Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 295
a structural feature of the architecture of the foyer area of a house in our illustrations
describing the upper passageway.
Plates 26c and 26d above show the interior of the 'stomach' of thala. The image on the left
shows the opening from the outside, while the one on the right is a view from above. We
recognise the ritual pots stored inside, and will come back to the role of each of them in
Chapter 3.12.
We can only make an informed guess as to why the opening of the 'stomach' of thala faces the
front wall and the central passageway where the anthropomorphic breasts or eyes are found. If
we consult Figure 19c at the beginning of Chapter 3.12, we can see the arrangement of the
sitting stones and the three ancestor stones forming a sacrificial area unit with the lower
kitchen and the ritual sauce kitchen. To interpret the opening at the back of the 'stomach' of
thala as a rectum would be speculation, despite the importance of dung for soil fertility. We
are neither entirely sure whether the two thala elements were the same everywhere in
Dghweɗe. For Korana Basa, we only have a photo of Bulama Nghatha's thala with the
ancestor stones at its foot, but we are not sure whether he also had a 'bed' of thala.
Concerning the ritual pots inside Buba's 'stomach' of thala, we can see a beer bowl on a
decorated stand jahurimbe (1), and a zal jije pot (2) which is the tughdhe thala (ritual beer pot
for thala) for the deceased grandfather (jije). We know this because later we will show
another image of Buba's thala from 2005, in which we can see two tughdhe thala. We think
that perhaps his father had died before we took the photo in 1998. This would have meant that
his father's tughdhe thala had been ritually smashed and not yet replaced with Buba's tughdhe
thala. The jahurimbe beer bowl played a role during har ghwe, the sacrificial slaughtering of
he-goat for the deceased father. We will discuss har ghwe in the next chapter. Jahurimbe also
played a role during adult initiation (dzum zugune), and we will discuss the ritual
circumstances of its use. We also see parts of a ritual cooking pot (3) in Plate 26d, which also
played a role during har ghwe, during which it was used to libate sorghum beer over the
ancestor stones. The other item we see in Plate 26c and 26d is a little grinding stone (4), but
can only assume that it was also part of the ritual setting found in a 'stomach' of thala.
Plate 27a: A Chikiɗe shrine facing the front of the house
Plate 27b: Rear of the shrine
The two images above (Plate 27a and 27b) show the front and back of a Chikiɗe house
shrine 3. As was the case in Dghweɗe, it was situated directly behind the smooth front wall.
3
The 'face' of the Chikiɗe shrine in the left image was digitally reassembled from six slides, because
the distance between the shrine and the front stone wall was less than one metre. It was also rather dark
and I had to use flash light.
293
