Middle Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. 19th Century. Stone carved.

This old horn has a simplicity in form that is most common in the much older Sepik carving, when no metal tools were available. The strong head has a wonderful form and good detail; the area below the trumpet’s blowing hole has simple diamond shape designs. The highlight, in some ways, of this object is the superb ancestral face carved near its base – and it would be this invokation of ancestral power that gives the headhunting horn its potency.