Subject: mercenary warrior

Culture: tribal Congolese = Azande, Mongo, Ngombe, others

Setting: Belgian Congo late 19th-early 20thc

Object: swords

Girafe / Mambeli

* Spring 1993 p87 f80

"Scimitars, mambeli, used by the Azande and, in similar forms, by the neighbouring Boa people of northeast Zaire. These weapons are said to have been developed to hook aside an opponent's shield to make way for a spear thrust. However, in order to do this a warrior would have to drop his own shield. Such speculation may therefore owe less to documented evidence than to the Western obsession with explaining form by function in the study of African weapons."

Kumu

Ngala

* Capwell 2009 p211

"These Ngala swords from Zaire, with their unique form of sickle-shaped blade, were sometimes used for a particularly gruesome form of execution. The victim was secured to the ground with his head tied to a supple tree bent over for the purpose. At the moment of decapitation the head was catapulted into the distance."

* Withers/Capwell 2010 p79

"Congolese Ngala knives appear in three main forms. The first is very long, double-edged and curved in a shallow, graceful arc. The second is shorter and wider, the blade often tear-shaped with one or two ridges. The third is almost a form of machete -- wide-bladed and long, decorated with ridges, profuse file-lines and cross-hatching. The leading edge is recurved and the trailing edge cut into a series of cuspings, the point forming a stout hook. These knives were often taken to be decapitation implements, but are more likely to have had ceremonial significance. Closely related to the Ngala knife is that of the neighbouring Ndjembo. This is of similar length but straight until it divides into two long points that curve inwards in a crescent shape."

* Geary/Xatart 2007 p173

"Certain types of weapons or implements have been in high demand -- be it for their extraordinary forms or their associated context .... In the case of sickle-shaped iron knives with wooden handles from the Ngala, in the north-central DRC, both motivations seem to merge. Fischer and Zirngibl call them 'beautiful and effective' and emphasize their use in executions, even presenting an Austrian artist's rendering of such a scene."

* Spring 1993 p