- Collection type
- Photograph
- Description
- A tuka or spirit shrine outside a hut with a child beyond, consisting of a split stick, the ends bound at the top and a straw hat on top, and ritual offerings below with magico-religious plants (ranga ambiri (against wild animals) and possibly also sarawa (food-medicine)) growing around the base. Such shrines are sites for medicines or ngua that are invoked to ensure ancestral (spirit) favour for the inhabitants of the homestead.
- Cultural groups
- Zande
- Date / Period
- Date of photograph: 1927 - 1930
- Acquisition information
- Donated: 1966
- Photographic process
- Print gelatin silver
- Dimensions
- Length x Width 104 x 78 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1998.341.141.2 Previous PRM number: EP.A.141a Previous other number: 92 1 (41) [frame 4]
- Research and responses
Ethnographic context - In The Azande (OUP, 1971) page 99, E. E. Evans-Pritchard notes that "the ordinary old Mbomu shrine is the tuka, a stake split at the top and with the split sections bound to form a recepticle for offerings."
In Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP 1937, page 441) he also states that 'Medicines which are domesticated are planted around the ghost-shrine, and when a new shrine is erected medicines are often buried at its base and ghosts and medicines are alike addressed to ensure the welfare of the inmates of the homestead. Likewise, when a shrine is erected in an eleusine cultivation medicines are placed around it, and both they and the ghosts are asked to protect the eleusine. The association is here close, but the power of the medicines is not attributable to the ghosts, for the power is in the medicines.'
In The Azande (London AIA, 1953 page 94) P. Baxter & A. Butt state that 'When a Zande establishes a new homestead he erects in the centre of it a shrine (tuka) to the spirit (atoro or atolo) of his father... [b]efore being set up, the stake is rubbed with ashes from the new homestead's first fire and soon after its erection a sacrifice made at it. A selection of first fruits and the liver of the first animal killed by the homestead head are usually placed in the basket, but otherwise offerings are not made regularly, except perhaps in times of dearth or adversity, or when disease is attributed to the anger of the spirits.' This account is based upon C.R. Legae's article "Les procedés d'augere et de divination chez les Azande" (Congo, 1921, I) and so may or may not relate to practices related to the tuka shrine among the Azande of the Sudan.
- Associated publications
- Contemporary Publication - Reproduced as Plate XXIIIb (facing page 358) in Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP 1937), with the caption "A ghost-shrine with medicines growing at its foot"
Search terms: Religion, Dwelling, Ritual and Ceremonial, Landscape/View
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