The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921

The veteran Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie, in the great mass of evidence adduced by him to show the African origin of the spirit and substratum of early dynastic Egyptian culture, points out that there is a very close connection between the subterranean structures of these tombs and many of those of the Egyptian pyramids, the inference being that the idea of the pyramids very probably had its origin in Central Africa.

As interesting and important as are these structures in this connection, they, like those previously mentioned and those yet to be described, are of interest in another direction; they bespeak the sometime existence here of a mighty people with a glorious past, now lying sleeping within the bosom of the earth, the silent witnesses of a world that has perished.

Beginning about three hundred years ago, and going back to an unknown period, it is evident from the above comments and extracts that the cultural life of the Negro on the West Coast of Africa, especially from the point of view of his architectural and tomb-building proclivities, was of a much higher type than anything he has produced since his contact with the European during the last four hundred years. The quality and quantity of work accomplished by these ancient black builders is especially notable when it is remembered that the type of material which they were forced to use, and the climatic conditions surrounding them, were of a most discouraging sort. The manner in which these very serious difficulties were overcome is itself a durable testimony of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the African builder and craftsman of earlier days. One can hardly avoid the speculation of what might have been the nature of their accomplishments, had they been provided with a more suitable and durable building material.

The more we study the cultural products of these people, the more pregnant such a speculation becomes; for in those fields of endeavor where they were less handicapped, or better, perhaps, where they were in a better position to overcome the destroying influence of the climate and the lack of suitable structural materials, we find the African artisan and the craftsman producing a wealth of objects of art of a very superior type. Some of these objects are notable not only in that they are of a superior type judged according to the standards of a so-called primitive art, but they compare, so far as technique and artistic qualities are concerned, very favorably with much of the best of ancient civilized art. The last generation has brought to light evidence which shows that the Negroes of the West Coast of Africa were producing hundreds and even perhaps thousands of years ago objects of art which, from the point of view of technique and artistic perfection, equal some of the best works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and compares favorably with the best masterpieces of the Solons of the Italian Rennaissance.

As was above stated, it has been the study of the technique, originality and artistic qualities as expressed in these recently found and comparatively little known African objects that has been the premier force in producing the change of opinion regarding the capabilities of African folk and the cultural history of the great continent. In this connection, however, it is perhaps well again to remind one of the fact that this change of opinion is not yet public in its scope, but is rather restricted to academic and especially to anthropological circles.

For the sake of clearness, the whole collection of African arts and crafts may be classified under three main heads, namely, carved works, glass and porcelain objects, including terra cottas, and metal castings. It will, of course, be impossible to treat exhaustively of the objects in any one of these fields. A considerable amount of selection will, therefore, be necessary; and in the interest of fairness it may be stated at the outset that the treatment and descriptions for the most part will be of the finest and best specimens so far obtained. In doing this, of course, we follow the general and most usual method of those engaged in making cultural studies. There is, however, an additional and very special reason for such a procedure in this case. It is the opinion of Dalton, Read, Ling Roth and Frobenius—perhaps the leading authorities on the whole subject—that the best objects are likewise the oldest objects; and since this purports to be a study of the ancient and medieval cultures, our purpose in following the above method of selection is doubly clear.

Among the large number of carved works discovered at Benin by the British Punitive Expedition are a large number of huge and splendidly carved elephant tusks. These objects have been carefully studied by Ling Roth, and the following is an abbreviation of his description of them:355

"The tusks vary in length up to six feet and over, and are in themselves magnificent specimens of ivory, speaking eloquently of the peaceful life which the elephants must once have lived, in order to produce such tusks. The ornamentation to which the large tusks have been subjected while preserving their form is in two grades: the one is severely plain, and the other extremely ornate and decorative in effect. The former consists of a series of three to five incised bands of a plait pattern, a design very common in West Africa, placed at intervals, the bands diminishing in width as they approach the tip of the tusk. The embellishment is consequently plain, but elegant, and does not call for further remark.

"The other grade consists in covering the whole tusk with a succession of boldly carved grotesque figures—human, animal, and symbolic—giving the tusk a rich embroidered-like look, the thick ends being finished off with a suitable diamond pattern belt and the tip finished with an equally appropriate series of carvings in the shape of a mascle studded foolscap, or a capsule supported by elongated cowries. The back appears to be cut to a uniform depth, and in spite of the multiplicity of figures there is neither overcrowding nor overloading."

There is another piece of carved ivory which appears to Ling Roth to be a piece of symbolic sculpture and which was probably used as a scepter. Roth says of this:

"The execution of the detail is rough—more rugged perhaps than the carved tusks—nevertheless there is considerable originality of design, and it is especially remarkable as showing an earlier stage of the application of hammered metal to carved work."356

Among the carved works in ivory are many splendidly carved armlets. Ling Roth gives a description of one which is particularly interesting as showing the ingenuity of the Negro artisan.

