Rosetta Stone

One of the most common San metaphors for trance is ‘death’. The death metaphor is expressed in the art in a number of ways, the most important of which is animal behaviour. When an antelope dies, especially as a result of a poisoned arrow, it lowers its head, bleeds, sweats, trembles, stumbles and falls. Similarly, when a San shaman ‘dies’, he lowers his head as he bends forward, bleeds from the nose, sweats excessively, trembles violently, staggers, and finally falls unconscious. Moreover, an antelope’s hair stands on end, and the San say that hair grows on the back of a man in trance. This panel is one of the many depicting a dying behaviour in the art, where they are used to link ‘dying’ shamans to potent but dying animals. With this dying eland there are four shamans, three of whom have been transformed so that they share features of the eland. Two have hair standing on end, hoofs, and features of antelope heads. The one holding the eland’s tail has his legs crossed. Above right, another shaman has an antelope head and fetlocks. The animal characteristics of these figures show that their ‘death’ is equivalent to the death of the eland with which they are painted and that, in this ‘death’ they become like the eland.