…external views of African indigenous life are [often] potent sources of misunderstanding. In this case, however, the most basic assumption is to an extent correct – some form of masking is indeed very widespread in Africa, at least in areas south to the Sahara. Masks seen out of context give an unbalanced impression. Most are carved of wood and are from West African or the Equatorial Forests. Yet in these areas and elsewhere masks which are constructed of less durable materials – grasses, leaves, bark, feathers, cloth – and many which are not subject to any special procedures to preserve them are but simply destroyed when they are no longer required. Their ephemeral nature makes them that much more difficult to document. But such masks are used in comparable circumstances to those that are carved and sculpted and, from an anthropological perspective, are the same thing.
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Masking performances can without discrepancy be both serious ritual and captivating entertainment. Even masks that act aggressively towards spectators do not want for an audience. And all, even those which perform in an entirely frivolous manner, may be equally regarded as emanations from the spirit world rather than actors in extravagant disguise.
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Myth and History
The suggestion that masking is deeply embedded in African culture also, of course, raises questions as to its origins. A common assumption is that the tradition of African masking may be of considerable antiquity. Even excluding the evidence from ancient Egypt there are other pointers to the past usage of masks.
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…the rock paintings of the San in the Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa include masked figures. The masks in these cases are animal skins and heads which conceal hunters and thereby enable them to approach their prey. This more pragmatic use extends the roster of occasions when masking is appropriate. As most masks in Africa are made of perishable organic materials, both evidence from both northern and southern Africa, though it tells us nothing (nor could be expected to), at least supports the view that masking is not a recent phenomenon.
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Masks and Identity
The question of what the mask portrays or represents was raised at the start of this chapter. Sande masks provide a good point at which to return to this issue. Expressing the Mande perspective, the anthropologist Jedrej says, ‘in this instance it is the concealing mask that is quite unambiguously identified as the spirit…the appearance of the Sande spirit is wholly representational; it is a spirit.’. what is suggested is that masking is not so much a portrayal as an actual embodiment. The emphasis is not so much on the act of concealment (the masker) as on the act on revelation (the presentation of spirit).
The Mende concept of spirits (ngafanga) ranges over a variety of different entities from conceptions of the human soul to dangerous spirits of the forest. One such is the dancing spirits which by contrast with others are visible and appear in villages as dancers, acrobats and jesters. Like masked figures these are also distinctive in another way. An accidental encounter with spirits in their natural habitat – the forest – transforms the individual who as a result becomes insane, or very rich, or a healer. It is appropriate that initiation also takes place in the seclusion of the forest, the place of mysterious transformations. When they appear in the village, however, spirits are rendered harmless. If it were otherwise, and a confrontation with a mask in the village were of the same order as that with a spirit in the bush, then, to follow Mande logic, villages would be variously populated by mystics, millionaires, and medical practitioners. In masquerade the spirit itself is transformed and in that act is robbed of its power to transform the viewer.
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A contrast to this is provided by the Central African example of makishi. There masks were concerned with the male initiation and were identified as the dead resurrected to participate in a particular set of events. At the same time, however, individual masks carry names which also identify them with stock figures of various kinds: with wealthy aristocrats, stern or impotent figures, attractive young women and so forth. Although these identification are quite precise, exactly how they relate to the equally firm association of masquerade with the dead is less clear.
Perhaps the clearest statement of the ethnography of makishi is White’s description of Lovale masking in Zambia. The crucial Lovale statement about the identity of masks is the phase natuya nakusangula likishi, literally, ‘we are going to bring to life a likishi’. The verb refers specifically to resurrection from the grave; but it does not refer to the bringing to life of ancestral spirits. Masks do not represent ancestors – not only are these invisible, but in many cases they do not reside in graves. The verb is used rather of were-creatures, monsters ill-disposed to the human world, such as a man who returns from the grave as a beast of prey.
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White notes that the Lovale masks katotoji, chikaza, and ngondo all have names that are otherwise applied to the familiars of sorcerers. These details help explain other aspects of the use of masks in circumcision rites in Central Africa. Thus non-initiates touching the makishi are said to contract serious illness; in some places it is considered dangerous to even walk on the ground on which masks have recently danced; and when initiation is at an end, the masks are burned. The occurrence of the same root kisi for both masquerade and, especially in the Lower Congo area, to denote objects and substances imbued with magical power adds further support to this interpretation of makishi.
Of course not all masks are regarded as equally ‘dangerous’. Often masks form a community which taken together present a range of differing characteristics.
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We end, therefore, where we started; there is no single model which encapsulates the variety of African masking practice. The issue is not whether spectators know the identity of the masker, or even acknowledge that there is masker articulating the performance from within the concealing artifice of the mask. It is the mask and not the masker which is the point, the performance and not the performer.
