Inspired by. The Ife Head.

In the first of a new series that focuses on some of the objects and artefacts on display in Manchester’s museums, Stephen Welsh, Curator of Living Cultures at The Manchester Museum, describes his fascination with the Ife Head.

What you’re looking at is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20^th century: a portrait of an Oni (king) of the Kingdom of Ife. This man would have been one of the rulers of this powerful, cosmopolitan city-state in West Africa, an ancient Yoruba city that existed in what is now southern Nigeria. We’re not overstating things when we say that this brass sculpture is one of the jewels of African art and culture. Its exquisite and intricate design, almost perfectly intact, is an outstanding example of Yoruba artistry and engineering, and it indicates just how influential the Kingdom of Ife was; how it flourished as a hub of political, cultural, spiritual and economic ideas in the 12^th to 15^th centuries.

But it is not simply an object of beauty. The Ife Head changed the way we appreciate and understand African culture. When the sculpture was discovered in 1938, the anthropologists who worked on it couldn’t believe that an African civilisation could have created such a naturalistic and technically skilled work of art. It’s perhaps not such a surprise: when you consider that the Yoruba art from this period pre-dated (and outstripped) the European Renaissance, its existence was a fundamental challenge to some of the racist arguments used to justify colonial rule. One German archaeologist, Leo Frobenius, went so far as use the Ife Head to prop up his theory of the so-called African Atlantis: he argued that it was ‘proof’ of the existence of a mythical European settlement in Africa long before the continent’s 19^th century colonisation. Only a European civilisation could have created such a work of art, so he thought, or at the very least passed on the superior technologies and techniques required to produce it. The fact that Frobenius had no way to explain what had happened to the African Atlantians didn’t discourage his theory being widely accepted – it was accepted as fact because it conveniently explained away the existence of the Kingdom of Ife.

That all changed in the post-war period, partly thanks to Frank Willett, a Keeper of Anthropology at Manchester Museum. He was one of several researchers who exploded Frobenius’ theory, while advances in the science (rather than just the unsubstantiated theories) of ethnology and anthropology meant that academics began to side with Willett rather than Frobenius. The post-war period was characterised by the global civil rights movement, with several African countries fighting to gain independence from colonial rule, and so civil rights didn’t just focus on politics; it was also a time when Africans began to reclaim their cultural history.

As for the purpose of the bust itself, we’re not honestly sure. One of the theories is that the head was placed on a wooden frame covered in textiles and used in a commemorative procession, or that it was commissioned as a portrait in the way that any monarch would sit for a painting today. But whatever its use, the Ife Head is a remarkable object, one whose role in the history of Western anthropology is just as interesting as its cultural significance.

The Ife Head is on display at The Manchester Museum until 7 February and is on loan from the British Museum. After that, it will form part of a major British Museum exhibition, Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa, which opens in London on 4 March 2010. Win a weekend stay in London to see the show – go along to Manchester Museum on Saturday 30 January to enter their prize draw (details here).

Image: Brass head with a beaded crown and plume. Yoruba, probably 12th–14th century AD. From Ife, Nigeria. Photograph taken by Steve Devine.

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