Forehead mask with human and animal features.

Collection type: Object
Description: Forehead mask with human and animal features.
Long description: Wooden mask with rectangular section cut out beneath the chin. Human features with scarification markings on the cheeks and forehead, buck teeth, elongated hare-like ears, with an animal figure and drum positioned between the ears. Painted in different colours on the outer surface.
Geographical reference: Nigeria
Africa > Western Africa > Nigeria
Cultural groups: Yoruba
Person: Field collector Gwilym Iwan Jones; PRM source Gwilym Iwan Jones
Date / Period: Date made: Before 1937
Date collected: 1937
Acquisition information: Donated: 1938
Materials and processes: Material Wood Plant, Material Pigment, Process Painted, Process Carved
Dimensions: Length: max 380 mm, Height: max 435 mm, Width: max 200 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1938.15.36
Research and responses: It is not clear to me on what basis the accession book entry for this mask includes the information 'Obt. in Lagos. ? from OYO. YORUBA tribe'. In a letter to Henry Balfour dated 15 April 1936, the donor (Gwilym Iwan Jones) writes: 'I have just remembered that in that case I sent you I had also included a large black Yoruba mask which I hadn't mentioned in the invoice. / It's a Yoruba Egungun (i.e. the equivalent of Man) mask which I bought off a Hausa trader in Lagos and it is said to have come from Oyo. / I know nothing about Yoruba, so can tell you no more'. However, this information seems to me to apply only to 1938.15.68. If the provenance for 1938.15.36 was based on the information provided in Jones's letter then it appears to me to be unjustified. It may, however, have been based on some other documentation that has not survived. Original letter is in RDF. [JC 4 12 2008]
John Picton examined this mask during a consultation visit about the Yoruba masks on 20 August 2013 and noted the following: This mask combines human and animal features with the hare ears, buck teeth and the beard of an old man, plus the monkey between the ears that is eating maize (corn cob). This is a combination of features only seen in masks from Abeokuta. There are a row of medicine bottles carved around the forehead so this mask almost certainly has some reference to hunting. This is the style of mask associated with the egungun masquerade. This type of mask is worn at the forehead, like a cap or hat. [ZM 29/08/2013]
In the G.I. Jones photographic archive at Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), Cambridge, is a black and white negative (identification number N.61189.GIJ) almost certainly of this mask, which is described on the MAA catalogue database as follows: 'Egungun mask'. [ZM 28/10/2013]

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