Gentlemen. Bambara

It seems that the horse was introduced to Africa, especially to the south of the Sahara, according to archaeological excavations and some cave paintings, during the second millennium before Christ and, since then, the property of a horse is a sign of distinction indicating the social rank of its owner.

Among the Bambarathe members of the secret society of the Koré practice a ritual dance, which pursues the search for knowledge, in which the dancers hoist a kind of baton topped with a carved head of horse. In these areas of Mali, with a lack of roads or impractical transport on horseback provides great services. We must not forget the warlike gestures in which people on horseback achieved victories more easily. All these images weigh on the collective memory Bambara that gives the horse a particular treatment.

This figure presents a white pigmentation and a patina blackened by the time that appear to be due to libations and projections of kaolin. The knight wears thick red laces on his neck, similar to the laces that serve as the horse's trellis. You saw a kind of woven jacket with a thick stitch. A flower formed by three cauris on the chest, which grants undoubted magical powers. It is remarkable the disproportion between the figures of the horse and knight, deliberate composition to note the rank of the latter, undoubtedly a remarkable or evocation of an ancestor, which would justify a cult with libations.