IDNO

N.19136.ROS

Description

A distant view of the King of Bunyoro’s ‘court house’; a European-style house painted white with a thatched roof and stairs leading to the main doorway. The doorway has a window on either side and a porch area in which a number of pillars (also painted white) support the roof. This porch area appears to extend all the way around the house in the portico-style. In front of the court house, a man? wearing a kanzu (white tunic) appears to be walking. In the background is the King’s house; a European-style building, painted white, with a corrugated iron roof?, no windows and attached? wooden? portico -style entrance.

Physical Condition: Film is a yellow/brown colour.

Place

E Africa; Uganda; Bunyoro; Masindi

Cultural Affliation

Banyoro (Bakitara)

Named Person

Andereya Bisereko Duhaga II (b. 1882 - d. 1924)

Photographer

?Roscoe, John R.

Collector / Expedition

Roscoe, John R. [Mackie Ethnological Expedition, Uganda, 1919 - 1920]

Date

1919 - 1920

Collection Name

Roscoe Collection

Source

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

This negative was kept in an envelope marked C30/85/ by the cataloguer. The envelope was kept in box marked C30/ by the cataloguer.
Previously stored on Shelf 4, in group of 4 wooden boxes numbered 180.

Publication: Image published in Roscoe, J., 1922. The Soul of Central Africa: An Account of the Mackie Ethnological Expedition. (London: Cassell and Co.), p. 219, with the caption: "Bunyoro: Court House at Masindi with King’s house in background”. [ED 3/10/2007]

Context: "The principal house in the royal enclosure was the great court-house, Kaluzika, of which the main doorway faced the gate of the enclosure and therefore looked south and into the kraal of the sacred Nkorogi herd. ... The court-house was divided into four rooms, of which the front one, into which the main entrance led, was the throne room, Hamulyango. This occupied about half the building, and in the centre of it, opposite the ivory tusk and the gateway of the enclosure, stood the throne, Nyamyalo, on a platform of earth beaten hard. This platform, which was about two feet high, was covered with a leopard skin and a lion-skin, and in the centre, over the other two, lay a white cow-skin on which the throne stood. ... The throne room was separated from the other three rooms in the court-house by a reed wall in which there was no doorways. The wall, however, was made in three parts, and the part at each end was set some three feet away from the line of the middle portion, which overlapped these end parts far enough to make it possible for anyone to see from the throne-room into the dairy into which both openings led, while the space was left large enough for a person to pass through.
The dairy, Musiki, into which these openings led, was the central division of the three which lay behind the throne-room and it had no doorway to the outside. In this room there stood on one side the official bed in which the king had to spend part of each night. The room also contained a platform on which were a number of fetishes and the royal milk pots. ... On one side of the dairy was Mwihindiro, the room where the crowns were made and kept. This room had an opening to the outside, by which the king generally entered and left the court-house, using the front doorway, where the tusk lay, only on special occasions. On the other side of the dairy, also with a doorway to the outside, was the robing room, Omwijekero, where the bark cloths were kept and where the king went during the day to change his dress. In each of these rooms there was always a wife of the king on duty to guard the room and protect it from the intrusion of any unauthorised person, and also to carry out any instructions the king might give, the special duty of the wife who was dairy-maid being to supply the king with milk whenever he wished to drink. In all four rooms fires were kept burning in special stands of pottery during the night” (Roscoe, J., 1923. The Bakitara (or Banyoro): The First Part of the Report of The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 77 - 79).

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 3/10/2007]