Estimate
€ 300 - 400
Sold
€ 832
The price includes buyer's premium
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Information
cm 62
Curved wooden handle with flat blade end. Signs of use. Period patina.
According to Dogon tradition these curved sticks were planted in cultivated fields in order to protect the crop from thieves.
According to accounts that French anthropologist Marcel Griaule obtained from Old Ogotemeli during his sojourn in Mali in the 1930s - from whom he had the important revelations about complex Dogon mythology - these black wooden sticks were planted in a conspicuous place in the cultivated fields. The thief of other people's objects would sooner or later be struck by lightning. This is in accordance with the tradition of folk belief that tells how fire on earth was caused by the theft of a Nommo (The Dogon Olympian Blacksmith) who, with a curved stick, would steal it in Heaven, bringing it to men on Earth. From its mouth would spring fire.
The black patina on the staff reminds thieves how the flame can turn them into black skeletons.
Curved wooden handle with flat blade end. Signs of use. Period patina.
According to Dogon tradition these curved sticks were planted in cultivated fields in order to protect the crop from thieves.
According to accounts that French anthropologist Marcel Griaule obtained from Old Ogotemeli during his sojourn in Mali in the 1930s - from whom he had the important revelations about complex Dogon mythology - these black wooden sticks were planted in a conspicuous place in the cultivated fields. The thief of other people's objects would sooner or later be struck by lightning. This is in accordance with the tradition of folk belief that tells how fire on earth was caused by the theft of a Nommo (The Dogon Olympian Blacksmith) who, with a curved stick, would steal it in Heaven, bringing it to men on Earth. From its mouth would spring fire.
The black patina on the staff reminds thieves how the flame can turn them into black skeletons.
Literature
KONATE’ MOUSSA & LE BRIS MICHEL “Les mondes Dogon” Abbaye de Daoulas, France 2002, pagg. 53, 54 (885) cfr.;
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