Producer unknown to us
Amulet
Africa, Sudan, Kordofan
Before 1973
Leather, cut, sewn; plant fiber, braided
Lothar Stein (former museum director) acquired this amulet during a research trip to Sudan in 1973
Donated to the museum by Stein in 1973
NAf 5618
This ring-shaped amulet was made of cut and sewn leather and plant fibers.
Lothar Stein (*1935) began working at the Leipzig museum in 1960 and served as its director from 1980 to 2001. His professional expertise was in the communities of the Middle East. He was also part of a research focus group on herding nomads in the deserts between West Africa and Central Asia. Since the late 1950s, Stein has made numerous research trips to the Arab region and North Africa and has also been involved in building museums there.
In 1972–73, Lothar Stein was invited to head and expand the ethnological department of the Sudanese National Museum in Khartoum. During this time, he undertook two extensive trips to nomadic communities in the west of the country to collect objects for the museums in Khartoum and Leipzig. He interpreted such amulets as evidence for the continuation of pre-Islamic religious practices. They were often made to order by Islamic clerics.
Frank Usbeck