This elegant figure once topped a staff carried by a Luba chief. In this context, the female signifies the perpetuation of life and reflects the spiritual and physical supremacy of the Luba leader who owned the scepter. Her shaved head and the markings on her torso signify an exceptionally beautiful and powerful female ancestor. The gesture of holding her own breasts emphasizes her life-giving capacity, while the knotted navel suggests her connection to the origins and openings of life. Whether braids, buns, or crests, the hairstyles help identify the hand of a specific carver or his region.
A new chief received a staff as an inheritance from a previous ruler. A chief might give his staff to an envoy to carry as an introduction to another chief; a warlord risked lives to keep it from falling into enemy hands. A spiritual leader traced signs in the ground with it, and a court chronicler used it to commemorate an ancestral history. In its metal decorations and symbolic geometric carvings, derived from basketry patterns, the staff that once bore this figure expressed a language of forms. Some symbols were easily interpreted by all as signs of power; others were only intelligible to the initiated. This work is encrusted from repeated applications of oil.
A Luba staff with its crowning figure might serve as a diplomatic calling card, a record of heritage, or a diviner of spirits.
