In March 2015 and January 2016, I undertook two expeditions to the Republic of Mali on the Dogon Plateau (Mopti region). Trips were made at their own expense (in 2015, the Moscow-Bamako-Moscow flight was paid for by the Institute of Internal Affairs of the Russian Academy of Sciences). I am deeply grateful to all those without whose help these expeditions could not have taken place-Dr. Kenekuo (Barthelemy), Minister of National Education of the Republic of Mali In addition, to the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Mali, the Embassy of the Republic of Mali in the Russian Federation and the second adviser of the Embassy, Dr. Sagu Binima, Director General of the National Museum in Bamako, Dr. Samuel Sidibe, Musa Amadou Guindo, Bokar Guindo, Laji Cisse, Souleymane Guindo, Bureima Gandeba, Justin Guindo, Domo Guindo, Ansama Seiba, Pabei Kassambara and all residents of Bamako, Jenne, Mopti, Sevare, Ende, Kani Bonzon, Baguru, Semari and Tintan.

The purpose of the expeditions was to study the evolution of traditional Dogon culture in the XXI century and collect a collection of objects of material culture and traditional fine art of the Dogon for the Peter the Great Museum of Fine Arts (Kunstkamera, St. Petersburg). Studies were conducted in the south of the Mopti region in the villages of Ende, Kani Bonzon (Kani Na), Kani Kombole and Baguru (Bankass district), in the village of Semari (Samari) in Duenza district, and in the villages of Tintan (Tintam), Ume and Dogani (Bandiagara district) (map 1). The expedition also managed to visit the cities of Segu, Mopti and Jenne. The main result of the expeditions was a collection of objects of Dogon culture and art; information was obtained about the architecture, oral tradition and social structure of the Dogon, allowing us to get an idea of the evolution of the culture of this people at the beginning of the new century; about 3.5 thousand photographs were taken. about 60 hours of video recordings were made; a short ten-kan-bamana-Russian dictionary (about 600 words and expressions with a video recording of phonetics and articulation) was compiled for practical communication with the residents of the village. Ende.

After 1991, our compatriots practically did not conduct regular field research in the Dogon Country. An outstanding expert on the culture and ethnography of Mali, V. R. Arsenyev (1948-2010) studied the cultures of the Mandarin-speaking peoples of this country, mainly Bambara. The collections of Malian art and ethnography that he brought to MAHE include Dogon cultural objects, but the number is small. The only expedition to the Dogon Country was undertaken in 2008 by an employee of the Center for Political and Social Anthropology of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera) RAS A. Yu. Siim (Moskvitina). In the collection N 7410 presented by her to the MAE RAS, there are items of Dogon material culture and art: a ritual ladder, a priest's wand, etc.

Thanks to the French ethnologist-Africanist M. Griol, the Dogon are perhaps the most famous people in Africa - a huge number of publications are devoted to their culture, history, mythology and art. But not a single researcher after M. Griaule has been able to find anything that even remotely resembles the myths he collected about the satellites of Sirius (Griaule, 1948) (in the ten-kan language, which is spoken in the villages of Kani Bonzon (Kani Na), Kani Kombole and Ende in the Bankass region, there are no words that denote celestial bodies other than the Sun and Moon). It should be noted that some other information contained in the publications of Griol and researchers of his school raises many questions: for example, in the monograph "The Pale Fox" by M. Griol and Zh. Dieterlen, describing the migration of modern population groups to the Dogon Plateau, wrote about the village of Kani Na (Kani-Bonzon) as " now extinct (actuellement disparu)" (Griaule and Dieterlen, 1991, p. 3) (ode to Kani-Bonzon and the history of her "disappearance", see below).

The truism that has already become a truism about the disappearance of traditional Dogon culture and its complete commercialization does not correspond to reality; information about migrations to the Dogon Plateau, the time of founding villages, etc. is not always accurate. In other words, even the information about Dogon ethnography that is considered absolutely reliable, in fact, often needs significant correction.

Pyotr A. KUTSENKOV-Doctor of Cultural Studies, Leading Researcher, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

page 170

Map 1. Dogon Country.

page 171
The peculiarity of my "introduction" to this environment, which is outwardly very friendly, but in reality still tightly "closed" to strangers, was that I had a long-standing twinning relationship with a native of the village of Ende, Musa Amadou Gindo, a descendant of the chief (ogo) on my mother's side and the high priest (lagan) on my mother's side. on my father's side. He left his native village early and returned there after a long break. In total, he had not been to his village for about 30 years (although his contacts with the villagers were never interrupted). People were suspicious of Musa's" fantastic " stories about studying in Russia, which was as exotic to them as Mali was to us, and that he had a brother there. We came to the village together, and this was taken by the villagers as proof that all Musa's stories about his life for 30 years were true. Thus, his status was confirmed and, accordingly, my status as Musa's twin brother was confirmed. But this does not mean that I have become completely "my own". Nevertheless, I had a higher degree of trust than any other outsider.

