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Ritual Gong or bell in carved wood, nicely carved.
For examples and superb descriptions, see Cornet's A SURVEY OF ZAIRIAN ART.
Ancestral statues are traditionally kept in huts whose only purpose is to protect the statues. This well carved figural bell comes from the people who today live in the savannah in the southeast region of the Democratic of Congo along the Lualaba River.
Broken into a number of chiefdoms, local styles of carving evolved sharing similarities but differing in details of sculpting and in the use of body marking.
This figural bell may have been used to serve as an intercessor between the living and the dead and to recognize lineage heads and document title to land.
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