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All true ancient Egyptian masks were made to serve a religious purpose. Disguise or concealment of the features was not an aim; rather the mask was a medium for the elevation of the wearer to the level of divinity, a role which applies as much to the animal masks occasionally worn by the living, as to the funerary headpieces placed on the mummified bodies of the dead. A means of personal access to divine qualities was felt to be important when confronted by situations which requires more than ordinary human abilities to deal with – in life, the threat of illness and the danger of accident; after death, the hazardous passage into the afterlife.
According to the concept of sympathetic magic, the putting on of a mask identified the wearer with another entity – usually one connected with the realm of the supernatural. It conferred superhuman abilities, particularly the power to ward off evil danger of various kinds. Because of this belief, it appears likely that the mask had a role to play in Egyptian cult and magical practices, where the main protagonists were often identified with deities.
…there is some evidence for the use of masks in rituals aimed at curing the illnesses and accidents of everyday life. In the ruins of a house at Kahun, Flinders Petrie found a full sized grotesque mask made of painted catronnage, with eye holes to enable the wearer to see. It probably represents a lion-demon, such as Bes or Aha, and may have been worn by a magician during the performance of apotropaic rituals. A wooden statuette, found in a tomb near the Ramesseum at Thebes, represents a woman apparently wearing such a mask and grasping snake wands which seem to have been part of the magician’s equipment.
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The masks placed over the heads of mummies almost invariably reproduce the features of the human face. They represent the deceased in the divine state which he or she aspired to attain after death – identified with a variety of deities, but chiefly with Osiris and the sun-god, the main agents of resurrection. The majority of mummy masks were mass-produced, with stereotyped features; only in the case of specially-commissioned pieces for royal persons, such as the mask of Tutankhamun, can any attempt at capturing a likeness be detected. It was in fact the norm for images of the deceased, whether tomb statues, anthropoid coffins or mummy masks, to be idealized, and this did not hinder their magical efficacy as substitutes for the corpse – they were deputies which could provide the spirit with the physical form necessary for survival, in case the actual body should perish. Significantly, one of the worst disasters which the Egyptians feared in the next world was the loss of the head. Chapter 43 of the Book of the Dead, the ‘Spell of preventing a man’s decapitation in the realm of the dead’, stresses ‘The head of Osiris shall not be taken from him; my head shall not be taken from me.’ The mask, acting as a substitute for the head, provided security in the event of such a loss, but this was not its only function. Other inscriptions reveal that mummy masks also had more specific roles to play in the Egyptians efforts to guarantee the continued survival of the spirit after death.
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| Spell from Chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead |
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| Osiris |
Some of these early masks carry an inscription which throws additional light on their function. It is found, as Spell 531, in the great collection of religious literature known as the Coffin Texts, and in the New Kingdom a revised version of it was incorporated in the Book of the Dead (chapter 151B). in its latter form this ‘Spell for the mysterious head’ addresses the mask: ‘Hail to you whose face is kindly, Lord of vision…kindly face who is among the gods!’ it goes on identify the individual parts of the mask with the appropriate members of different deities or with the barques in which the sun god travelled – carriers of the potential for resurrection: ‘You right eye is the Night-barque, your left eye is the Day-berque, you eyebrows are (those of) the Ennead (the nine gods of the Heliopolitan creation story), your forehead is (that of) Anubis, the nape of your neck is (that of) Horus, your locks of hair are (those of) Ptar-Sokar…’ A version of the text is inscribed in the gold mask of Tutankhamun, where it continues: ‘You are in front of the Osiris, he sees thanks to you, you guide him on good roads, you smite for him the confederates of Seth so that he may overthrow your enemies before the Ennead of the gods…’. Through this last reference the deceased is identified with Osiris, who was murdered by his brother Seth and resurrected, the god who above all others was the key to rebirth. But this is not all, the description of the mask as the ‘mysterious head’ points to an identification of it in the minds of the Egyptians with the head of the sun-god, who, as he journeyed through the Underworld by night, illuminated the subterranean caverns with his shinning golden face, and brought new life to the dead who dwelt there. The mask thus provided the deceased with the necessities for a safe passage into the afterlife – not merely the blue hair, collar and golden flesh of a divine being, but the physical attributes of a whole range of specific gods. It identified him simultaneously with Osiris and Re, the sun-god – a double assurance of resurrection.
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The aim of those items which may be truly called masks was essentially the transfiguration of the wearer – to enable him or her to harness divine power and to manipulate it for practical ends. When placed on a mummy, the mask focused onto the deceased divine attributes and associations crucial to a successful passage into the afterlife, recreating him on a new, higher plane of existence. Hence with funerary masks, as with so many of the products of ancient Egyptian craftsmen, the motivation to triumph over death and decay led to the creation of some of the greatest surviving works of ancient art.
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