During the period of European colonial expansion into Africa, the first ethnologists who came across the Fang people of Gabon conjectured that they were in fact a Nilotic people, descended from the Pharaohs of Ancient Nubia, who had once begun to rival the Pharaohs of Egypt for the splendour and wealth of their Kingdom. Certainly, the Fang do not believe themselves to be Bantu, despite the general agreement among scholars that they are, in fact, a Bantu group from the Sahel region who moved deeper into Africa, perhaps as a result of the raids by the Hausa people, who collaborated with Europeans to capture significant numbers of their neighbours to feed the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Victims of the trans-Atlantic and trans-Saharan slave trades from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries AD, the Fang were often stereotyped as cannibals by the European missionaries, who were shocked to find human skulls in open-topped or partially-covered boxes near their villages, and even within their houses. Combined with the fearsome habit of the ngil secret society, which meted out brutal justice in the middle of then night wearing deliberately horrifying gorilla-masks painted white with kaolin so that they glowed in the light of the campfire, the local French administrators presumed that the Fang lived up to their frightening reputation. The reality, of course, was very different.

The human remains found in boxes near Fang villages, or even in the houses of the Fang, were not the victims of cannibalistic orgies. The Fang believed that the bones of the deceased retained something of their supernatural powers after death, and so venerated and preserved the remains of their ancestors.in cylindrical boxes, called reliquaries by Europeans. These boxes were usually cylindrical – hence they are sometimes characterised as barrels – and were designed to be portable so that the Fang, ever in motion due to the aggression of its neighbours, could take their immediate ancestors with them wherever they went. Through their continued presence among the community, in the form of their remains, the ancestors were thought to look out for the social and spiritual wellbeing of their former village. Often kept in the houses of the village headman, the reliquaries were hidden from the sight of the uninitiated (which included all women); to view the bones of the deceased themselves was a rare honour only afforded to a very few. Atop these reliquary boxes or barrels were placed wooden heads and full figures. The wooden heads often contain bone fragments of the skulls of the deceased, and acted as a kind of mannequin through which the deceased could communicate. The heads are abstract, and tend to prioritise geometric form over the accurate depiction of the deceased. Often, the heads are made to ‘cry’ with the use of streaming tears made from palm oil resin. Additionally, reliquary figures are affixed to the top of the box, serving as a talisman or guardian to protect the contents. Known as bieri or mwan bian, these figures vary significantly in style. These figures are frequently rubbed with palm oil to ensure that they retained their magical powers. This constant physical contact, and the regular soaking of the wood with the oil, ensures that Fang bieri tend to have a bright reflective sheen.

This small and aesthetically arresting Fang bieri figure represents a male (nlo bieri) – female reliquary figures are also frequent, and may have been preferred in particular for female ancestors – who crouches on his haunches, held up with a stick from his buttocks which both helps to support the statue, and helped to affix the sculpture to the reliquary barrel itself. The figure is small, but is wholly imposing, with a stocky musculature, with exaggeratedly bulging biceps and calves which are common in Fang sculpture, and may represent a kind of ideal of masculinity somewhat distinct from the softer and more slender female figures. His strong thighs rise up to a tapering cylindrical body, and a large nearly spherical head sporting a crest-like hairstyle. The figure sports eyes made from brass tacks; the use of reflective materials represented the interface between the spiritual and temporal worlds. This figure is unusual in a number of respects. His penis, while indicated as a bulge, is not fully formed; one might even think he were female if there were some attempt at rendering the breasts, as is usual on feminine Fang sculpture. His broad shoulders and stocky musculature argue against femininity however. Yet, this figure remains puzzling. His under-developed manhood, small size, and the gentle simplicity of his features and hairstyle indicate a sad possibility; this figure may, in fact, have been designed to top the reliquary of a child or adolescent, whose family chose to commemorate him in this way. Another puzzling aspect comes in the form of a horn, which is clenched between his hands, pointing downwards, towards the bowels of the Earth. Horns are not a common feature in Fang art, unlike that of the Songye of the Congo, whose figures almost all wear a horn on the head. In the Songye case, the horn is seen to pierce the veil between the living and the dead, and it is possible that the same symbolism is in operation here, just with the energy of the horn directed downwards to the Earth – from whence the Fang believed humans came and returned – rather than upwards towards the sky. It is also possible that this serves as some kind of symbolic repository within which offerings to the deceased could be left. The remains of the deceased – nsek-bieri – needed to be fed, in order to increase their strength and stimulate their capacity to breach the world between the living and the dead when the soul of the deceased needed to be consulted.