the Ga in the last 50 years. Since these figurative coffins were shown 1989 in the exhibition "Les magicians de la terre" in the Centre Pompidou in Paris they were shown in many art museums around the world. Angola From at least the 15th century until the 19th century, litters of varying types known as tipoye were used in the Kingdom of Kongo as a mode of transportation for the elites. Seat-style litters with a single pole along the back of the chair carried by two men (usually slaves) were topped with an umbrella. Lounge-style litters in the shape of a bed were used to move one to two people with a porter at each corner. Due to the tropical climate, horses were not native to the area nor could they survive very long once introduced by the Portuguese. Human portage was the only mode of transportation in the region and became highly adept with missionary accounts claiming the litter transporters could move at speeds 'as fast as post horses at the gallop'. In the West In Europe Portuguese and Spanish navigators and colonisers encountered litters of various sorts in India, Mexico, and Peru. Such novelties, imported into Spain, spread into France and then to Britain. All the European names for these devices ultimately derive from the root sed-, as in Latin sedere, "to sit", which gave rise to seda ("seat") and its diminutive sedula ("little seat"), the latter of which was contracted to sella, the traditional Classical Latin name for a chair, including a carried chair. In Europe this mode of transportation met with instant success. Henry VIII of England (reigned 1509–1547) was carried around in a sedan chair—it took four strong chairmen to carry him towards the end of his life—but the expression "sedan chair" did not appear in print until 1615. Trevor Fawcett notes (see link) that British travellers Fynes Moryson (in 1594) and John Evelyn (in 1644–45) remarked on the seggioli of Naples and Genoa, which were chairs for public hire slung from poles and carried on the shoulders of two porters. From the mid-17th century, visitors taking the waters at Bath would be conveyed in a chair enclosed in baize curtains, especially if they had taken a heated bath and were going straight to bed to sweat. The curtains kept off a possibly fatal draft. These were not the proper sedan chairs "to carry the