United States or Eritrea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The sides of the thigh are tatued with a beautiful design of circles and scrolls termed KERIP KWE, flight feathers of the Argus pheasant, and on the back of the thigh is a scroll design borrowed from the decoration of a grave and known as KALANG SONG SEPIT. The knee is left untatued.

The quadrangles were twelve in number, divided from each other by four longitudinal and two transverse untatued lines, 6 millimetres broad, two of the longitudinal lines running down each side of the front of the leg, and two down each side of the calf, approximately equidistant; the forearm was tatued in the same style. This manner of tatu is obsolete now, but Dr.

Between the two strips of line design at the back of the thigh runs a narrow line of untatued skin, the supposed object of which has been described above.

They believe that after death the completely tatued women will be allowed to bathe in the mythical river Telang Julan, and that consequently they will be able to pick up the pearls that are found in its bed; incompletely tatued women can only stand on the river bank, whilst the untatued will not be allowed to approach its shores at all.

A Kayan chief of the Mendalam river informed Dr. The designs were in the form of quadrangular blotches divided by narrow untatued lines, and were known as TEDAK DANAU, lake tatu.

The knee-cap is the last part to be tatued, and before this is touched the artist must be paid; as this part of the design is the keystone, as it were, of the whole, the required fee is always forthcoming. A narrow strip down the back of the thigh is always left untatued; it is supposed that mortification of the legs would ensue if this strip was not left open.