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In many of African countries, especially in pastoral communities, cattle are the most valuable assets. Cattle provide meat and, more commonly, milk and blood for subsistence. Not only as a source of food and milk but they are also of great cultural and social significance.
They are the ideal bride-wealth payment, are used in sacrifice, function as the referent and provide the linchpin for “the relationship between the sexes, the solidarity of age-mates and the link between the social order and the order of the universe”.
What is more, they are an essential tool for a man to establish his own concepts of aesthetic and to visibly express his own personal identity and social relationships among his people.
In this regard, the ritual and social centrality of cattle is not unique to the Mursi Tribe- those people residing in the far southwest corner of Ethiopia, in the valley of the River Omo.
As studies indicate, the significance of cattle in Mursi society is underscored by color and decoration; including horn alteration, ear cutting and decorative pattern branding.
The ‘favorite-ox’ can be beautified via modification in varied ways; breeding for coat color, castration, ear cutting and horn shaping, the wearing of secondary ornaments such as bells around the neck, or pattern branding.
As documents indicate, ox decoration through modification is done to make the animal special, beautiful and exemplar of its kind. Thus the cattle is painted with vertical banding on coats, cow painting with a geometric coat pattern or with two bisected rectangles, cattle painting with “exceptionally diverged”, possibly trained horns, cattle engraving with asymmetrical horns, two circular markings and associated dashes.
However, all the shapes and patterns are not made haphazardly; but they have their own significances and meanings. For instance, the circular markings singularly, could be interpreted as ownership brands rather than decorative patterns.
Horn shaping is the other significant form of Mursi ox modification. For instance, the horns will be cut with the required shape, like at circular V-shaped notch, and bound tightly together with twine to keep the position and encourage horn growth in the desired shape.
In similar way, the Mursi Tribe decorates their cattle by piercing the ears of their cattle and putting various ornaments. Piercing the ears can be done for either cows or oxen, and has two forms based on the extent of cutting. Nyabacouda is a rounded, serrated saw-tooth pattern around either one or both ears; sierouy is a more pronounced form where the ear is cut into four upward points. These patterns are cut with the small arrow, lawun wheni, used for letting blood from cattle’s main veins for human consumption.
Often the ear cutting is always carried out by the same male elder who may conduct the horn alteration and pattern branding activities.
A secondary ornament used by the Mursi to decorate oxen, nilla, is made locally by Mursi men from leather and two warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) tusks joined with iron fittings to a leather headpiece. These are worn so that the tusks are positioned pointing outwards from either side of the ox’s head below the ears, providing a visual contrast in both size and color to the ox horns.
The Ethiopian herald March 11/2021
