Cephalomorphic Emambele Prestige Knife
Mangbetu, D.R. Congo
Iron, wood, pigment
Collected by Lang and Chapin on the American Museum Congo Expedition in 1910

A decade after Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness first depicted the mysteries and agonies of the area, Herbert Lang and James Chapin set sail for the northeastern Belgian Congo on the American Museum Congo Expedition which would last from 1909 to 1915. They knew they were launching an extraordinary adventure, but they could not have imagined what those years would hold. By the time they sailed home, they had collected tons of precious zoological and anthropological specimens representing one of the most comprehensive collections of the day (Introduction to the American Museum Congo Expedition, AMNH.org, 2003).

In 1910, Lang and Chapin had made their way to Niangara, a town in the Haut-Uele Province of the D.R. Congo, which straddles the Uele River. There, they acquired two emambele sickle blades with carved heads. Their field notes describe “Two sickel [sic] shaped knives with carved heads of females made by Okondo's blacksmith. The carved handle is made by another man. They also are considered as a mark of distinction and conspicuously worn. Emambele – in process of making it. The blacksmith of Okondo receives two or one piece of raw iron (already once melted) and the whole knife is hammered out. It takes about a day and a half to make one of these knives (ready to put the handle on).”

Both knives were acquired by the AMNH in 1915, and assigned inventory numbers 90.1/4139 and 90.1/4140.

Item 90.1/4140 is still in the permanent collection of the AMNH, viewable here. It was prominently displayed in the exhibition African Reflections: Art from Northeastern Zaire (1990-94), and its photo was given a full page in the publication of the same name (1990), below.

Item 90.1/4139 it presented here. The AMNH traded it to the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston, SC, in 1968. That trade is documented in paperwork from both museums. Located on the site of an antebellum slave auction gallery, the Old Slave Mart Museum displayed objects of interest about the slave trade, but also African and African American artifacts.

In 1988, the Old Slave Mart Museum was closed, and the entirety of the collection was sold to a private collector, Carroll Greene. Greene was a scholar of African American art, who began a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution in 1968. Parts of his collection were often exhibited under the label “The Acacia Collection.” Greene died at 75 in 2007, and in 2017, his collection was sold at auction.

Inventory numbers from both museums are written on to the blade. 4139 (AMNH) appears on the back of the figure's neck, and R348 (Old Slave Mart) appears on the iron near the handle. 

Published: 100 African Blades, no. 55 and cover (Rider, 2021). 

18 in :: 46 cm

InventoryID #13-1141

SOLD