Consulter la cote et le prix de A Fine Baule Mouse Oracle Container, Mid to late 20th cen

Description : Carved wooden Baule Tribe Mouse Oracle (Gbekre), Divination bowl from ivory Coast of west Africa. Such containers were tools for for fortune telling, the physical apparatus of the gbekre is contained within a terracotta vessel inside a hollow wooden cylinder. A shelf divides the vessel into two distinct chambers, which are connected by a hole, the mice are placed in the lower chamber and pass through the hole into the upper chamber, in which the diviner has placed ten small sticks (originally, bird or bat bones were used), the small sticks, called gbekre nyma (eyes of the mice), are coated with flour and attached at one end with fibre to the shell of an earth turtle, the actions of the mice in the upper chamber change the positions of the sticks, creating a new configuration that constitutes the sign to be translated by the diviner.

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