To whom did this Object belong?
This reliquary belonged to Sherpa Nijma (Nigma?) Djordji, who had assisted the new director of the Ethnography Museum, Marguerite Lobsiger- Dellenbach (1905-1993), during her fieldwork in the Himalayas in Nepal in 1952. From him, she bought this sacred object of Tibetan Buddhism, vested with protective powers for the climb and which had been left to him by a lama. In the early 1950s, when Western powers were competing to reach the world’s highest summits, the City of Geneva supported an expedition combining mountaineers and scientists – a zoologist, biologist and geologist as well as Marguerite Lobsiger-Dellenbach for the ethnographic side. This expedition’s scientific reports stressed the collection of knowledge in the different disciplines and were couched in military, conquering vocabulary. For her anthropological study, Marguerite Lobsiger-Dellenbach purchased many artefacts and took the anthropometric measurements of 75 people. In addition, she collected a wealth of documentation: logbooks, films, recordings and photographs.
Iris Terradura/MEG
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