African Arts Gallery

Luba Shankadi miniature cup carrier (N° 18372)

Seated with her legs stretched out, the female figure has the mboko cut that was filled with kaolin. This hollowed-out gourd offered the kaolin symbolizing purity and the spiritual world, which the king's visitors supported themselves with respect. According to P.Nooter, these figures represented the soothsayer's wife, underscoring her importance in the divination process bilumbu.
The healers of the Buhabo society and the soothsayers Mbudye also used them.
On some Luba though a woman, she would represent the first soothsayer Luba, and would also be an allegory of royalty linked to the powerful society of the Mbudye associated with royal power. Clear satin patina.br>The Luba (Baluba in tchiluba) are a people of Central Africa. Their cradle is the Katanga, specifically the region of the Lubu River, so the name (Baluba, which means the Lubas). They were born from a secession of the Songhoy ethnic group, under the leadership of Ilunga Kalala who killed the old king Kongolo, who has since been revered as a python. In the 16th century they created a state, organized in a decentralized chiefdom, which stretched from the Kasai River to Lake Tanganyika. The chiefdoms cover a small territory without a real border that includes no more than three villages.
Ref.: Luba Roberts Luba F. Neyt, ed. Dapper Museum.)
Luba (Baluba in Tchiluba) are a people of Central Africa. Their cradle is the Katanga, specifically the region of the Lubu River, so the name (Baluba, which means the Lubas). They were born from a secession of the Songhoy ethnic group, under the leadership of Ilunga Kalala who killed the old king Kongolo, who has since been revered as a python. In the 16th century they created a state, organized in a decentralized chiefdom, which stretched from the Kasai River to Lake Tanganyika. The chiefdoms cover a small territory without a real border that includes no more than three villages.
Ref.: Luba Roberts Luba F. Neyt, ed. Dapper Museum.)