Haus Tambaran

What it is

A haus tambaran is a Tok Pisin name for a kind of sacred house found among the Sepik peoples. It is built for ancestral worship and belongs to the tambaran culture. The shapes people recognise most come from the Maprik area. There the front wall is tall and covered with decoration. The ridge pole of the roof drops towards the rear, and the roof itself follows that fall, sometimes reaching all the way down to the earth. The Sepik are admired for their carving and painting, and these religious buildings are where that work is often seen.

Inside the tambaran

The tambaran culture is run by men. The house serves as a meeting place and as the setting for rituals and initiations. Worship connected with the yam also takes place in it, since yams are the staple food of the Sepik peoples. Women mostly cook and arrange the feasts. Apart from that they remain outside the inner life of the house, watching rather than joining. The men gather inside. Meetings, ritual and feasting all happen around the same building.

Spirits and painted faces

Among the Abelam and the Southern Arapesh, the giant spirit carries the names Nggwal and Ngwalndu. People hear it as sounds coming out of the haus tambaran. Nggwal is the leading ancestor deity. Other cultural heroes are shown in the sacred and cultural arts too. The Ngwalndu are broad, flat painted faces arranged along the inside walls. They are understood as images of ancestral spirits, and they can also be read as women's bodies drawn in a stylised way. Painting is a holy activity for the Sepik peoples, and their painted work is taken very seriously.

Copied and growing rarer

The front of the National Parliament building in Port Moresby is based on haus tambaran design. In everyday speech people sometimes call that building the Haus Tambaran. The design also appears on the Papua New Guinea 50 Kina banknote. The country's High Commission in Canberra, Australia, shows the same influence. At the same time the old houses are growing rarer. As Christian fundamentalism has grown in Papua New Guinea, fewer haus tambaran are built and used than before.

How Haus Tambaran is kept

Men of the Sepik communities gather in the haus tambaran for meetings and for ritual. Initiations of young males are held there, and worship linked to the yam takes place in the same building. Those rites are not open to everyone: women are not part of the inner life of the house. Their role is to cook and lay out the feasts that go with these occasions, and to watch from outside. Carving and painting are done as sacred work for the house and its interior, and the giant spirit is heard as sound from within.

When and where

The haus tambaran belongs to the Sepik peoples of Papua New Guinea, above all to communities in East Sepik. The most widely recognised forms are those of the Maprik area, with their high decorated entrance walls and steep roofs. The design is echoed in modern public buildings, in Port Moresby and in Canberra.

What Haus Tambaran means

The house stands at the centre of ancestral religion for the Sepik peoples. Inside it the living meet the dead: the tambaran spirits are present as sound, and the painted faces on the walls carry the memory of ancestors. To be initiated there is to be brought into adult male life. The yam, the food that keeps people fed, is honoured in the same place. Because painting is holy work, the decoration of the house is more than ornament.

Questions people ask about Haus Tambaran

See also

Tribal youth dormitoryA communal house where a tribe's unmarried young people sleep, learn and serveEid al-FitrThe feast that ends Ramadan, opened with morning prayers, sweets and visits homeSukkotA seven-day autumn Jewish festival of temporary booths, harvest prayers and hospitalityIntiThe Inca sun deity, honoured with temples, offerings and the June festival Inti Raymi

Good reading and sources

• Haus Tambaran on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.