Subject: chief

Culture: Mangbetu

Setting: Mangbetu kingdom, central Africa 18-19thc

Object: sape dagger

Museum of Fine Arts > Arts of Africa *

"Dagger Unidentified artist or workshop

Mangbetu peoples, Democratic Republic of the Congo

20th century Steel, wood, leather, fiber" ...

Dallas Museum of Art *

"Knife with head at end of handle Late 19th-early 20th century Wood and iron ...

The handle of this knife (sape) is carved in the form of a woman's head with the distinctive Mangbetu royal women's hairstyle.

Creating the hairstyle involved wrapping a woman's elongated forehead --

which had been reshaped in infancy -- with string and drawing her long hair around a basketry frame to create a halo effect.

"Both men and women used knives for various purposes. An ornament as well as an implement,

daggers were furnished with an elephant hide sheath and worn in the belt."

* Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology > Translating Encounters -- Travel and Transformation in the early 17th Century

"KNIFE WITH CARVED HANDLE ... Steel, wood Late 19th-early 20th century

African peoples from the Congo region represented themselves differently than the way they were depicted by Europeans.

The detail of the carved head conveys a sense of individuality with its hairstyle and expressive face.

Tattoos are suggested by the decorative incising and staining."