. The beautiful beadwork and impressive otherworldly artistry of ades has made them popular—so some of these examples may be constructed for the tourist trade. Nevertheless, the Yoruba ade is a very impressive sort of crown. Here is a little gallery of online images of ades.
Yoruba Ade Oba (by ÌMÒ DÁRA)
Yoruba Beaded Ade (Oba’s Crown) from Southwest Nigeria (Barakat Gallery)
Ade Olójúmérìndilógún, (with 16 faces) from Formação da Cultura Yoruba
Chief’s hat from the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria (ca. 1940)
ferrebeekeeper 