Igbo Shrine Figure (Ikenga), Nigeria

Allan Stone, New York

Christie's New York, Selections from the Allan Stone Collection, November 12, 2007, illustrated on p. 193

Personal shrines called Ikenga were at the center of Igbo ritual life. According to Cole and Aniakor (1984: 24), Igbo "success in material, social, even spiritual and political terms ultimately rests in moral determination and physical strength. The prevailing ideal has been an excellent yam farmer who accumulates wealth and prestige, titles, a large family, and finally, an honored place among prosperous and respected ancestors. This will to succeed is institutionalized in personal shrines, ikenga, maintained by men in most regions and only occasionally by women. The concept of ikenga reverberates throughout much of [Igbo] life. These images are found in the shrines of individual diviners and corporate tutelary cults and as representatives of age grades and communities. [...] The basic ikenga image is a human with horns, sometimes rendered very simply as an abstract head-and-horns-on-base. Larger, more elaborate examples include fully realized males seated on stools, holding and wearing various symbols, and with more or less complex headdresses determined in part by horns and often including several other motifs."

Cole and Aniakor (1984: 30-31) note: "Other rare ikenga are those with superimposed figures. Without field reports on the meanings of these we suggest they refer to the support given a succesful man by either his ancestors or age-mates, or both." The ikenga from the Allan Stone Collection is a very rare example featuring three superimposed figures. At the bottom, a seated male figure, identified as title holder by scarification marks on the forehead, called ichi, holds a trophy head in his left hand and a long knife in his right, symbols of power. On top of the seated male figure stands a female ancestor figure in the typical offering position with the palms of the hands turned upwards. Above the female figure, another seated male figure, also with ichi scarification, holds a vessel. This figure wears a headdress adorned with three human skulls, presumably a clan symbol.