...one can imagine ‘grave robbers’ plundering graves beneath a tent in the pale glow of a camping lamp, whilst a full moon tries to illuminate their sinister goings-on.
I took the little Djenné-Jeno figurine out of its display case. Now it stands between us on the round wooden table in my kitchen. Sitting opposite her is Bénédicte Savoy, Professor of Art History at the Technical University of Berlin, a provenance researcher and later author of the book *Africa’s Struggle for its Art*. She looks at the figurine only briefly. Then she picks up the export documents from the National Museum in Bamako.
“What’s that price? 3,000 dollars? Or euros?”
“No,” I reply. “FCFA.”
She looks up.
“How much is 3,000 FCFA?”
“About four and a half euros.”
She looks at me in disbelief.
“That can’t be true!”
She takes out her mobile phone and takes a photo of each page. Then I explain to her: “A ten per cent export duty is levied on these 3,000 FCFA – that’s about forty-five cents, 0,45 Euro. But we export several hundred items each time. It really does add up. And after all, Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world. They’re grateful for any revenue the state can generate.”
The small terracotta figurine stands silently between us. At this moment, only one of us knows its story.
Its story did not begin in a European museum, nor in a private collection. It began many centuries ago as part of a burial in the inner delta of the Niger. The deceased lay in a large ceramic urn, with a small hole at the bottom to allow the bodily fluids to drain away. Terracotta figurines, small bronze objects and other grave goods were placed around him. The arrangement followed a fixed tradition: the urn formed the centre, with the figurines lying to either side, as companions for the deceased on his journey.
Centuries later, hardly anyone knew where the graves were located. The landscape had been overlaid by new settlements. Yet on some hills, a striking number of terracotta shards lay scattered – remnants of more recent settlements, but at the same time indications of older burial sites beneath them. For the excavators, who knew the area well, these shards were a sign that there was a high probability of a grave lying beneath the surface.
When I arrived in Mopti in 2004, this system was explained to me by the men whom the international academic and museum communities usually lumped together under the terms ‘looters’ or ‘grave robbers’. Their accounts were not archaeological excavation reports. Nevertheless, they described the typical context in which the figurines were found with astonishing precision. They drew in the sand to show where the burial urn lay, where the terracotta figurines were located, and at which points the small bronze figurines were usually found. The same arrangement repeated itself time and again. Later, I drew a pictogram of what had been sketched for me in the sand. I had measured the approximate distance using the span of my hand.
A Djenne funeral urn showing the typical positions of the excavated sculptures, pictogram wj.
At that time, the so-called ‘treasure lotteries’ were part of everyday life in Mopti. Traders, middlemen and, occasionally, tourists would meet in a café whose name has long since changed. People would, in a sense, place bets on a burial mound. A price was agreed, with no guarantee of success. It was only at night that the actual excavation began. Work was carried out under a makeshift tent by the light of a camping lamp so as not to attract attention. If the group was discovered by the gendarmerie, the night often ended in prison. The Western client would then have to send more money so that the excavators could be released and the work continued. It was not uncommon for this to happen more than once.
Once a grave had finally been reached, the scene that often unfolded was exactly as it was later described to me: the urn in the centre, flanked by terracotta figurines, with smaller bronze objects between them. If a figurine broke during recovery, the excavation area had to be extended in order to find the missing pieces as well. Often, the same excavators would reappear the following morning – this time with small bronze objects that they had secretly set aside. They openly admitted that they were withholding these pieces from their middlemen. The pay was poor, prison sentences were dangerous, they were often beaten up because the ransom was slow in coming, and the risk was high. That is why they regarded these bronze objects as a kind of fair extra reward.
A few days later, our Land Cruiser – fully loaded – was parked outside the National Museum in Bamako. The museum photographer arrived. Every object was photographed and measured. The permits classified the objects as replicas. Upon their arrival in Berlin, these objects were examined using thermoluminescence analysis. Almost without exception, the analyses confirmed their great age and proved that they were indeed ancient terracotta artefacts from the Djenne culture.
The scientific analysis was able to determine the age of the figure. However, it could not establish exactly where the figure had been found.
This is precisely where the object’s history begins. It is not thermoluminescence alone, but the combination of various sources that paints a historical picture: the consistently described position of the figurines in the grave, the accounts of the excavators, the burial customs of Djenné-Jeno as known from archaeological research, and finally the scientific dating. None of these sources is sufficient on its own. It is only their combination that makes the original context of the find plausible.
This gives the figure a history that begins long before its appearance on the art market. It tells of a burial many centuries ago, of a night-time excavation in the Niger River delta, of dealers, prison sentences, a lottery involving archaeological artefacts, ransom payments, scientific analyses and, finally, of its arrival in Europe.
Six years later, I open a book. The title is *Africa’s Struggle for its Art*. I am reminded of that encounter at my kitchen table. I leaf through to the end, to the sources and the bibliography. Our conversation, the National Museum’s export documents, the photographs on her mobile – none of it is to be found there.
I place the book next to the small terracotta figurine.
Perhaps that is the real difference between a narrative and an object biography.
An object’s biography consists of the traces an object has actually left behind: its burial a thousand years ago, its rediscovery, the accounts of the people who found it, the official documents relating to its export, the scientific analyses, and the encounters it has sparked along the way. It is not always complete. It is not always convenient. But it is verifiable reality.
I leaf through the bibliography once more. The export licences from Bamako are missing. Our conversation is missing. The little figurine on my kitchen table is missing. The object’s biography ends where it is actually only just beginning. Yet that is precisely where its academic value lies: it does not tell the story that is supposed to be told. It tells what can actually be pieced together about the individual object. I close the book. As I look at the little terracotta figurine, I am not thinking about Africa’s struggle for its art. I am thinking of something else: Africa’s art of survival.