Large, spherical palm wine pot. Bamum, Cameroon. H 40cm, ø 27cm, made of reddish-brown slipped terracotta with a large overhanging rim, decorated with a broad, raised frieze with the spider and other motifs. A wide variety of ceramics are made throughout the Cameroonian grasslands. In addition to tobacco pipes, lamps and food bowls and large vessels used as bridal gifts, it is above all the spherical palm wine vessels that help to define cultic life in the grasslands. The keyus is essential for understanding this cultic significance, as Koloss emphasizes in his work on the religious world view in Oku - Feyin and the Doctrine of the Keyus (1987). Keyus is a libation to unite feuding families and to reconcile the ancestors in the Cameroon grasslands. In these ceremonies, the ancestors gather at the bottom of a large terracotta wine vessel; their Keyus flows through the wine, blesses it and unites it with the living. By drinking the wine, peace is made and by consuming the keyus, which mainly comes from the ancestors, they gain the power of the ancestors. Intact. Provenance: Acquired in the 1970s in Foumban, Cameroon.