Untitled Image (Funeral Procession)
This image depicts a funeral ceremony in the Senegambia region. According to Dapper, "When someone dies, all his relatives come to mourn and attend the funeral. The body is preceded by drummers. . . and followed by the relatives, each one in his row, the men first, the women following. They bury his clothing with him in a shallow grave that they cover with a big earthen mound (p. 235). In an informed discussion of Dapper as an historical source, Adam Jones writes "there is virtually no evidence that Dapper took much interest in what sort of visual material was to accompany his text, and that it was the publisher, Van Meurs, who probably did all the engraving himself." With respect to the plates, in particular, Jones concludes that "for those interested in seventeenth-century black Africa rather than in the history of European perceptions, few of the plates showing human beings and artefacts are of any value. . . [and] originated solely from Van Meurs' imagination. . . [although] they have been used as historical evidence in modern works." See Jones, "Decompiling Dapper: A Preliminary Search for Evidence" History in Africa, 17 (1990), pp. 187-190.
Image Title
Untitled Image (Funeral Procession)
RegID
SI-OB-642
Date
Late-1600s
Title
Untitled Image (Funeral Procession)
Source
D. O. Dapper, Description de l'Afrique. . . Traduite du Flamand (Amsterdam, 1686; 1st ed., 1668), p. 235. Copy in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
Language
French
Item sets
Pre-Colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture
Spatial Coverage
Africa--Western Savanna
Reproduced In
D. O. Dapper, Description de l'Afrique. . . Traduite du Flamand (Amsterdam,1686; 1st ed., 1668), p. 235.
Researchers
Jerome Handler; Michael Tuite; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
Identifier
DAP14