Regiaein Guinea sepulturae repraesentatio
"A Representation of a Royal Guinea Burial" (caption translation). This image likely represents the Kwanza north region. According to a summary of the Latin text, when a chief dies his closest friends want to ensure that he lacks for nothing in the next world; thus, they kill his family and servants and bury them in the chief's grave along with his weaponry. Dishes of food offerings are placed on the grave, and the heads of the slain servants are modelled out of clay and mounted on stands around the grave while one or two guards (shown on either side of the gravesite) watch over the site. For this image in particular, see pp. 136-38. The De Brys had never visited Africa and constructed their illustrations of Africans from late sixteenth century eye-witness accounts by the Dutchman Pieter de Marees of the Gold Coast in the Voltaic region, and by the Portuguese Duarte Lopez of the kingdom of Kongo in the Kwanza North region. For an extended discussion of the De Brys' illustrations of Africa and their sources, see Ernst van den Boogaart, De Brys' Africa, in Susanna Burghartz, ed., Inszenierte Welten: Die west-und ostindischen reisen der verleger de Bry, 1590-1630 [Staging New Worlds: De Brys' Illustrated Travel Reports, 1590-1630] (Basel, 2004), pp. 95-149.
Image Title
Regiaein Guinea sepulturae repraesentatio
RegID
SI-OB-1020
Date
Late 1500s
Title
Regiaein Guinea sepulturae repraesentatio
Source
Theodore and Johan Israel De Bry, Indiae Orientalis pars VI [India Orientalis. pt. 6], (Frankfort, 1604), plate 22. Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library.
Language
Latin
Item sets
Pre-Colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture
Spatial Coverage
Africa--West Central North
Reproduced In
Theodore and Johan Israel De Bry, Indiae Orientalis pars VI [India Orientalis. pt. 6], (Frankfort, 1604), plate 22
Researchers
Jerome Handler; Michael Tuite; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
Identifier
BRY08