- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Wooden object from a cave full of human bones (not a grave?).
- Long description
- Wooden object from a cave full of human bones (not a grave?). the wood is a light coloured wood and has been carved at one end with the shape of two rough crosses. The wood is weathered. [FC 04/11/2009]
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 10/01/1897
- Date collected
- 10 January 1897
- Acquisition information
- Donated: 1917
- Materials and processes
- Material Wood Plant, Process Carved
- Dimensions
- Width: max 42 mm, Length: max 250 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1917.53.670
- Research and responses
These three objects (1917.33.670, 1917.53.671, 1917.53.672) are referred to on page 978 of 'The Island of Socotra', by J. Theodore Bent [i.e. the collector], in The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review, no. 244 (June 1897), pp. 975-92: 'Near Ras Moni, to the east of the island, we discovered a curious form of ancient sepultre. Caves in the limestone rocks have been filled with human bones from which the flesh had previously decayed. These caves were then walled up and left as charnel-houses, after the fashion still observed in the Eastern Christian Church. Amongst the bones we found carved wooden objects which looked as it they had originally served as crosses to mark the tombs, in which the corpses had been permitted to decay prior to their removal to the charnel-house...'.Exactly the same text appears on page 356 of Southern Arabia, by Theodore Bent and Mrs Theodore Bent (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1900). [JC 29 9 2009, 15 10 2009]
These three objects (1917.33.670, 1917.53.671, 1917.53.672) are referred to on page 110 of 'Socotra', by P. Shinnie, in Antiquity, Vol. 34 (pp 134, June 1960), pp. 100-110. Shinnie writes: 'The only other pieces known to come from Socotra are: ... 2. Wooden objects found by Bent in a burial cave. He describes them, somewhat inaccurately as "having originally served as crosses" (Southern Arabia, p. 356). In fact, they look much more like wooden clubs. They are in the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford.' [JC 29 9 2009]
- Associated publications
- Illustrated on page 296 of Deserts of Vast Eternity: Southern Arabia and Persia, Volume 3 of The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent: Mabel Bent's Diaries of 1883-1898, from the Archive of the Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies, London - Published for the First Time, with Additional Material by Gerald Brisch (3rdguides series), Oxford: Archaeopress (2010). Illustration credit (page 428) reads: 'Page 296. Wooden cave-finds collected by the Bents on Socotra and acquired by the Pitt Rivers Museum. Oxford in 1917 (accession numbers 1917.53.670-2). Photograph (c) Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.' In her diary entry for Sunday 10 January 1897, Mabel Bent writes (see page 295): 'We climbed up to a cave, or rather series of caves blocked up by stone walls and full of bones, and carried off some bits of wood, but what they have been I know not.' In a related note (number 54 on page 330), the editor Gerald Brisch writes: 'The Bents have now travelled from the west to the far east of the island, about 100 km. "Caves in the limestone rocks have been filled with human bones from which the flesh had previously decayed. These caves were then walled up and left as charnel-houses, after the fashion still observed in the Eastern Christian Church. Amongst the bones we found carved wooden objects which looked as it they had originally served as crosses to mark the tombs..." (Bent 1897, 978 [see 'Research Notes' above]. Theodore gave (or sold) three of these wooden items (see page 296) to the anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917). Tylor was Oxford professor of anthropology, and keeper of the university museum. His wife Anna presented the Bent's Socotran artefacts to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford in 1917 (1971.53.670-2). Recent excavations at the nearby Hoq cave have revealed votive remains thought to date from the 3rd century AD. (Soqotra Karst Project, http://www.friendsofsoqotra.org/index.htm).' [JC 27 8 2010]
Search terms: Death, Religion, Unidentified Object, Grave Good