Box Animal Head (Ifugao)

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Rectangular wooden box with lid. Black-brown, made from one piece with two handles in the form of animal heads, which rise from the edge of the box on the narrow sides and run at an angle of about 75 degrees to the side walls. Rectangular notches for the two handles are cut out in the corresponding places in the lid. The contents consist of fruits, chicken feathers and bamboo sticks. Lambrecht (1939: 524ff) of the Mayawyaw (a subgroup of the Ifugao) describes ritual boxes of this type made of wood or rattan, with one or two handles, in two sizes: tagga'd and ho'op are larger boxes, upigan are smaller (ho 'op is also the name for a fishing basket, as Lambrecht (1957: 7, fig.1) draws attention to. Lambrecht (1932: 28ff, fig.4) describes the use of the tagga'd or ho'op box during a rice ritual, in the course of which chickens are sacrificed over the box and the priest drink rice wine with the owner of the rice field and his wife. The box contains chicken blood, chicken liver, chicken and pork bile, chicken feathers, pork bristles, rice bread and betel nuts. The priest demands the gods, Ancestral spirits to come and take the rice bread out of the box, but to spare the young rice bushes in the fields. Without handles: 25cm; H. without lid: 9.5cm.

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