Olifant (instrument)
Olifant (also known as oliphant) was the name applied in the Middle Ages to a type of carved ivory hunting horn created from elephant tusks.
[2] The surviving inventories of Renaissance treasuries and armories document that Europeans, especially in France, Germany and England, owned trumpets in a variety of media that were used to signal, both in war and hunting.
They were manufactured primarily in Italy (from either African or Indian elephant tusk), but towards the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, they were also made in Africa for a European market.
[1] About seventy-five ivory hunting horns survive and about half can be found in museums and church treasuries, while others are in private collections or their locations remain unknown.
Another famous olifant belonged to Gaston IV, viscount of Béarn, and is now preserved in the Spanish city of Saragossa, which he helped reconquer from the Banu Hud.
[9] The Horn or Oliphant of Ulph, preserved in the treasury of York Minster, is part of the above group olifants that were carved in either Salerno or Amalfi in the first half of the eleventh century.
[3][7] While various animals like griffons and unicorns are found in low-relief carving on the Oliphant of Ulph, much of this imagery was likely Islamic in origin, recalling ancient art from Babylonia and Syria.
[2] Olifants that are classified as "Sapi-Portuguese" are so identified in fifteenth-century Portuguese documents by the blanket term "Sapi" or "Sape" to describe production by West African Temne or Bullom artists, as well as people originating from Sierra Leone who have common language and cultural similarities.
[2] These olifants were part of a larger group of other carved ivory pieces by the Sapi like salt cellars, spoons, hunting horns, and other objects made from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.
[2] Moreover, the olifants made for the Europeans also include lugs, or hinges, for the purpose of attaching a strap, cord, chain or belt so that the horn could be suspended, allowing to worn over one's shoulder.
[11][12] The olifant, made by Sapi artists, was commissioned by a European patron to commemorate the marriage of Manuel I to Maria of Aragon (the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella) on October 30, 1500, thereby allowing scholars to more accurately date this object.
[12] Seven registers separated by bands of braid and geometric relief decoration including hunting scenes were based on European sources.
[2] In the 1507 inventory of Alvaro Borges, a note is recorded about the bill of sale for the deceased man's possessions, including various African objects along with a "small ivory".
[2] An ivory bugle is listed in the inventory of the possessions of André Marques, a navigator who died aboard the caravel Santiago during a voyage from São Tomé to Portugal.
[2] A noteworthy insight is that the people of these African regions had their own artistic traditions that had existed before their first contact with the Portuguese, and these objects were very sought after by European collectors.
[2] In Washington Irving's 1809 fictional A History of New York, the trumpter Anthony Van Corlaer blows a mock-heroic last blast of warning before drowning in Spuyten Duyvil Creek.
There is a connection to the Song of Roland in the novels and movies, when Boromir blows the horn at the battle of Amon Hen to try to summon help from the other members of the Fellowship of the Ring.
For Boromir, like Roland, this action comes too late, as he is mortally wounded with several arrows shot by an Orc archer by the time Aragorn and the others reach him.
