The Bullroarer Atlas

No. SUBSAH-017

Mofu

Mandara Mountains · Gudur, Far North Cameroon · Central Africa

Function not recorded

A slender dark wooden blade tapering toward its ends, with white cord wound around the middle and trailing in loose loops.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Slender dark wooden blade pointed at both ends, with white cord. Image source

Among the Mofu of the Gudur massifs — the "men of the rocks," whose chiefs still guard the hidden cult of the mountain spirit high in Cameroon's Mandara range — a flat blade was whirled on a cord: the rhombe. What its voice was for is lost.

Source

Guernier (ed.), Encyclopedie coloniale: Cameroun, Togo (1951)

View the source

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