Art in Ancient Ife, Birthplace of the Yoruba

Artists the world over shape knowledge and material into works of unique historical importance. The artists of ancient Ife, ancestral home to the Yoruba and mythic birthplace of gods and humans, clearly were interested in creating works that could be read. Breaking the symbolic code that lies behind the unique meanings of Ife’s ancient sculptures, however, has vexed scholars working on this material for over a century. While much remains to be learned, thanks to a better understanding of the larger corpus of ancient Ife arts and the history of this important southwestern Nigerian center, key aspects of this code can now be discerned. In this article I explore how these arts both inform and are enriched by early Ife history and the leaders who shaped it.1 In addition to core questions of art iconography and symbolism, I also address the potent social, political, religious, and historical import of these works and what they reveal about Ife (Ile-Ife) as an early cosmopolitan center. My analysis moves away from the recent framing of ancient Ife art from the vantage of Yoruba cultural practices collected in Nigeria more broadly, and/or the indiscriminate use of regional and modern Yoruba proverbs, poems, or language idioms to inform this city’s unique 700-year-old sculptural oeuvre.2 Instead I focus on historical and other considerations in metropolitan Ife itself. This shift is an important one because Ife’s history, language, and art forms are notably different than those in the wider Yoruba region and later eras. My approach also differs from recent studies that either ahistorically superimpose contemporary cultural conventions on the reading of ancient works or unilinearly posit art development models concerning form or material differences that lack grounding in Ife archaeological evidence. My aim instead is to reengage these remarkable ancient works alongside diverse evidence on this center’s past and the time frame specific to when these sculptures were made. In this way I bring art and history into direct engagement with each other, enriching both within this process. One of the most important events in ancient Ife history with respect to both the early arts and later era religious and political traditions here was a devastating civil war pitting one group, the supporters of Obatala (referencing today at once a god, a pantheon, and the region’s autochthonous populations) against affiliates of Odudua (an opposing deity, pantheon, and newly arriving dynastic group). The Ikedu oral history text addressing Ife’s history (an annotated kings list transposed from the early Ife dialect; Akinjogbin n.d.) indicates that it was during the reign of Ife’s 46th king—what appears to be two rulers prior to the famous King Obalufon II (listed as Ekenwa in this early king list; Fig. 1)—that this violent civil war broke out. This conflict weakened the city enough so that there was little resistance when a military force under the conqueror Oranmiyan arrived in this historic city. The dispute likely was framed in part around issues of control of Ife’s rich manufacturing resources (glass beads, among these). Conceivably it was one of Ife’s feuding polities that invited this outsider force to come to Ife to help rectify the situation for their side. As Akinjogbin explains (1992:98), Oranmiyan and his cavalry, after gaining control of Ife “... stemmed the ... uprising by siding with the weaker ... of the disunited pre-Oduduwa groups .... [driving Obalufon II] into exile at Ilara3 and became the Ooni.” Eventually, the deposed King Obalufon II with the help of a large segment of Ife’s population was able to defeat this military leader and the latter’s supporters. In Ife today, Odudua is identified in ways that complement Oranmiyan. As Akintitan explains (p.c.):4 “It was Odudua who was the last to come to Ife, a man