Woman with Elephant Head

Although it is common in African art to find representations of the elephant as some Baulese, Bamilekese or Lubas masks, it is an almost isolated case to find in all its iconography a woman with an elephant head. In this case we have a tsaramo woman, without arms, like almost the entire statuery of this ethnic group, holding the trunk with her breasts. Some embossed furrows run through her chest on a bulging belly that refers to motherhood. Her ringed legs indicate that she is a remarkable woman. We have gone through many pages about African art and ethnology without finding the slightest reference to such a figure, although we have found it in Asian.

In Africa, the elephant represents the head of the animals and the role of the patriarch because of their longevity. It is also recognized and celebrated by its great memory and wisdom and in many peoples it is a symbol of prosperity. There are several ethnicities, as we have said, who have the elephant represented in their masks.

We can make a comparison between the virtues or qualities of the elephant and those of African women. If the elephant is the patriarch of animals, the woman, of course the married woman, is the patriarch of the family. She is the one who takes care of the house and the education of the children and in most cases the work of the fields that gives prosperity to the family and especially the backbone of the lineage. Women must have the strength of an elephant to carry out all these functions. Also the wisdom of the elephant and its patience can be found in the African woman, for as the illustrious wise Amadou Hampâté Bâ says, "mother's milk in addition to a food is the sap that realizes the transmission of fundamental human values". For all the above reasons, we believe that this justifies the fact that the zaramo ethnic group represented a woman with an elephant head.