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Foot for setting up elephant tooth ? "turban-like"

This metal object is probably a holder with which elephant tusks could be placed vertically on the ancestral altars - in the royal palace and, at the latest since the middle of the 17th century, also in rich bourgeois houses. His description as "turban-like" is not necessarily in contradiction with it, because the elephant tusks stood by the way also above in the memorial heads of the ancestors, whose hairstyle or headgear functioned consequently likewise as such a mounting. The vertical position of the tusks made possible by such holders refers to their symbolic meaning as a world axis, i.e. as a connection from the world on this side to the world of the ancestors and gods on the other side. The emphasis on this vertical axis is a central stylistic feature of the formal language in the art of the Kingdom of Benin. Text: Dietmar Neitzke.

Data Provider
Linden-Museum Stuttgart Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde
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Cataloguing data

Cultural attribution
Edo
Object type
Halterung
Dimensions
Durchmesser: 21.5 cm, Höhe: 20.7 cm
Material/Technique
Copper alloy
Lost wax process, scribed
Current location
Linden-Museum Stuttgart
Inventory number
005395

Provenance and sources

where
Nigeria

when
1899
Provenance
In October 1898, the Hamburg company "H. Bey & Co" offered the Berlin Ethnological Museum a Benin collection that came directly from Africa. However, due to a lack of funds, the entire collection could not be purchased and was therefore to be passed on to other interested parties. Felix von Luschan of the Berlin Museum therefore informed Karl Graf von Linden in November 1898, and offered him a right of first refusal. The Linden Museum then made 15,000 M available for the purchase of objects. The purchase price was paid by the Heilbronn entrepreneur Karl Knorr, which is why the collection became known as "Die Karl Knorr'sche Sammlung von Benin-Altertümern". Von Luschan published a detailed description of the collection under the same title (1901) on behalf of Count Linden and Knorr. Other buyers of the collection included the museums in Vienna and Munich, but also people such as Hans Meyer (Leipzig) and Eugen Rautenstrauch (Cologne). Text: Markus Himmelsbach.

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