Nuer man smoking pipe

100 x 80 mm | Print gelatin silver

Date of Print:

?1930s

Previous PRM Number:

EP.N.345

Accession Number:

1998.346.345.1

Description:

A portrait of a seated man wearing a white bead neck ornament and smoking a long pipe with its bowl decorated with bands of white. Although he is described in The Nuer as a man of Zeraf River, suggesting a Gaawar, Thiang or Lak tribesman, on the second (probably original) print reverse he is described as a Law (Lou) 'chief of blood'.This photograph was most likely taken in the 1920s, possibly by its original owner Talib Ismail, a Sudanese sub-mamur at Akobo in Upper Nile Province from 1920-27. Ismail's base of Akobo also points to a Lou identity.

Photographer:

Talib Ismail

Date of Photo:

1921-7

Region:

[Southern Sudan] ?Jonglei Bahr-el-Zeraf River

Group:

Nuer ?Lou

Publication History:

Contemporary Publication - Reproduced as Plate XXVIIIc. (facing page 256) in E. E. Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer (Oxford University Press, 1940), with the caption 'c. Man (Zeraf River)', credited to Talib Ismail. Also reproduced as Plate XXb (facing page 208) in C.G. & B. Seligman's Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan (London, Routledge 1932), with the caption 'Three Nuer types', credited to E. E. Evans-Pritchard. [Chris Morton 5/5/2004]

Notes:

Biographical Information - Talib Ismail is noted in The Nuer as the source for two reproduced images. He was a Sudanese officer who served in Upper Nile Province as a sub-mamur at Akobo from 5 June 1920 to 1 November 1927. The prints all have the same handwriting on the reverse which may be that of C.G. Seligman who may have procured them in 1921-2 during travels in the region, and who used some of them in the volume Pagan Tribes of 1932. Curiously they reproduced the images crediting E-P as the source, although E-P rectified this in his own monograph. It is likely that Evans-Pritchard was given these Nuer prints by his supervisor Seligman. See correspondence with Douglas Johnson in RDF [Chris Morton 23/4/2004]
Archive note - This print seems to be a slightly later and slighty cropped copy of [.2], presumably made in the 1930s for publication. [CM 9/9/2005]

PRM Source:

Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard

Acquired:

Donated 1966

Other Owners:

E. E. Evans-Pritchard Collection. Probably given to Evans-Pritchard by C. G. & B. Z. Seligman.

Class:

Physical Anthropology , Narcotic , Ornament

Keyword:

Pipe , Ornament Neck

Documentation:

Original catalogue lists in Manuscript Collections. Additional material in related documents files. [CM 27/9/2005]

Primary Documentation:

Accession Book Entry: [p. 98] 1966.27 [1 - 24] G[ift] PROFESSOR E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARD; INST. OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY, 51 BANBURY RD. OXFORD 1966.27.17 S. SUDAN. NUER TRIBE. Box of negatives each in separate envelope, labelled. (some missing). Nos. 1 - 213. (prints in box 1966.27.18)...1966.27.18 S. SUDAN. NUER TRIBE. Box of prints each in separate envelope. Nos. 1 - 213. (negatives in 1966.27.17.)

Recorder:

Christopher Morton [5/5/2004] [Southern Sudan Project]