The Bullroarer Atlas

No. NGUINEA-012

Mairipepia wooden rhombe

Papua New Guinea · Gulf Province · Mairipepia village · Oceania · Sahul

Function not recorded

The Mairipepia rhombe: linked heart-spirals in lime-whitened zigzag frames beneath a carved face.
Plate I. The Mairipepia rhombe: linked heart-spirals in lime-whitened zigzag frames beneath a carved face. Image source
A second blade from Mairipepia, acquired with this one: painted white and rust-red zigzags, cross motifs and a stylized face, with cord tied at one end and laid along an edge.
Plate II. Representative — not this record’s object. A second blade from Mairipepia, acquired with this one. Image source

Source term: Rhombe

A face peers out from under the arrow-shaped head of this board from Mairipepia, a village of the Papuan Gulf, and below it a chain of interlaced hearts runs down the blade in zigzag frames picked out in white. It matches what the missionary J. H. Holmes found in the Ipi and Namau villages of the Gulf, where the roarer was usually carved at its widest end with the suggestion of a human face.

Particulars

Object
Oblong wooden board, 43 x 8.5 x 0.5 cm, engraved and painted on the front only; Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris.
Function
Function not recorded.

Sources

  1. Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris, object 305040, inventory 72.1993.1.32 View · archived
  2. J. H. Holmes, In Primitive New Guinea (1924), p. 188 View

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.