Insigne de pouvoir

Staff

This bronze figure group is standing on a rectangular base traversing the decorated cone used to fix it to the top of an iron rod decorated with bronze rings. The scene’s central subject is the horseman holding the reins in his right hand and wearing a headdress composed of two interlocking cones.

He is preceded by men-at-arms and followed by another horseman holding the reins in his left hand, a club in his right hand, and wearing a crest with three contiguous spirals.

The essential stylistic feature of this work is the eyes, which are represented with two hemispheres surrounded by a circular eyelid in relief, both for the men and the horses. The ears are also circular. The noses are straight and the mouths open. The legs do not descend lower than the stomach of the horses, which are saddled.

In an article in African Arts in 1979, Enzio Bassani discusses Avelino Teixiera de Mota’s observations on such objects in Guinea-Bissau in 1956 and 1963. Called sono by the Fulani peoples of this region, he considers them to be insignia of political and religious power of Soninko chiefs and kings, at least until the arrival of Islam.

The Soninko, whose presence in the country is attested by sixteenth-century Portuguese texts, invaded from the Mandingo world during the era of Malian domination.

Other sono, one of which has been in the Museo Pigorini in Rome since 1885, also have female figures, children and dogs around the central horseman. The iron carrying-rod is often decorated with bronze human heads. It therefore seems that, given the lost-wax casting process used (not practiced in Guinea-Bissau) and their iconography (horsemen and conical headdress), these objects can be linked to the Mali Empire. They were very probably insignia carried by representatives of the central government to indicate their office. Local Soninko kings may have later adopted them as regalia to legitimise their power.