The Swazi-speaking language groups of Southern Africa have a distinctive headrest style that is easily distinguishable from their northern neighbors such as the Shona and Tsonga. While the latter groups created headrests with a base, central support and upper platform, Swazi headrests are usually made without a base and have two pairs of legs supporting a longer horizontal upper platform. While Swazi headrests generally have vertical ridges carved on the legs, similar Zulu examples feature horizontal ridges or square motifs. Most headrests have a third, truncated leg at the center of the underside of the crossbar, possibly phallic in implication. The abstract shapes carved onto the end of the headrests might depict a head, hump, genitals or tail of a bull. Typically, headrests were carved with the same figure shape at both ends. A small number of exceptional Swazi headrests allude to cattle- the animals being immensely important in the economic, political and cosmological systems of the Swazi. Unfortunately, there is no specific research on Swazi headrest symbolism and usage. Therefore it is usually assumed that they must have followed a pattern similar to their southern neighbors, the Zulu, with whom they share many cultural patterns. Unlike Shona and Tsonga headrests, these headrests could be used by both sexes. Sandra Klopper has written how traditionally a Zulu woman commissioned two headrests before her marriage, one for herself and one for her future husband. Although they could be identical in design, a woman could choose to acknowledge her husband’s status by giving him a more elaborately treated headrest than her own. Collected in the early 1870s the present headrest is among the earliest documented examples known.