LYDENBERG HEADS

PAGE 194
Credo points out the page in the book showing two ancient terra cotta masks, reconstructed by the British Museum. He reads the information on these two terracotta heads from South Africa and sighs…

‘This is a horse not a cow. These kings rode horses…

Many, many centuries ago there was a great empire in South Africa. It was the empire of the Mambo Kings. The word Mambo was used to mean king, in those ancient days, but it actually means mine. These Mambo Kings used to live in the same lifestyle as the Oba kings of Nigeria.

Their attire consisted of beads made of a certain bony substance from the sea and they twined these beads around their necks almost to their chin. And these people were a highly cultured and deeply religious people and they worshiped clay, regarding it as one of the holiest substances that there are on earth. Where the other tribes regarded metal as a very sacred substance, the Mambo people regarded clay as the very sacred substance.

When a king of this tribe died, a mask was made for him out of clay, a death mask. And on the mask, the cause of the king’s death was often portrayed, as a mark or a series of markings. What is interesting is that, because these people had such close trade links with the Arabs, and other foreign nations of the Middle East, Mambo kings used to own horses and when the king died, either his horse was killed and buried with him, or a young horse was sacrificed and buried with the king, so that the king would ride this animal in the after-world.

Here we see two remarkable masks, the one representing the dead king and the other representing the king’s horse. We see that this king died of a weapon slash in the head. The slash is depicted going from the left side of the king’s forehead, right down to almost between the eyes. Here on the king’s horse there is an identical slash on the left side of the horse’s forehead, down to the horse’s eyes.

What is very interesting and poignant, the horse’s eyes are shown streaming with tears, to show the horse is grieving for the king.

The capital city of these ancient people was in the Eastern Transvaal, in a very fertile place, near where stands the town of Lydenburg today. In Lydenburg there is a sacred place of fire, a kind of mini-volcano which was very sacred to these people. Not far from the town of Lydenburg, there is a large system of standing stones called the Stones of Nomkukulwane or Nomkubulwane -the names of the great Mother Goddess. These stones were a temple to these people of so long, long, long, long ago.

It is said that there were twelve great Mambo kings and queens over a period of some 500 years. It was a great famine which destroyed this great empire of the Mambo, an empire which stretched all the way from beyond the Zambezi River, right down into the land today known as Zimbabwe, into the Transvaal and far into what is today the Free State.

Our country has seen many empires come and go. Our country has seen many kings arise and pass away. These funerary masks, one of the king’s horse and the other of the king himself, remind us of that. Sometimes in the place of a king’s horse, a young calf or a goat was sacrificed and its face also represented in clay.

Whenever a great priest died, either voluntarily or through suicide, a clay mask was made over his face. They are much, much older than the 500 – 700AD date given.’

Credo studies the text of the next artifact and shakes his head.

‘One cannot help but feel very sad when one sees interesting African artifacts so wrongly labeled in museums. It all proves just how little is known about my country and its people.’

KING’S MUSICIAN

PAGE 407
‘This is not an Oba. This is the king’s musician, an actual portrait of a man who danced for the king. In all African cultures, the man who played the lute and did tumbling for the king was allowed to wear a trouser-like garment as is shown.

There are his musical instruments.’

LINTON PANEL

PAGE 188
‘Why does everybody call these Bushman art?

Not only Bushmen painted, black people did too. It’s high time the whole story is revised. You sometimes see illustrated, practices and ceremonies, which are not Bushman.

That is a typical attitude of a dead king. There is a similar drawing on a farm, called Diana’s Vow, in Zimbabwe. It is called, ‘the dead king’.

There was a long-vanished people who came to South Africa and brought with them a powerful tradition of painting and engraving, a tradition which was passed on from father to son and from mother to daughters.’

DOOR

PAGE 389
‘These are sea currents, a door with patterns of ocean currents of a man who traveled through the sea.’

OGON

PAGE 382
‘The figure is not seated on a barrel. The figure holds a sword and has a very unusual headdress. This is the God of War, with his headdress of fire. This is Ogon.’