Wooden soul ship

Estimated Value:

1.500 € - 2.500 €

Result:

incl. Premium and VAT

Description:

Tanimbar, Indonesia, East, Alfuren, early 20th cent.
H. 68 cm, B. 121 cm, T. ca. 21 cm
Wood (mangrove). Very rare ancestral or votive boat from eastern Indonesia, probably from the island of Tanimbar. The hollow boat made of hard mangrove wood depicts a stylised standing figure in a ship above a boat. While the figure is without any decoration, the ship is carefully crafted in the floral-ornamental tendril motifs typical of Tanimbar on the bow, stern and sides of the ship. There are two variants for the interpretation of ships of this type. They may be votive boats, which were placed next to the sarcophagus during the secondary burial to guide the soul of the deceased, or they may be a representation of the well-known dancing boats. In favour of the ancestral boat interpretation is the fact that on Tanimbar there are still village squares surrounded by megaliths in the shape of boats. Boats symbolise the ancestral community. Especially during the Porka festival, when the sun god Upuleno marries the earth goddess Upusena, all the women and girls of the village dance on the boat-shaped village square. There are also special dance boats in which the women dance and travel to the neighbouring villages or islands to motivate the inhabitants to dance. Dancing maintains or renews pro-creative acts of creativity in prehistoric times. These events also deepen the social ties between the villages and promote weddings.
From an old German private collection, collected since the 1950s
The Tanimbarese are known for their boat building skills. The boats are used to harvest trepang (sea cucumber) and for local trade. They also have great symbolic significance as a vehicle of the ancestors who came across the sea and as a vehicle of souls to the afterlife. The Tanimbar archipelago, which consists of 30 islands in the Maluku Tenggara kabupaten (regency), Maluku provinsi ("province"), in eastern Indonesia, is inhabited by an ethnically mixed population. The islands lie between the Banda and Arafura Seas. The area used to be forested, with dense mangrove forests that offered the locals good protection against attackers. The Moluccas were colonised tens of thousands of years ago. Between 10,000 and 2000 BC, the Austronesian expansion reached the islands. Today's population consists öpredominantly of Malays and smaller ethnic groups with Melanesian and Papuan roots, who were previously referred to collectively as Alfurs

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