260153 - African Fang Ngontang Ceremonial Helmet Mask - Gabon.

Very expressive African Fang Ngontang Ceremonial Helmet Mask, Gabon.
This type of mask is used for entertainment of the spectators on festive occasions.
Hand carved from a single piece of wood.
Height: 44 cm and 29 diameter.

Carved From A Single Piece Of Wood And Whitened With Kaolin on the face.

The mask or helmet, called ngontang, used by the Fangs, is a fascinating ritual object. The entranced dancer wears this mask, with long plant fibers attached to the rim, concealing the dancer. The mask is white because it represents the spirit of a young woman who comes to protect the tribe. Its three faces and six eyes allow it to detect sorcerers and evil spirits, wherever they may be.

The Fang people were victims of the large transatlantic and trans-Saharan slave trade between the 16th and 19th century. They were stereotyped as cannibals by slave traders and missionaries, in part because human skulls and bones were found in open or in wooden boxes near their villages, a claim used to justify violence against them and their enslavement. When their villages were raided, thousands of their wooden idols and villages were burnt by the slave raiders. Later ethnologists who actually spent time with the Fang people later discovered that the Fang people were not cannibalistic, the human bones in open and wooden boxes were of their ancestors, and were Fang people's method of routine remembrance and religious reverence for their dead loved ones.