"While at first sight it appears to depict only one carved armlet, it is really two armlets, one being carved inside the other out of the same piece of ivory with only the space of a knife-blade thickness between them. When moved, the two armlets rattle against each other. The ornamentation consists of four figures: a king or chief belonging to the outer armlet, and four sets of two hands placed between the human figures belonging to the inner armlet. The whole shows skill and ingenuity on the part of the artist who planned this difficult piece of work, so remarkable from a technical point of view. But although the beauty of design is not its chief attraction, it is nevertheless a piece of work which can not fail to be admired from the artistic standpoint also."

Another object of interest described by Ling Roth is a highly ornate fragment on an article which originally had the shape of a brass sistrum, consisting of two bell forms, a large and a small one, grafted onto one handle. Its delicate treatment is described as differing somewhat from the rugged workmanship of the objects above described, but it is said to err in its excessive elaboration.

"Yet there are good points," says Roth, "such as the blending of the two bell forms into the common handle, the happy tapering of the ornamentation into the Normian bird's beak; the increasing size of the side cups as they rise to correspond to the enlarged opening of the bell form; the truthfulness to nature in an essential like the bust of the Negro, all of which betoken a fair amount of artistic feeling. The craftsman who probably designed execution of the smallest detail."357

It is the opinion of collectors that there existed in Benin at one time a very large amount of carved objects in wood, but, unfortunately, most of these must have been destroyed when the British burned the city in 1897. Very little of such work, therefore, has survived. What it may have been like cannot be definitely said, yet some hint might be gained from a few specimens that escaped the fire, though these specimens are probably modern in their execution.

One such object is a wooden casket in the form of a bullock's head, with two hands jutting out of the forehead and grasping the horns of the animal. The casket is supported by a pedestal of appropriate size and is decorated to represent cowries. "The ears of the bullock's head are covered with embossed brass work, and there are strips of brass of scroll pattern running down the bullock's face and fastened on with small brass staples."358

In this connection it might be mentioned that there are some carved coconut shell in which the Negro carver often expressed his ingenuity. These represent in their carving a varied number of forms, including human beings, animals and plants. The interest in these carvings, as Roth tells us, "lies in their demonstration of the adaptability of the native to perform creditably on a material very different from ivory. Fair ingenuity is displayed in the manner in which the figures are grouped on a confined surface without overcrowding. In fact, the feature of the work is the careful distribution and general freedom of treatment. The details of the carvings are throughout in low relief, remarkably clean and neat and of a uniform depth."359

So far no carved objects in stone, granite, marble, or the like, have come to view in the immediate Benin territory. This, of course, is natural enough when it is remembered, as has been pointed out, that there are no such materials to be found in the country. In 1911, however, Leo Frobenius discovered in his excavations of Ilife, a few hundred miles farther back in the interior, a number of carved stone objects which are interesting from several points of view. In the first place, might be considered the circumstance and position in which these objects were found. Many of these objects were dug up out of the earth at a depth of from eighteen to twenty feet, but several were found set up in tombs and isolated spots in the African forest. These forests are described by Frobenius as being sacred groves where the present-day natives worship their gods. Frobenius testifies that there were an extraordinary number and variety of these stone figures, and that they represent very different periods. Some show a coarse type of workmanship, but others represent a very superior grade of work. The following is, in the main, Frobenius's description of these objects:

"When, on leaving the main road, we arrived at the first small palm plantation, a group of quite coarse little stone pillars about waist high came into view. They are angular, roundish, and at all events roughly hewn or chipped off, absolutely bare of any detail. Going forward we came to another, rather more to the left. Here there is a wilderness of weeds, a mass of roof battens and the straw of a collapsed thatch, surmounted by a few stakes and climbers amidst which rises a stone image. This is about thirty-two inches high, roughly executed and defaced. It has one chain around its neck and another hangs over an apron skirt down to the hands folded over the stomach. On its left side it has a peculiar hanger, something like the tassels of a Houssa sword."360

In another nearby spot he describes the find of a smaller statue:

"When I first made its acquaintance," he writes, "it was housed in a badly damaged little hut whose thatch almost hid it. It is a granite figure about thirty-six inches high above ground level. I could not find out whether its feet were covered by the earth. It is exactly like the other figure, with the hands over the belly, aproned and ornately tasseled on its left. It has armlets and a ruff-like ornament round its neck. The interesting part of the statuette is most decidedly its head, which had been knocked off and only insecurely replaced, when I first set eyes on it. The thick-lipped, broad-nosed face is negroid in type.... The treatment of the hair in this granite head is especially of the very greatest interest. The hair is represented by little iron pegs inserted in small holes; here, for the first time, we come upon this singular use of iron, which metal, as we shall see, played a quite extraordinary part in the realm of Ilifian antiquities."361

