Old Dogon Amulet – 3 Sun Disks – Mali

Bronze, leather. Cm. 5,3 high x cm. 4,9 width (2.09″ x 1.93″). Gr. 24,6 (0.87 oz.).

Metal works like this is molded in bronze by ‘the lost wax method’, also called ‘cire-perdue’. This kind of metal molding is made with a wax model and a mold made from a heat proof material, such as clay, in which the liquid metal is poured into through pipes and openings, and the wax is melted and drained away. The method is common on every continent exept Australia, and dates back to 3rd millenium BC and has sustained few changes since then.

The Dogon are an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. Certain researchers investigating the Dogon have reported that they seem to possess advanced astronomical knowledge. From 1931 to 1956 the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule studied the Dogon. In late 1946 Griaule spent a consecutive thirty-three days in conversations with the Dogon wiseman Ogotemmêli, the source of much of Griaule and Dieterlen’s future publications (Dieu d’eau. Entretiens avec Ogotemmêli was published in 1948). They reported that the Dogon believe that the brightest star in the sky, Sirius (sigi tolo or “star of the Sigui”), has two companion stars, pō tolo (the Digitaria star), and ęmmę ya tolo, (the female Sorghum star), respectively the first and second companions of Sirius A.

Literature: DOGON by Hélène Leloup for the exhibition “Dogon” in 2012 at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, page 375. Editions d’Art SOMOGY.

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