No. MUS2026-208Africa
KwaZulu-Natal carved bullroarer
South Africa · KwaZulu · Natal · Southern Africa
Sacred / spirit
Source term: Bullroarer
Inniato Bee: the second name the museum records for this blade, beside 'Bullroarer'. Zulu for 'bee' is inyosi, once written innyosi.
Nine inches of carved wood, shaped like a long leaf and worn smooth, with a twist of grass fibre knotted through its narrow tail — a man named Henderson picked it up somewhere in KwaZulu-Natal in the eighteen-seventies, and it sat in private hands for a century before reaching Oxford in 1980. The Pitt Rivers Museum calls it a bullroarer and files it under both music and ceremony. Beside that, on the card, sits a second name, half-legible and never explained: Inniato Bee.
Particulars
- Object
- Carved wooden blade, 227 x 28 mm: a long lanceolate slat with a rounded broad end, tapering to a narrow tail at the other, where a twisted grass-fibre cord is knotted through.
- Function
- Not recorded.
Source
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 1980.1.1 (KwaZulu-Natal; collected by D. Henderson, 1870-1880)