When collecting the collection, I tried to acquire items that were either ethnographically authentic or distinguished by outstanding artistic qualities, combining these criteria as much as possible. The main part of the collection was purchased in d. Ende, located in the south of the Mopti region (Bankass district, Kany-Bonzon commune). Its population is more than 5 thousand people (a much smaller number of residents live permanently in the village). Strictly speaking, there are two villages - the old one, now abandoned by the inhabitants, and the new one. The old village is located on a rocky ledge, while the new one is located at its foot. Even at the beginning of the XXI century, the old village was inhabited, but now all its inhabitants have moved to the valley. Old houses are not completely abandoned - they have owners, they are maintained in good condition.

The first thing that attracts attention in Ende is the carved doors and gates of houses and the doors of granaries. Doors are often supplemented with bolts, which, along with carved stools, are the most common genre of Dogon arts and crafts. The village museum 1 presents fragments of doors from 140-150 years ago. Thus, the evolution of Ende's art can be traced back about a century and a half.

In 2015, the collection was limited to buying a few items from village carvers and ordering a door bolt from the best blacksmith in the village, Ansam Seib. Items that weren't meant for tourists weren't even shown to me. But in 2016, there was no trace of the previous alienation. This was reflected, in particular, in the fact that they brought really interesting things, and not necessarily for sale. There were some that I and my Malian colleagues were deeply convinced should have been in the National Museum in Bamako, or at least in the village museum. So, I was shown a very old statuette, which, judging by its shape, following the curves of the wooden billet, could belong to tell. Thanks to this, I managed to collect a fairly representative collection of door bolts, where all the main types of these products that exist in End 2 are represented (in other villages where I was not "my own", they refused to sell me bolts).

Attention should also be paid to items related to malicious magic, which in 2015 were not shown to me and even denied their very existence.3 Among them, the iron figure of a chameleon (Jobumo) stands out. This is a complex forged structure with legs and tail riveted to the body in the form of two chains, to which miniature knives and scissors are attached. At night, the master of Jubumo sends him to his enemies, and he wounds them with knives and scissors. But Jubumo can also harm its owner. This is possible if the victim turns out to be a stronger sorcerer than he is. Another interesting magic item is a small deadbolt for the granary door, which was not used for its intended purpose. According to Amadou Dagale Gindo (Ende) and my guide and colleague Bokari Gindo (Ende, Bamako), it can be used to stop any action or process. The object symbolizing this action is placed inside the bolt, after which it is wrapped with a cloth, tied and sewn. Otherwise, it is the usual Ende bolt with the image of ancestors (similar bolts are in the collection of the National Museum in Bamako N 81-x-299 and 81-x-303).

1 Ende residents (like all Dogon people) are well aware of the value of their culture. This is evidenced by the fact that they have created a museum of the village, where old and new household items and works of art are displayed. There are also such local history museums in Bandiagara and in the villages of Nombori and Soroli.

2 For details on Dogon door bolts, see [Kutsenkov and Semenova, 2016].

3 Protective magic is very well developed in End. Malicious magic is much less common. All problems Dogons usually solve with the help of poison.

page 172
page 173
It was indeed a great success that the blacksmith Ansam Seib agreed to forge it specifically for MAHE im. Peter the Great figure of a horseman and record the forging process on a photo and video camera. This permission provided extremely valuable and, as far as I know, unique information about the technique of forging such sculptures, previously unavailable: such sculptures were made exclusively by order of the leader or priest. The blacksmith would come to the house of the chief and / or priest and work there in a designated place. No one could see it. According to Ansam, the last such figures were forged by his great-great-grandfather.

In Enda, an iron billet is cut with a chisel from the inside, after which the strips of metal from which the horse's legs are forged are bent from the inside out; in Songo-style figures, the billet is cut from the outside, after which the strips of iron are bent from the outside in.

Now the rules are not followed as strictly as before. But as far as blacksmiths and blacksmithing are concerned, they are still active. Blacksmiths remain a special caste4 and still adhere to ritual restrictions. So, in d. Tintan they very politely but firmly refused to give me permission to film the forging process.

