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11. Female Bowl Bearer (Mboko)
Luba, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wood, beads; H. 36.8 cm (14 1/2 in.)
19th century
American Museum of Natural History, New York
90.0/2423ab

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11. Female Bowl Bearer (Mboko)

esigned to forecast future events, this bowl bearer—known as a mboko (the name for the sacred vessel held by the figure)—is a vivid example of how knowledge and divination are visualized in Luba culture. Luba bowl figures commemorate the first mythical Luba diviner, Mijibu wa Kalenga, and were primarily the preserve of royal diviners, who used them as oracles. More recently, such works have also been commissioned by rulers for use as containers filled with sacred chalk, an empowering material associated with purity, renewal, and the spirit world.1 Mboko are thus icons of royal authority and legitimacy; their ownership by both types of patrons points to the historic relationship between divination and the origins of the Luba state.

In Luba tradition, the establishment of the Luba charter of kingship in the seventeenth century was due to the acumen of Mijibu wa Kalenga. According to the charter's genesis myth, the heroic foresight of this diviner led to the overthrow of a cruel despot, Nkongolo, and the institution of a refined form of sacred kingship.2 Mijibu is characterized as a sensitive visionary whose role as mentor and guardian to the prince Kalala Ilunga assured the Luba people's adoption of a stable and enlightened form of leadership.3 Mijibu is credited with having invented Bilumbu divination and prototypes of the various implements used by contemporary royal diviners.4 From that time on, Luba society has depended on the royal Bilumbu diviner for its well-being and prosperity. Today, diviners fulfill the roles of doctors, therapists, lawyers, and priests for individuals, families, chieftaincies, and entire kingdoms.5 All Bilumbu diviners, male and female, are regarded as personifications of Mijibu, from whom they derive their influence.6 Leaders rely on diviners' perception and wisdom to guide them in resolving crises affecting their territories and to advise them on affairs of governance ranging from the most mundane problems to serious medical and judicial matters.7 (See part 2 of the Pemberton essay; see also cat. nos. 35, 46.)

In Luba cultures, the act of divination, kubuta, is defined as a consultation of spirits through consecrated formulas in order to learn hidden things.8 A successful divination results in the desired information being revealed—an action conveyed by the Luba verb kusokola.9

Luba conceive of human experience as governed and controlled by two distinct types of spiritual entities, and have developed divinatory processes through which they are addressed. Ancestral spirits of the deceased, bafu, are considered responsible for problems relating to domestic life and the affairs of individual communities. The more powerful bavidye spirits, associated with natural resources, inhabit features of the landscape and may affect the welfare of entire regions and chieftaincies.10 Because of the scope of their influence, bavidye are considered vital to effective governance and are closely linked to royalty by Bilumbu diviners through spirit possession.11

Among the most important of the tools used by Bilumbu diviners in the act of divination is the mboko, a sacred gourd that contains an assortment of natural and manufactured objects. This divinatory instrument is conferred on specialists during their initiation as a symbol of the spiritual guidance from which they benefit. Its very name is related to the term for success or prosperity, and it is considered a source of well-being, wealth, good health, and truth.12

Bilumbu diviners develop the ability to enter a state of possession through a combination of music, voice, and percussion. While in a trance, they become mediums through which various bavidye communicate their insights.13 Visual metaphors constitute the primary means through which knowledge is transferred. The extraordinary perception that a diviner acquires while in trance is described as kuntentana kwezi, the monthly rising of the new moon illuminating that which had been obscured.14 It is only in this visionary state that the contents of the mboko are shaken and its constellation of symbols is interpreted by the Bwana Vidye.15 His wife, the guardian of his spirit, assists him by invoking his spirit and then translating the information it imparts through him.16

