This <em>Mask (Ndeemba) </em>has been featured prominently in the African galleries since making its debut at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1962. Dated to the 1900s, the object is part of a group of eight masks that appear at the end of the circumcision and puberty ritual <em>(n-khanda) </em>for Yaka boys. It would have marked the new status of the boys who became men and commemorated their re-entry into the village. Affirming age-long tradition, such masks are worn by the master of the initiation or by the newly initiated himself.
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