Kota (Akota, Bakota, Kuta), Gabon and Congo Republic

Chief’s Stuff. The land of the Kota, numbering some 75,000, is situated in the eastern part of Gabon, extending slightly into the Congo Republic. The Kota are actually a number of groups of peoples with common cultural traits. Ancestor worship formed the core of the family group’s religious and social life. At the death of a chief, the initiates would take from the body of the deceased various relics, which were then decorated with metal and rubbed with powders of multiple magical powers. Kota rituals allied to ancestor cults aimed to honor illustrious deceased members of the lineage, but also would carefully keep them out of reach of other villagers. The extraordinary diversity of known objects from the Kota Cultural Region bears witness to the boundless imagination of Kota artists, even though their range of expression has been limited to the ancestor figures that guard  the family reliquaries. The present chief’s stuff presents a typical Kota two-dimensional reliquary figure covered with sheets of brass.

Material: wood, brass

Size:  H. 36”, W. 5½”, D. 1”