PW104: Sepulchers of these barbarians

[Q]uesti sono i sepolcri di questi Barbari e massima delle Personne grandi e regie sono fatte di pure pietre senza calcina 2: testi di morti nella punta de Pali p[er] significare che sono sepolchri 3: fiasco di Polvo 4: tavole di Pietra fatte rozamente; dove cavando la cassa o ossa del sepulcro lo posano; p[er] farli ogni luna nova i soliti suffragi o sacrifici che cosistano in amazare ivi alcuni schiav;i 5 – e 6: schiavi da sagrificarsi 

These are the tombs of these Barbarians and especially of the Great or Royal Individuals they are made of only stones without mortar1  2: skulls at the tip of Poles to show that they are tombs. 3: Powder flask; 4: stone tables roughly made; where they put the box2  or bone[s] [after] taking them out of the tomb; to give them every new moon the usual offerings or sacrifices which consists in killing there some slaves; 5 – 6: slaves to be sacrificed

  • 1
    See the similar excavated site near Pungo a Ndongo in Manuel Gutierrez and Frédérique Valenti, “Archéologie et anthropologie des tumulus de Kapanda (Angola),” Journal des africanistes (1995): 145-69.
  • 2
    About the royal funerary boxes or misseto see Cavazzi, Missione Evangelica, vol. A, book 1, chap. 5, 52; vol. A, book 2, chap. 10, 118.

Notes

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