In 2015 and 2016. I purchased several wrought iron figures from Amadou Dagale Gindo, which Amadou himself was sure were the work of the Ende blacksmiths. He even mentioned the names of those craftsmen who, in his opinion, could have done these works 30-40 years ago. However, neither Ansama Seiba nor the other blacksmiths of tige (jamu, "clan") Seyba did not recognize their work in these matters and unanimously pointed to D. Songo is 10-12 km northwest of Bandiagara (not to be confused with San Ga ,the" Mecca " of French ethnology

4 In Ende and other villages, it is said that "Dogons, blacksmiths, tanners and weavers live in the village", i.e. artisans, people of caste, are not considered Dogons. They were not members of the community, had no land plots, and lived only on in-kind wages for their work. Now this rule is often violated. I note that these restrictions have nothing to do with discrimination: Ansama Seiba is one of the most respected residents of Ende, and slana about his skills goes far beyond the village.

page 174
(map 1) as the most likely place where these figures could have been made. Indeed, the method of work of Ende's blacksmiths differs from that applied in products possibly originating from ed. Songo. There is also a stylistic difference - figures from Ende are characterized by a lower degree of conventionality and an abundance of forged details.5 According to a thorough study by K. Robion-Brunner, the Dogon have six schools of metallurgy (a special section of the third chapter of her monograph is devoted to Ende [Robion-Brunner, 2010, p. 98-101]). According to her research, Songo Village is part of the Fico Zone (map 1). But K. Robion-Brunner researched schools

5 The horse harness made by Ansam Seib accurately reproduces the harness found during excavations in the capital of Wagadu (Ghana), Kumbi Sale (Berthier, 1983, p. 84; Diallo, 2015, p. 31). I note that the attribution of Ansam Seib can be trusted, since his family settled in Ende only about 150 years ago and came from Songo, and the historical memory of the Dogon is very clear and accurate.

page 175
iron smelting, not forging as such, and their boundaries may not coincide.

This case shows how easy it is to make a mistake in attributing works of traditional art. No less revealing is another story. In the village. Semari (Samari) in the house of chief Bureim Gandeba (Gandeba Voigeima) in 2015, my attention was drawn to an unusual door bolt. There is a similar one in the collection of the National Museum in Bamako (N 81-x-752), but its description does not contain information about the place of origin. In 2016, a survey in Semari showed that there are no artisans at all: living conditions in the village are very harsh, and there is simply not enough "surplus product"to support blacksmiths. Accordingly, there is not and cannot be any "Semari style" - all handicrafts are ordered by villagers from neighboring villages.6 The village of Tintan, located near Semari, has all the necessary artisans for a normal life. However, even there, it was very easy to make a mistake in defining the "village style". So, the son of the chief D. Bureima Kassambara (Cassambara Vigeima) showed me a sculpture stored in his house and very much appreciated by him, the author of which is the sculptor Justin Guindot from Ende. There I also purchased an iron figure of a horseman, which differs in forging technique and style from both Ende-style products and the conventional "Songo-style". It is possible that it depicts a rider not on a horse, but on a camel. Madu Seydou Kassambara, the blacksmith who sold me this sculpture, and the other blacksmiths from Tintan did not know where it was forged, 7 and if it were not for a clarifying question, I might have considered it a product of the Tintan blacksmith school.

In conversations with residents of Ende, Tintan, Semari and other villages, as well as with citizens of the city of Jenne, the same tendency was regularly shown: people are clearly not used to the fact that a buyer of traditional art works will ask questions. This helps to understand why in the vast sea of literature on Dogon art, it is not often possible to find information about the place of origin of sculptures and almost always there is no information about their authorship, although they are known and no one hides them. The only exception is a really old sculpture: for example, the Semari chief Bureima Gandeba did not know when the bolt appeared in his house - it was in its place for as long as Bureima can remember. He will be 65 years old in 2016, so this bolt could not have been made later than the late 1950s and early 1960s.

6 The fact that in the visual arts of different regions of the Dogon Country there are different styles, which consist of numerous sub-layers of individual villages, has been known for a long time: for example, the sculpture of d. Ende refers to the southern regional style and / or the Kambari style, but can be separated into a separate style or sub - style [Leloup, 1988, p. 51]; Tintan sculpture-to the style of the cultural and historical region of Bondum, which includes Semari.

