Station: [59] Nkisi Nkondi

Pierced with nails all over, the manikin stands firmly rooted to the spot and once confronted evil with a spear in his raised hand. He carries a rectangular box in front of his abdomen. A figure like this is known as a Nkisi Nkondi.

"Nkisi is simply whatever you use to help a sick person. Leaves, medicine. Nkisi protects the person from sickness. Nkisi chases the illness away. Nkisi is the place where a soul seeks refuge to stay alive, to be able to keep breathing. That’s why people venerate Nkisi."

A conversation with a missionary in 1910, in which a man called Nsemi Isaki described the task performed by a nkisi – a power figure.

A ritual expert, doctor, herbalist and therapist called a Nganga would put the figure to various uses. One of these was to cure diseases, if they were not of natural origin. And diseases almost never were. Evil forces were virtually always involved. 

The treatment had elements of psychotherapy. And the small box in front of the figure's abdomen, fastened with a mirror, contained the medicine: herbs perhaps, resins or other essences? We don't know, because the box has never been opened.

The figure exemplifies the links between Europe and Africa. Very early on, in 1483, Portuguese sailors reached the mouth of the Congo River and encountered a flourishing kingdom. An Afro-Portuguese culture with a Christian flavour emerged. That explains why the Nkisi Nkondi is strongly reminiscent of Saint Sebastian, pierced by arrows. He, too, was thought to provide protection from disease – specifically, the plague. And the small box in front of the nkisi’s abdomen evokes the containers in which relics of Catholic saints are kept.

The mirror on the front of the medicine box may also have been exported from Europe to Africa –perhaps even from our neighbouring town of Fürth. Its mirror factories sold their products all over the world.

A merchant from Spalt in central Franconia donated the nkisi figure to the Natural History Society in 1912. It’s from Cabinda, which is now an exclave of the African state of Angola in south-western Africa. In the Natural History Society's register of items received, it’s described as a "fetish", a term from colonial times. Today, figures like this one can be found on the art market and even on eBay.

Bild: Von Antonello da Messina - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Gemeinfrei, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147589

By Anonymous - Bibliothèque de l' École Polytechnique de Zurich, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1552035