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A Shock Discovery
DID I actually believe I would ever hold a piece of the Moon Mask in my hands?
I’m not sure, to be honest.
I’ve been so obsessed with the idea of the Moon Mask for so long that I guess I had almost forgotten that it was an actual thing. Something distinct and tangible, a beautifully crafted work of art, something used for ritual purposes, the central idol of ancient religious thought.
It’s not quite what I expected. The Sarisariñama mask differs from the depictions and oral descriptions of the Bouda Moon Mask in several ways.
While the Wassu graffiti indicated that the Bouda mask had rectangular slits for eyes, the Sarisariñama one has wide, gaping holes. There are no brightly coloured beads patterned in swirls around the face’s cheeks. Instead, adorning this mask is some sort of ochre-coloured paint or dye, now faded and flaking, giving the impression of dried blood. Jaws filled with corroded metal teeth, twisted into a perpetual, malevolent snarl, have replaced the benevolent ‘almost-smile’ of the African mask.
Indeed, to the untrained eye, the two masks look like the opposite number of one another- good versus evil, light versus dark, joy versus pain.
Yet, despite the differences, there is one glaring similarity: both are composite masks, constructed out of two very different materials at, I propose, two very different points in time.
A roughly triangular section of the Sarisariñama mask encompasses the left-hand side of its fearsome jaw. It tapers up to a point in the centre of its nose. The overall shape of the face was evidently derived from the contour of the shard’s outer edge, validating my belief that the fragment pre-dates the rest of the mask. It is of a reddish-coloured metal that I cannot identify. Yet, the rest of the mask is a single gold sheet- this is consistent with my knowledge of South American metallurgical skill during the Early Horizon, 1000-200 BCE. The two metal sections have been amalgamated into a single façade. The gold has been painted over with the red pigment I mentioned previously.
It is precisely the same technique I have always imagined being used in the construction of the Bouda mask. Yet thousands of miles of ocean and jungle separate Sarisariñama from the mythological home of the Bouda. So how did two pieces of the same mask come to be distributed across such a distance?
I can’t help but wonder, also, how Kha’um, the last oni or Great King of the Bouda ended up trapped in a crocodile-infested chamber in the middle of the Venezuelan rainforest. Whatever information Nadia gleans from the study of his remains, I must consign myself to never knowing the details of his life, beyond the legends of the Black Death.
Yet, since finding the mask, I feel somehow closer to my ancestor, as though he is as tied to its fate as I am. As though he remains connected to it even after death.
Yep, definitely hit my head too hard earlier!