H. In his book, Blom publishes numerous Dogon sculpture monuments indicating the villages from which they originate [Blom, 2011]. At the exhibition at the Dapper Museum (Paris) in October 1994-March 1995, the material was distributed among the ten main regional styles in the Dogon Country (Dieterlen and Roussin, 1994). E. Leloup, who has been studying the problem of regional styles in Dogon art since the 1980s (Leloup, 1988), in the catalog of a large art exhibition The Dogon exhibition at the Musee Branly (Paris), held from April 5 to July 7, 2011, also paid great attention to regional styles [Leloup, 2011, p. 6-11]. Accurate identification of individual sculptures is hindered by the fact that most museum descriptions of Dogon sculpture monuments do not contain information about their origin.

7 Strictly speaking, Madu Seydou Kassambara was not the owner of this sculpture. In a conversation with him, it turned out that about thirty years ago these things were left in Tintan for storage by some European collector (the blacksmiths did not remember his name, because they were children at that time). He never came back to the village.

page 176
All of the above raises the question: how reliable is the information about the Dogon ethnography, which has become a "classic" object of ethnological research? To what extent does the information from numerous publications of M. Griol and researchers of his school correspond to reality, if entire villages "disappear" from them8, and no one could find the myths described by M. Griol already 30-40 years after their fixation? Since the 1930s, the Dogon culture, like that of other Malian peoples, has undergone very significant changes. Much has disappeared, and information about the former state of culture is preserved only in old publications. But it is no longer possible to check them. This situation is all the more intolerable because in the overwhelming majority of cases they contain completely reliable information. But what if all of it becomes questionable due to already identified inaccuracies? This situation is also aggravated by the fact that modern research is often inaccurate. This applies, for example, to the cultural and historical region of Bondum (the villages of Borko, Tintan, Dogani, Semari, etc.).

First of all, the names of villages are distorted - for example, on maps the village of Tintan (Tintan) is designated as Tintam( Tintam), and the village of Semari (Semari) - as Samari (Samari). Meanwhile, locals call them only "Tintan" and "Semari", which is written on road signs at the entrance to the villages. It is worth recalling that we are not talking about the names of ancient Egyptian villages of the 3rd millennium BC, but about modern settlements, whose inhabitants are not isolated from the outside world at all.

The history of the settlement of this cultural and historical area is also confused and obviously unreliable. It is believed that approximately 300 years ago, the Bondum region was inhabited by the Bambara of the Kassambara clan, who came from villages in the Inner Niger Delta about 130 km north of Mopti (this information is repeated in relatively recent publications [Blom, 2011, p. 79; Robion-Brun Peg, 2010, p. 45-47]). Interestingly, Bondum now speaks a language that has nothing in common with Bamana, and it is difficult to assume that in three centuries the language could have changed beyond recognition and even moved from the Mande family to the Dogon language family.

Be that as it may, when visiting der. Semari was found to have been founded around 1269. An oral historical legend is recorded by the leader of the village of Bureima Gandeba. He compiled a brief summary of the village's economy, history, and ethnography. In Semari clan name (jamu, tige) Kassambara unknown-the villagers belong to the Gindeba and Gandeba tiga. By the way, in fact, Semari could have been founded even earlier than the date indicated by Bureima Gandeba: in the fields about three hundred meters to the east of the cliff of a small rocky plateau (100 × 50 m) on which the village is located, you can find a large number of fragments of stucco ceramics, which makes you doubt the explanation given this finds the leader. He assumed that these were the remains of broken pots in which farmers brought food to the fields. If this is the case, then the inhabitants of Semari in the fields were not so busy

8 The mystery of the" disappearance " of D. Cani-Bonzon may be explained by the fact that M. Griol and J. Dieterlen was confused with Dukun (the place where, according to oral tradition, the Dogons who came from the "Land of Mande" settled on the Plateau), with the village of Kani Na, on the territory of which it is located. The French called it "Kani-Bonzon" after the chief who first came into contact with them (the chief's house is still shown in the oldest quarter of the village). The Dogon themselves only call this village Kani Na. Surprisingly, the error was not corrected in the second edition of The Pale Fox (1991).

page 177
page 178
agricultural work, as much as the destruction of ceramics. It can be assumed that this uplift material is related to the population that lived on the territory of Semari even before the appearance of the ancestors of the modern population there.

