File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17541395863).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo18amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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FAMOUS IVORY TREASURES OF A NEGRO KING 551
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rC^Ea^iaiay^itni:^^fKIi^THt8!)'i>TT«liOjjnE(i3j^(5j.;,iIi?^ Pictograph of hunting and fishing. — One party has been succossful in tlie forest. The boar, sus- pended from a pole by loops cut and pulled up from its own hide, is borne by two men, wliile a third follows, carrying the hunting nets. The fishing party, too, has been fortunate, its success represented by the proverbially large fish. The second figure in the boat, a little boy, eagerly awaits an opportunity to spear a fish; the two other spearlike implements are oars. In the group of three at the right, the leader of the party (in the middle), on returning home, threatens his flirtatious wife with severe pun- ishment for her conduct with a warrior (extreme right). To appease his anger, she offers him in one Iiaiul a bowl of wine. ;iiul in the other, leaves to wipe his perspiring brow iiig across the fragments of the re- mains, were to carry such disaster to opponents as they themselves had ex- perienced. The great chief.s of the Spartan-like Azande, who conquered parts of Mang- betu territory, tried to imitate the won- ders of the court of the Mangbetu king, for they recognized the importance of favorably impressing the natives en- slaved by them. A few of the ivories in the American Museum collection show the work of Azande artists. Sasa especially decorated the horns with valu- able records of customs and beliefs from the native's point of view. Without any previous sketch, these pictographs, often direct from actual scenes, are scratched on the well-polished ivory horns with the sharp point of a knife. From time to time the artist rubs his thumb over a piece of charcoal and passes it across the engraved line caus- ing tlic picture to stand out clcni'lv in bhick. The only ancient ivory carvings found in Africa are those from Egypt, assigned by Petrie to about 7000 B.C. Although Assyrian and Phoenician ivories date to the ninth and seventh centuries b.c.,^ subjects from about 4000 B.C. indicate that even then ele- phant tusks must have formed a valu- able article of commercial intercourse. The first piece of carved ivory we came across in the Congo was at Ava- kubi. Dr. Rosati, the resident physi- cian and a great sportsman, showed us an interesting club, a smooth, nearly cylindrical piece of brown ivory about eighteen inches long. Natives, he told us, found it of service in breaking the bones of their victims—whose bodies were then soaked, to render them more 1 Ivorij and the Elephant, by Dr. George Fred- erick Kunz, pp. 8—13.

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