The Ausction house Sotherby's will auction off a substantial private collection of African art in Paris on November 30th 2010, There is a lot to learn from this auction.
http://www.sothebys.com/liveauctions/A_New_York_Collection.pdf
This piece really intrigued me because of the two drinking receptacles on their underside, and the oddness of the hair and the squareness of the face compared to other Luba works. The squareness of the jaw reminds me more of the work of the Dagon people.
Magnificent Royal cup, Kalundwe peoples, western Luba, Democratic Republic of the Congo
(History: The Luba empire, which at one time stretched from the west all the way to Lake Tanganyika, was at its most powerful from around 1500 to the 1870's, when expansion reached east to lake's edge. The decline of Luba power began soon afterwards, and can be traced to Arab slave raiders and European colonialists, who did not recognize the power of Luba laws and rituals, and alas, also possessed rifles and horses. Though no longer politically powerful, Luba influences are still felt today throughout much of the DRC.)
Royal cups shaped like human heads with twin drinking receptacles on their underside are among the rarest of
Luba and Luba-related insignia. There are only a few such objects, and each is singular in its aesthetic elaboration.
Most cups of this type have emanated from Kanyok people and perhaps related groups to the west of the Luba heartland. This cup has been attributed to a workshop in the Kalundwe region (Felix 1987: 48-49; Neyt 1993: 212), not far from the Luba heartland, as evidenced by certain formal attributes. It also bears a close resemblance to a cup in the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde, (now called The Ethnological Museum) purchased by the museum from Hermann Haberer in 1925.
The Berlin and this cup are similar: Each possesses a dramatic coiffure with elegantly striated, voluptuous
chignons, cowry-shell shaped eyes, and the tongue slightly protruding from the mouth. This cup does not have the metal pins that adorn the Berlin cup, which are used to "fasten the spirit" (Roberts and Roberts 1996: 68; 2007: 32).
However, this example does have a hole carved into the top of the coiffure which may have been used for the
insertion of powerful medicinal substances to activate the sculpted head and to render it efficacious.
Luba cups of this sort were documented by the late Albert Maesen, former Head of the Ethnography Section at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, who conducted research and a collecting mission in southern Belgian Congo in the 1950s. Maesen reports that among the Kanyok, royal drinking vessels were the only objects he was not permitted to see in a storeroom in which the ruler's emblems were guarded, including thrones and scepters. He was allowed to view the rectangular box in which the cups were kept, but he was informed that they were only used during a ruler's investiture and for other sacred occasions (A. Maesen, personal communication, 1987).
Maesen found that royal cups called musenge were also used in a ceremony to honor paternal ancestral spirits, when a titleholder made an offering of cooked cassava (also called yuca or manioc- Kalundwe is mad up of the word manioc, lulundu, plus the diminitive ka; the Bena Kalundwe are the "people of Manioc") while the ruler communed with his ancestors. The chief counselor named Shinga Hemb drank palm wine from one side of the cup and then passed it to the participants who drank from the other side. Similar acts were performed after divination or at the rising of a new moon (A. Maesen, personal communication, 1982).
The secrecy associated with these royal cups and their limited number suggests another possible association: Early colonial sources and oral traditions point to the importance of the skull of the previous ruler to the investiture of his successor. The skull was the vehicle through which the new ruler obtained power, blessing, and wisdom from his predecessor and validated his own link in the chain of political and moral authority. Quiet contemplation with the skull was essential to investiture, and some writers assert that the king consumed human blood from the cranium, to effect his transformation from an ordinary human being to a semi-divine ruler (Verbeke 1937: 59; Van Avermaet and Mbuya 1954: 709-711; Theuws 1962:216). Indeed, the Luba word for royalty, bulopwe," refers to "the status of the blood" (Roberts and Roberts 2007:32). It has been asserted that carved wooden cups might have replaced and symbolized the use of skulls in important rituals (Huguette Van Geluwe, personal communication, 1982). Such an assertion remains a hypothetical explanation for the existence of these beautifully carved and carefully concealed cups.
The gender of this strikingly sculpted head cannot be ascertained with certainty. Its elaborate coiffure would
suggest a female hairdo judging from other Luba emblems, yet chiefs and kings were known to don women's
coiffures during their investitures, thus reinforcing the complexities that Luba ascribe to political authority. In many contexts of Luba and Luba-related culture, women serve as guardians of royal secrets and possess other remarkable prerogatives and powers. They have long held roles as diplomats, ambassadors, advisors, and counselors to their male counterparts, and are responsible for the spiritual underpinnings of power itself. Only a woman's body is considered to be strong enough to hold the spirit of a king, and a king was often referred to as a woman by Luba officials. Such deliberately ambiguous gendering of power allows the special attributes of men and women to coalesce in bulopwe, the realm of royalty that is not qualified by gender, as the word "kingship" is in English-speaking contexts.
This particular royal cup has another trait that associates it with womanhood: its visibly protruding tongue. A Luba woman named Ngoi Zaina explained that this artistic motif was the sign of a woman ready for courtship, marriage, and childbearing, and therefore suggested that a woman was in the prime of her life (Nooter 1991: 250). Luba sculptures usually represent female figures with attributes of Luba beauty, including dense scarification marks and elegant coiffures. A spirit is attracted to an emblem of royal power that bears these marks of beauty, just as men are to those of a woman. In effect, a Luba cup such as this one must have been a magnet for spiritual power, a receptacle of royal secrets, and a symbol of continuity for the dynastic line.
Mary Nooter Roberts, UCLA