No less surprising was the story of Tintan. Village sculptor Pabei Kassambara said that the village, it turns out, was founded at least a thousand years ago, or even earlier. In architecture, in ornaments on fabrics and in door bolts der. Tintan is clearly connected not with Bambara, but with Jenne - the oldest city in Mali and, probably, all of Western Sudan. To this day, a part of the Plateau's population is called "djennenké", i.e."people of Jenne". It is known that when migrating to the Plateau, they reached the Bondum area around the time the village was founded. Semari.

It follows from this that the Bambara of Jamu Kassambara really came to Bondum in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, subjugated this territory, and gave their clan name to the population of several (but not all)of them its villages and adopted the local language. But villages already existed, and their population lived in these places, as they say, for centuries.

Two expeditions to the Dogon Plateau allow us to draw some-so far preliminary-conclusions about the evolution of the Dogon culture in the last 40-50 years, as well as about the real degree of its study.

1. It is a mistake to think that modern Dogon culture and art exist exclusively "for tourists". As the example of the purchase by the son of the chief of der shows. Tintan sculptures in Ende, Dogon people value their fine art very much. Door bolts, granary doors, and house doors are in high demand, especially among the Dogon themselves. It seems that over the decades of communication with tourists, the Dogons have formed a parallel market for traditional art works - "for their own". At the First Festival of Dogon Culture in Bamako in 2016, there was a market for traditional handicrafts, and its visitors - both Dogon and representatives of other Malian ethnic groups-actively bought these items

page 179
(fabrics were particularly popular). In addition, there is no denying that tourists at some point contributed to the preservation of traditional culture and the awareness of the Dogon of its enduring value.

2. In no case should the importance of theoretical knowledge about Dogon culture obtained from the literature be exaggerated. The problem of the existence of individual styles in both old and modern traditional art remains virtually unexplored. The same can be said about the study of traditional Dogon architecture: more or less studied what is in the UNESCO protected area, but it covers only part of the territory of the Bandiagara rock ledge (map 1). Meanwhile, the quality of architectural monuments on the Plateau and the surrounding plains is not inferior to those that have been protected by UNESCO. As for the ethnography and history of the Dogon, the examples of the" disappeared " village of Kani Bonzon and the history of the cultural and historical region of Bondum speak for themselves.

So, despite the abundance of literature devoted to them, the Dogon remain a clearly insufficiently described and studied ethnic group. The only way out of this situation can only be scrupulous field work, and in some cases-almost "from scratch".

list of literature

Kutsenkov P. A., Semenova V. N. Dvernye zasovy (Radlovskiy sbornik: Nauchnye issledovaniya i muzeynye proekty MAE RAS v 2015 g.) [Radlovskiy sbornik: Nauchnye issledovaniya i muzeynye proekty MAE RAS v 2015 g.] / Ed. by Yu. K. Chistov. SPb.: MAE RAS, 2016. pp. 162-169. [Kutsenkov P. A., Semenova V. N. Dvernye zasovy dogonov v real'nom i muzeinom kontekste (Ancient locking bars of the Dogons in the true museum context) / / Iu. K. Chistov (ed.). Radlovskii sbornik: Nauchnye issledovaniia i muzeinye proekty MAE RAN. Vol. 2015 g. St. Petersburg: MAE RAN, 2016. Pp. 162-169.]

Berthier S. Etude archeologique d'un secteurd'habitat a Koumbi Saleh (Mauritanie). T. I, these de 3eme cycle Universite de Lyon 2, Science historique et geographique, et civilisations islamique, 1983.

Blom H. Dogon Images and Traditions. Brussels: Momentum Publication, 2011.

Diallo B.S. L'empire du Wagadu. Etat de la question. Bamako: La Sahelienne, 2015.

Dieterlen G., Roussin M. Dogon. Paris, 26 octobre 1994, 13 mars 1995, Musee Dapper. Paris: Musee Dapper. 1994.

Griaule M. Dieu d'eau: entretiens avec Ogotemmeli. Paris: Editions du Chene. 1948.

Griaule M., Dieterlen G. Le renard pale. Paris: Institut d'ethnologie, 1991.

Leloup H. Dogon Figure Styles // African Arts. Vol. 22, No. 1 (Nov. 1988). Pp. 44-51, 98-99.

Leloup H. Dogon. 04/05/11-07/24/11 Garden Gallery. Paris: Musee du quai Branly, 2011.

Robion-Brunner C. Eorgerons et siderurgie en pays dogon: vers une histoire de la production du fer sur le plateau de Bandiagara (Mali) durant les empires precoloniaux. Frankfurt-am-Main: Africa Magna, 2010.

page 180

Permanent link to this publication: