Iran, Double Head

Bidjogos altars are family altars intended to worship ancestors. For Bidjogo everything sacred is called “iran”, whether it be an altar, a statue or a seat, and they are respected and feared objects. Its altars are usually quite old. They usually have two parts, a circular base of variable height, normally built on a piece of tree trunk. The upper part can be decorated with a long neck topped by a calao head and even by two long ringed necks of a bird that could symbolically represent the calao or for any other reason of its cosmogony, as in this case it bears a neck from which two heads stop, one with a dragon appearance that is as often represented by its sacred animal the python snake.The snake python bidjogo is particular, it is presented in the most diverse forms, elongated, short and robust and, often with a crest, which, as in this case, gives it the appearance of a dragon. The other head has a long bird's beak but with a human-like face that is difficult to catalogue, and in the torso part of this head there are two generous female breasts and, in the remaining perimeter, three heads that look like a woman. Over the heads and breasts surrounding the neck a kind of necklace formed by what could be small breasts of woman. Everything suggests that this altar is intended for worship of the ancestors. He has received numerous libations of kaolin.

Very rare piece that has served for decades the cult of Bidjogo.