tambaran travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

The ceremonial Men’s House is the sacred dwelling of the initiated men and of the spirits. This kind of building is found in many cultures of Oceania, but those of the Middle Sepik are the most elaborate from an aesthetic viewpoint. Called tambaran, these constructions can reach 25 metres in length and exceed 18 metres in height. They occupy a central position in the villages and are built in the area reserved for ceremonies. The Men’s House is usually built on two levels. On the ground floor it is surrounded by large sculpted poles, decorated with totem symbols, and it is divided into spaces with hearths, each of which is assigned to a single clan. Here also are the huge slit drums, the small stools and the hooks sculpted and painted with anthropomorphic illustrations, which are hung from the beams to hold the food baskets. Access to the upper floor is by stairs with heavily decorated posts. One or two seated figures with open legs support the roof beams. The entrance to the upper floor is between the legs of the figure portraying the female or male ancestor in which the mythical theme of the transmutation of a human being into crocodile is iconographically portrayed. This second level of the house is also divided among the clans and sometimes it contains a space reserved for the initiated. The treasures of the clans are preserved on this floor: the great sacred flutes used during ceremonies and the skulls of the ancestors and of the enemies which are exhibited on painted panels or hung from the beams with the anthropomorphic hooks. As a whole the Men’s House represents primordial woman. The façade is her face and the building represents her body. In this way, all that belongs to men, that is to say the public, cultural and ceremonial sphere, is placed inside the body of a woman, so that the male/female conflict is overcome by a more profound integration between the two sexes. The ceremonial objects were collected in the area of the Sepik in the first two decades of the 20th century by Padre Kirschbaum S.V.D. and they were donated to Pope Pius XI in 1928.