LOBI Maternity Shrine Figure (Container)

A deeply patinated 19th-century wooden figure (83 cm) from the Lobi of Burkina Faso — a mother holding a child on her hip, hollowed internally to serve as a concealed container for magical ingredients and divinatory instruments.

1. The anomaly of the Lobi container

Lobi Bateba are almost universally carved from solid wood.

• Rare Anthropomorphic Box: A hidden seam across the shoulders separates the head-and-shoulder section from the torso, which opens as a lid.
• Master Diviner's Property: The hollow interior once held highly classified tiila medicines and divinatory tools belonging to a powerful priest.

2. The maternity motif

The exterior carving is not decorative — it doubles the object's occult function.

• Bateba ti Bala: Mother-and-child figures are carved specifically to intercede on behalf of women seeking fertility and to protect the lineage from infant mortality.
• Container as Womb: By making the container itself a mother, the carver visually maps the hidden medicines inside onto the literal life-giving womb of the figure.

3. 19th-century antiquity

The surface tells the story of long shrine residence.

• Encrusted Patina: Dry, cracked wood heavy with decades of millet-beer and blood libations.
• Heart of a Private Sanctuary: Kept deep inside the thilda of a master diviner, hiding profound occult power in plain sight as what appears to be a simple mother-and-child figure.

Summary

This Lobi maternity container is a magnificent ethnographic rarity. It merges the protective, fertile symbolism of the mother with the secretive, utilitarian function of a medicine box, surviving from the 19th century as a masterwork of Voltaic magic.