MUS2026-182 - museum specimen
Bulu / Sangmelima
Cameroon - Lobo River - Sangmelima - South Region, former German Kamerun - Africa
Function not recorded
Source term: Schwirrholz
Zauberholz: German, 'magic wood' — the designation the blade carried when collected; Schwirrholz is the German museum term for a bullroarer. No Bulu name was recorded.
A Bulu carver at Sangmelima, on the Lobo River, shaped a blade nearly half a metre long yet not even a centimetre thick. Incised figures crown its rounded head, a dovetail notch bites into each edge, one flank of the narrow end was shaped by burning, and the fibre cord still loops its little tail. The one word that travelled with it to Vienna in 1915 was German: Zauberholz, 'magic wood.' What the magic was, and what its maker called the blade, went unrecorded.
Or.Vz.: "Zauberholz".
Original designation: 'magic wood.'
Weltmuseum Wien accession card, Post I/1915, inv. 91302
- Object
- Incised wooden blade, 44.5 x 7.5 x 0.9 cm: long egg-shaped outline, one face flat and one moderately convex, incised figures at the broad end and mid-blade, a dovetail double notch cut into each edge toward the broad end, one side of the narrow end shaped out by burning, and a fibre cord still looped at the narrow tail.
- Function
- Not recorded; the collection-time German designation Zauberholz ('magic wood') preserves no documented use.
- Map confidence
- high - Sangmelima town, South Region (GeoNames populated place); the museum's own geography is Lobo Fluß / Sangmelima with no findspot on the river, so the point sits at the named town.
- Source location
- inv. 91302; accession card Post I/1915, Or.Bez. 421