Kota Mahongwe

The Mahongwe, located in eastern Gabon, in the Makotu and Mekambo regions, achieved a high degree of stylization, reducing the body to a simple support with a flattened head covered with thin copper or brass sheets, apparently concave for women and convex for men. Copper and brass, wired or in the form of thin sheets, are systematically part of these reliquary guards. These lockets seem to have given rise to the other lockets Kota. His name, Bweté, is more popularly known as “reliquary cobra” because of its resemblance to the head of this serpent. Some researchers see them as Egyptian influences.