On those occasions, the placement of a sculptural representation of a female bowl figure, such as this one, on the diviner's left provides a symmetrical counterpart to his human interpreter. Female bowl figures are the most important genre within a broad group of representations deployed by Bwana Vidye known as mankishi (singular, nkishi).17 When a diviner composes or commissions an nkishi, it is "charged" with bijimba, which are empowering materials that invite a spirit to inhabit the figure and, in doing so, endow it with extraordinary powers.18 Over the course of a consultation, the diviner may speak to the figure, describing the nature of the problem to be dealt with.19 Like the diviner himself, the figure becomes an oracle by serving as a mouthpiece for the spirit's responses. It is reputed to gather evidence on suspected criminals, track down malevolent forces, and effect cures.20

In this especially lovely version of a bowl bearer, a naturalistically proportioned figure is seated with her long, slender legs extended before her, resting the bowl on them while holding it with her hands and supporting it with her feet. She is depicted at the prime of life, and her beauty is enhanced by an elegant cruciform coiffure and raised cicatrization markings on her lower back, abdomen, and thighs. The figure has variously been interpreted as representing the wife of the diviner's possessing spirit or even Mijibu wa Kalenga himself. Mijibu's portrayal as an idealized woman relates to the Luba notion of the female body as the natural receptacle for spirituality.

The many visual resonances throughout the composition are enriched by the work's underlying conceptual meaning. The form of the vessel held by bowl bearers closely resembles the mboko gourd, and diviners traditionally placed chalk and beads within it.21 The combined representation of woman and gourd evokes the interaction between human and spiritual realms.22 Although another bowl figure by the same artist is represented holding a gourd, in this particular work the form is clearly that of a clay vessel.23 The motif of the incised decorative band that wraps around it is taken from the repertory of designs (n'kaka) inscribed on Luba women's bodies. N'kaka refers to both the cicatrization pattern favored by most women and the beaded headdress worn by Luba prophet-diviners.24 This formal device creates a sense of unity between the female form serving as a spiritual vessel and the ritual container adorned as a woman.

Form and meaning reinforce each other repeatedly throughout the composition of Luba bowl figures. Their richness as a subject for both artistic interpretation and visual analysis is comparable to the multireferential nature of the contents of the mboko's metaphorical elements. A close reading of the sculpture's formal elements, like the diviner's reading of the mboko's contents, may yield enlightenment.

1. Memory 1996, p. 70.

2. Ibid., p. 180.

3. Ibid., p. 187.

4. Ibid., p. 180. Although, historically, practitioners were predominantly female mediums, referred to variously as "Bifkwa" and "Bibinda," today they are generally male diviners, addressed as "Bilumbu" or, when in trance, "Bwana Vidye." Ibid., p. 187.

5. Ibid., p. 180.

6. Nooter 1991, p. 201; Memory 1996, p. 197.

7. Nooter 1991, p. 200; Memory 1996, p. 187.

8. Van Avermaet and Mbuya, cited in Memory 1996, p. 178.

9. Memory 1996, p. 178.

10. Nooter 1991, pp. 173–74.

11. Ibid., p. 176.

12. Petit 1995, p. 115; Memory 1996, p. 195; Nooter 1991, p. 119.

13. Nooter 1991, pp. 201, 205; Petit 1995, p. 114.

14. Memory 1996, p. 189.

15. Ibid., p. 194; see also n. 4, above.

16. Ibid., p. 204.

17. Ibid.

18. Bijimba may be enclosed in a horn inserted into the figure's head, as well as in tiny incisions in the figure's ears and temples, which relate strategically to sensory perception. Memory 1996, p. 206.

19. Nooter 1991, p. 128.

20. Memory 1996, p. 177.

21. Ibid., p. 204.

22. Nooter 1991, p. 126.

23. A bowl figure attributed to the same hand, in the Museu Carlos Machado, Ponta Delgada, Portugal, is illustrated in Memory 1996, cat. no. 80, p. 197. The style of these two works is almost identical, except that the figure in Portugal holds a calabash with a lid and handles, her hands are less finely modeled, and there are several miniature secondary figures.

24. Nooter 1991, p. 241.