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OBJECT history 124 have is unknown. Two fl attened, curved horns resembling “rabbit ears” emerge from the top of the forehead. The horns are painted with transverse red and white bands. Two shafts of forged metal are planted like antennae behind the horns, and the signifi cance of this detail is also unknown. These horns are reminiscent of coiffure elements and are similar to the remarkable padded hairstyles with two large “horns” that nineteenth-century travelers observed Galwa women to have. Certain “horned” masks are known among the Tsogho of the Chaillu Mountains (who formerly inhabited the Middle Ngounié River area, not far from the area under discussion here), as well as among the Punu and the Lumbu of Southern Gabon. Thus this iconographic detail is not all that unusual within its regional context, especially when a long historical perspective is considered. Relavant to this, testing done on the wood suggests it has impressive age—indeed, the result makes the object one of the oldest masks known from sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Bonani of ETH Laboratory in Zurich, who is well known for his work of this kind, examined a wood sample from this mask in 2000. His fi nding was that it was around three centuries old—specifi cally 315 years +/- 45 BP (before present), in other words, that it has a calibrated age of from AD 1573 to 1662. Even if one takes into account the large margin of error inherent in this type of testing, this date is exceptional. Botanical testing reveals that the wood is of the Vitex genus, which is widespread in intertropical Africa and represented by the Vitex doniana, ciliata, and grandifolia species there. The vernacular name for it is the black plum tree, and the local name for it is evino in the language of the Myene of the lakes area, and evul in the Fang language (cf. Raponda-Walker and Sillans, Les plantes utiles du Gabon, 1961, p. 245). The pigments applied to it are a type of white clay called pemba (kaolin), a red ochre called mondo, and a black obtained from charcoal. There is no clue with regard to the signifi cance or symbolism of the forged metal “antennae” behind the horns; however, the use of iron in the ornamentation of Gabonese masks is extremely rare. As has been stated in the introduction, the object may derive from any number of peoples of the region, all of whom have been moving throughout the Lower Ogooué area for centuries, and its manufacture cannot really be assigned to any precise style of sculptural expression of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, whether Galwa, Fang, Eshira, Duma, Punu, Tsogho, Kande, or even Pygmy. AN UNCERTAIN ATTRIBUTION With its horns that are reminiscent of the animal sculptures of the peoples of eastern Gabon (fi g. 6), and especially of certain Kwele works with antelope horns that often encircle the mask, as well as of some of the “white” masks of the Punu-Lumbu (fi g. 5), the small mask that is the subject of our present discussion appears to be an atypical example. Preserved in a European private collection, it comes from the Lambaréné region, but cannot be identifi ed as “Galwa” based only on that. It is fairly rough in appearance with a vaguely oval face and a prominent nose that also marks the center of the forehead. It is pierced by two circular eyes and a rectangular mouth. The rounded frontal surface is colored with red-orange pigment, while the lower part of the face is coated with a whitish kaolin. Traces of black remain beneath the nose and the chin. The ears are rendered by two crescents carved in shallow relief near the temples, but they are curiously inverted with the openings facing backward. What signifi cance this may


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