Under these same circumstances, he continues,

"a group of all kinds of well-preserved relics is met with in a carelessly constructed hut in the fourth and last enclosure. Symmetrically placed there is a stone crocodile to the right and left in front of a stone block artificially rounded and set on end. These vary but little in shape between a drop and an egg or onion, always inclining toward the first, so that I would like to call them 'drop stones,' … before such of these drop stones, the more oval of which is twenty-four, and the more conical one nineteen and a quarter inches high, there is a crocodile. The larger and better finished of the two is twenty-four and three eighths and the other twenty-one and a quarter inches long."362

Frobenius further states that he had seen several other similar objects, made both of quartz granite and of other kinds of stone. In another sacred grove he reports finding several other very interesting stone objects:

"Here within a small space surrounded by a low wall there is a ring of holy stones," he writes, "some of them very valuable. Firstly, there is a twenty-nine and a half inch long sandstone block of no very remarkable general aspect, weather-worn and abraded, but ending in a jagged crowned head of some such animal as a fish. The second is a block of quartz, like the drum of a column, damaged in places by exposure, but still recognizable as a fine piece of antique work."

Finally, we come to what Frobenius calls the stone "stools," of which "there are quite a number." According to Frobenius, these stools very much resemble the stools made and used by the present-day Negroes and remind one of "negro stools with carriers." He says further:

"These are stumpy columns from fourteen to twenty-four inches high. Sometimes the flat surfaces have a ring between them and sometimes not. Both quartz and granite examples are characterized by extraordinary uniformity of shape and surface polish. Their single handles at the side, mostly broken off, is the strangest part."

Frobenius comments especially upon the tendency of these objects to "monumental form." In this connection he says:

"Following the lines of everything taught us in the development of historical art, I can not well help drawing the inference that this idea of working in stone was introduced by a people who felt themselves impelled to monumental expression."363

The origin and variety of these carved objects in stone offer us a very interesting point, yet one may reasonably infer from his other statements that here in the Ilife, as in the Benin region, granite, quartz and hard stone materials are in their natural state very, very limited, if not altogether absent. Like Benin, Ilife is in the Niger delta region, and, as Frobenius points, is of rather a swampy character. It is a geological fact that hard stone in any quantity is seldom to be found in such regions. In addition to this, Frobenius, as was pointed out above, states that the foundations of the ancient buildings are of burnt brick rather than sun-dried brick or stone. It is very reasonable to suppose that hard stone, had it been in any way common to this area, would certainly have been used for building operations. One seems more or less justified in concluding, then, that the materials out of which the above-described objects were made were not of local origin. This circumstance is very important, for it seems to indicate that either these materials were imported from a distance and fashioned on the spot or else they were imported already in their finished form. If the first view be accepted, it would seem in a measure to account, on the one hand, for the obvious lack of skill on the part of the African artist as expressed in the archaic human and animal forms; but, on the other hand, it would, as is seen in the case of the "stools" mentioned above, seem to indicate a rather remarkable liberty and grace on the part of the Negro artist, implying his ability to become a master even when working with a comparatively unfamiliar material. For as Frobenius says, "the dexterity acquired in treating quartz and granite is very considerable. There is a quantity of eminently beautiful examples of such skill in this country."364

If we accept the latter view, namely, that the objects were imported ready made, it would seem to indicate that there must have been a rather extensive trade with some other Negro folk having a rather advanced form of culture, for it is obviously apparent from the distinctively Negro features of the statuettes and the undoubted Negro influence as expressed in the style of the "stools" that these objects must have been the products of a Negro people. A slight hint for such an origin may be gleaned from the finding by Frobenius of the handle of an antique cup, of which he testifies that the carved figure thereon resembles very much the effigy of the Ethiopian or Nubian god Bes,365 and which, according to Budge,366 is held to have been of Sudanese origin.

Such, then, is an abbreviated account of the carved works which during the last generation have been discovered to have been produced by black folk on the West Coast of Africa in ancient and medieval times.

We shall next turn for a brief consideration to the glass and porcelain objects, including terra cottas. So far as can be determined, very little or no work of importance which can be classed under this head had come from the Benin country. By stretching the category, however, one might include under this head the finely polished marble-like walls which have been described in connection with the houses of the Benin territory. One might also include under this head the benches which were seen in the Benin houses in former times. The typical character of these benches may be noted from the brief description given by Captain Jas. Fawckner,367 who visited the country in 1825. After describing the houses, he says that "in the center is a bench formed of brown clay, which by frequent rubbing with a piece of coconut shell and wet cloths has received a polish, and, when dry, looks like marble."

