Wooden ancestral figure of a man with incised armour and a helmet riding a horse with cermaic button eyes and an incised harness and saddle.
Max Klimberg, author of 'The Kaffirs of the Hindu Kush', says that the object was probably made for the tourist trade. Traditionally such statues would stand by the grave of a deceased leader. Extant examples of these funerary statues are generally considerably larger than the Horniman’s statue and show signs of having been weathered. If this was a tourist piece it would be an early example. Klimberg states that the Kalasha started making statues in small numbers for British colonial officials after the first world war.
