My Sumba collection and some observations

[Sajen]

Last piece is a kabeala with whale bone handle, clearly a sword for someone of wealth. 65 cm inside scabbard, 62,5 cm without and the blade is also 6 mm thick at the base.

[Sajen]

Before I will tell you my observations (maybe you have seen them byself already) I will show you some other swords from Sumba I don't have in my collection (sadly) but I hope that I can add similar examples in future to my collection.

There is a type of kabeala knives and swords similar to the shown example in post #3 but it shows as handle also a male human but the scabbard mouth is shaped like a female human, a clearly sexual symbol, see pictures from a knife which was sold not long ago by ebay. I've seen this type also as sword.

[Sajen]

And there is also the rare sword from West Sumba, I've seen only very few from this type, here you can see them byself: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ighlight=sumba

[Sajen]

And here my observations:
1. all my Sumba blades are not laminated and I can't remember to have seen one with laminated blade. But it seems that the West Sumba swords have laminated blades!

2. all my blades and the most others (exception West Sumba swords) have a cut-out at the edged side of the blade near the handle, it seems to be typical.

3. all scabbards from the examples in my collection have a cut-out at the scabbard mouth on the backside of the handle. Also this seems to be a typical sign for a Sumba sword.

And I can add maybe that the bindings at the scabbards are worked/braided in the same manner.

[Sajen]

Here the pictures for my second observation.

[Sajen]

And here the pictures from my third observation.

[Sajen]

I hope that this thread is from some interest for you and I haven't bored you. You can see that you can collect weapons from a small Island only and can put together a very large collection if you want.
Finally the display at my home!