Ashanti Figure
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- Title Ashanti Figure
- Category Sculpture
- Medium Wood
- Dimensions 15"h x 4"w x 4"d
- Notes The Ashanti come from central Ghana and have a high proportion of people with high wide foreheads. The flatness of the head could be attributed to mothers carrying children in a waist cloth at the small of the back. It is also theorized that the head is shaped like this to associate it with the moon. The priest of the Moon-Mother-Goddess gives the sculpture to women who desire to conceive or become pregnant*. The Ashanti follow succession through the female line; thus, the Queen-Mother is the daughter of the moon and fertility of the land depends on her. Figures such as this, known as Akua’ba, are sometimes carried by women to ensure that they will conceive, and the children will be well formed. *Ladislas Segy, "The Ashanti Akua'ba Statues as Archetype and the Egyptian Ankh: A Theory of Morphological Assumptions." (Anthropos, vol.58 no. 5/6, 1963), 839-61.
- Artist Ashanti People Ghanaian
- Credit Clyde and Annie Matters Collection
- Location Library Art Storage H6
- Accession Number 1994.0002
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Status
Available
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