- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Annular ivory arm ornament, with oval plan view [RTS 1/6/2004].
- Long description
- Annular arm ornament carved from a single piece of ivory, irregularly oval in plan view. The inside face is largely flat, with sharp edges at top and bottom, and a slightly convex outer face that varies in width from 21 to 24.5 mm. The outer surface has been polished. The armlet is complete and intact, although the inside face has a series of blackened patches that look like scorch marks, and the outer face is appears to be slightly leached, with the colour ranging from deep yellow to patches of pale cream where the surface has been damaged. It measures 68.4 by 54 mm across its outside edges, 60 by 48 mm across its inside edges, with a maximum height of 24.5 mm and a thickness of the band of around 5 mm, and a weight of 26.4 grams [RTS 1/6/2004].
- Cultural groups
- Dinka
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 1917
- Date collected
- By 1917
- Acquisition information
- Donated: 1917
- Materials and processes
- Material Elephant Tooth Ivory Animal, Process Carved, Process Polished
- Dimensions
- Length: max 68.4 mm, Width: max 54 mm, Depth 24.5 mm, Thick 5 mm, Weight 26.4 g
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1917.25.79
- Research and responses
This object was probably collected in the period immediately before World War I (1909-1913, or 1910-1914?, according to Gayer-Anderson's biographical history). Throughout the twentieth century the term ‘White Nile’ has been used to denote an administrative district immediately south of Khartoum. However at the time this object was collected the term was also used more loosely to refer to the Bahr el Abiad and Bahr el Jebel rivers, or the areas immediately around them, and association with the Dinka suggests this is probably the case here.
Domville Fife suggested that ivory bangles were worn by Dinka men who had speared an elephant (C.W. Domville Fife, 1927, Savage Life in the Black Sudan, p. 129); he does not give any specifics as to the actual form of the armlet, but gives it the name afjok. This is probably the term that appears in Nebel as apiok, meaning an ivory armlet. An alternative term is given as atum (ivory, round) (Nebel 1979, Dinka-English Dictionary, p. 106).
Note that other ivory objects from Gayer-Anderson have similar patterns of white across the surface (e.g.: 1917.25.78); is this a result of how he had the material stored or displayed prior to entering the PRM? [RTS 1/6/2004].
Search terms: Ornament, Arm Ornament