Eyema Byeri (Reliquary Guardian Figure)

The Fang preserve the skulls, femurs, and vertebrae of revered ancestors in bark boxes that are protected in shrine houses. Figurative images are carved to sit on the lids of these containers to serve as guardians of the bones. These figures symbolically evoke the ancestor as well as serving as protectors of the relics. This figure's elongated torso and bulbous arms and legs, and especially the elaborate coiffure with three triangular elements that sweep back from the nape of the neck, are characteristic of a Fang master carver who lived in the Ntem River valley in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth.