Dogon Tribe Mali Figural Granary Door

Dogon tribe granary door panel, Mali, carved wood, featuring (4) high relief female figures balancing baskets overhead (symbols of fertility), accented by low relief diamond pattern at center, flanked by crocodiles at top/bottom, original sliding lock at upper left, rear affixed with (3) screws and steel cable mount.

Measures: 29.5″ h (to hinge tips, each measures 1.5″H) x 19.75″ W x 1.5″ D.
Weight: 9 pounds, 14 ounces.

The Dogon, subsistence farmers who hold ancient animist beliefs, are one of central Mali’s ethnic groups. In the 15th century, or even earlier, perhaps fleeing a wave of Islamization, they settled along the 100-mile-long Bandiagara Cliffs, which rise just above this village. The Dogon displaced the indigenous Tellem people, who had used caves and cliff dwellings as granaries and burial chambers, a practice the Dogon adopted. They built their villages on the rocky slopes below. Today, the majority of the estimated 500,000 Dogon remain purely animist (the rest are Muslims and Christians), their ancient culture based on a triumvirate of gods. Ritual art—used to connect with the spiritual world through prayer and supplication—can still be found in caves and shrines. Dogon doors and shutters, distinctively carved and embellished with images of crocodiles, bats and sticklike human figures, adorn important village structures.

The villages of Dogon Country are among hundreds of sites across Mali that local people have plundered for cash. The pillaging feeds an insatiable overseas market for Malian antiquities, considered by European, American and Japanese art collectors to be among the finest in Africa. The objects range from the Inland Niger Delta’s delicate terra-cotta statuettes—vestiges of three empires that controlled Saharan trade routes to Europe and the Middle East for some 600 years—to Neolithic pottery to the carved wooden doors and human figurines made by the Dogon.