Relief panel

Description:

Indonesia, Timor East, Belu / Tetum, early 20th cent.
78,5 x 38 cm
Wood, pigments. Relief panel of the Tetum on Timor. The panel is made of medium-hard, dark pigmented wood and is carved in low relief. The circle in the center shows a man keeping the dangerous early ancestors, the crocodile and shark, at a distance, as it was probably his primary task to avert danger from the family. In the circle below is a woman surrounded by fertility symbols or breasts. This means that her primary task is to be fertile and maintain the lineage. On marriage, the man takes over his wife's totem animals and lineage. The researcher Vroklage, who carried out his field research in the 1930s, lamented that the worship of totem animals had already fallen into oblivion at that time. The plaque, which must therefore have been made before the time of Vroklage's stay, still shows cosmology in its pure, unadulterated form. It probably comes from the possession of a Kepala Adat (“head of tradition”, head of the family).
Collected from an old German private collection since the 1950s
The Malayo-Polynesian Tetum (also Tetun, formerly Belu) are the largest ethnic group in East Timor. In Indonesian West Timor, they make up a large part of the population in the government districts of Belu and Malaka. With around 450,000 members, the Tetum are the largest ethnic group in East Timor and the second largest in West Timor with 500,000. They first migrated to Timor in the 14th century, according to their stories from Malacca. They first settled in the centre of the island and displaced the Atoin Meto to the western part of Timor. Later they also advanced further into the eastern part and founded a total of four kingdoms, of which Wehale was the most powerful. Even then, their language became the lingua franca in the centre and east of the island. The Tetum still live in the centre of the island on both sides of the border and on the south-eastern coast. The old foreign name Belu means friend or friend in German. In colonial times, the east of the island of Timor was referred to as Belu. Among the matriarchal Tetum, it is believed that the first humans emerged from two Öopenings, Mahuma and Lequi Bui. Traditional Häusers refer symbolically to this process. This is why the Tetum Terik refer to the doors to the traditional houses as the vagina and the inside as the (female) belly. Breasts are also an essential design feature of Tetum house walls. The sacred underworld, which is defined as feminine, is dominated by women, while the secular and masculine upper world is occupied by men. Both worlds must be connected, otherwise infertility, illness and death threaten - signs of wear, slightly bumped in one place