A few hundred miles to the West, in the Gold Coast region, is the home of the famous "aggry" beads. These beads, the manufacture of which is now a lost art, were found in the possession of natives by the earliest European explorers.368 The beads are of two kinds, a plain type and a variegated. "The plain aggry beads," say Bowdich, who made a careful study of them, "are blue, yellow, green or a dull red; the variegated consist of many colors and shades; the variegated strata of the aggry bead are so firmly united and so imperceptibly blended that the perfection seems superior to art. Some resemble mosaic work; the surface of others is covered with flowers and regular patterns so very minute and the shades so delicately softened one into the other and into the ground of the bead that nothing but the finest touch of the pen could equal them. The agate parts disclose flowers and patterns deep in the body of the bead and thin shafts of opaque colors running from the center to the surface. The coloring matter of the blue bead has been proved by experiment to be iron; that of the yellow, without doubt, is lead and antimony, with a trifling quantity of copper, though this latter is not essential to the production of the color. The generality of these beads appears to be produced from clays colored in thin layers, afterwards twisted together into a spiral form, and then cut across; also from different colored clays raked together without blending. How the flowers and delicate patterns on the body and on the surface of the rarer beads have been produced cannot be so well explained."369

In the earlier days, when much less was known of the technical and artistic ability of the African, the origin of these beads was quite a problem. The fact that similar beads were sometimes found in tombs in North Africa and in the graves and tombs of ancient Egypt and India led some to suppose them of probable Phoenician origin. Such a theory implies the existence of a rather extensive trade between the ancient Phoenicians and the ancient Africans of the West Coast. This may have been the case, for from Herodotus, and from the fragments of Hanno from the Temple of Milcarth in Carthage, we learn that frequent voyages were made beyond the Straits of Gibraltar and to the Gold Coast hundreds of years before Christ by Phoenicians as well as the Egyptians. This theory would, however, imply an act of conservation and preservation of minute objects over a period of thousands of years on the part of African "savages," which, to say the least, would be very remarkable. It is likely, in the light of recent research upon the subject, that the Phoenician theory will have to be made with caution; for, as will be pointed out, there is now available much evidence which seems to indicate that these beads were of indigenous African origin.

Further up in the interior of the Ilifian region a number of important glass objects have been found. Frobenius, commenting on the find of this character made as a result of his excavation in the neighborhood of the ancient "Holy City," testifies that "these furnish proof that at some remote era glass was made and moulded in this very land, and that the nation which here of old held rule was brilliant exponents of apt dexterity in the production of terra cotta images."370 The spot where the objects were excavated is "located about a mile or more to the north of Ilife and undoubtedly marks the impression of an ancient cemetery." It is located today in what is a vast forest, and "is about half a mile broad, did hide and still in fact hides quite unique treasure." Frobenius in describing the excavations here, planned by himself and executed under the direction of Martins, the engineer of the expedition, gives the following account:

"We went down some eighteen feet or so, near the ground water, and can report as follows, viz., the top layer consisted of about two and a half feet of extraordinary hard and compacted soil. Even in this we turned up several glazed potsherds.... At about six and a half feet we found pottery. But the actual adit averaged about eighteen feet below the surface. For we came upon charcoal and ash heaps at this depth. This thoroughly verified the native statements as to the finding of either pearl jars or ashes so far down.371 The old excavations made by the inhabitants reached from twelve to twenty-four feet or thereabouts."

Frobenius, in describing the objects discovered by this expedition, says: "The substance of the pots is a sort of cement or stoneware. They are from fourteen to twenty four inches high and from three and three quarters to sixteen inches in diameter; they are generally uniform. The aperture is at the under and upper ends of the walls from about three quarters to one and a quarter inches thick. The upper of these portions is covered with an irregular glaze, varying from one thirty sixth to one eighteenth of an inch thick inside. They were similarly glazed outside as the edges proved, but this has perished. A convexly carved plate or cupola in which there are three or four holes for finger holds seem to have been lids. Inside the pots are glass beads, rings, irregular bits of glass tubing, and always at the bottom a mass of fused bits of glass from one eighth to one quarter of an inch in depth. The colors of the beads and the glaze on the jars vary from light green, greenish white, dark red, brown and blue." Frobenius, commenting upon these finds, concludes that "the great mass of potsherds, lumps of glass, heaps of slag, etc., which we found proves at all events that the glass industry flourished in this locality in ages past. It is plain that the glass beads found to have been so common in Africa were not imported, but were actually manufactured in great quantities at home."372