Fon Divination Sculpture, Kingdom of Dahomey, Benin (Country)

Private collection, Europe

Very good condition for an object of this great age and rare type. Marks, nicks, scratches, and abrasions consistent with age and ritual handling. Head and bowl are carved from one piece of wood. Chipping around edges of clay. Area of native repair around proper left edge of the face. Some metal elements in the forehead are slightly loose. Insect damage (very small holes) and small losses to the bowl, with an area of age cracks and losses on the reverse. Old cement repair on center of reverse. Old metal cross support on reverse, aged and rusted. Two later screws on either side of support. Exceptionally fine aged blackened patina to head, varied aged medium brown patina to bowl, and aged encrusted surface to clay and shells. A copy of the C-14 test conducted by the University of Oxford, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (January 22, 2013, sample “OxA-27185” is available on request.
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A Fon Divination Sculpture

John Pemberton III
Crosby Professor of Religion, Emeritus
Amherst College

This sculpture is a magnificent - and to our knowledge unique - creation for the Fa shrine of a Fon divination priest. Centered upon a sensuously-sculpted human head with a sublime, transcendent expression with eyes gently closed, it is a moving image of human devotion to the spiritual realm.

The Fon people were the principal cultural group in the once-powerful Kingdom of Dahomey.  Probably by the end of the 16^th century, the dynasty of Aja-Tado was established and by the 17^th century the Kingdom of Dahomey with its capital at Abomey was a dominant political and cultural presence in West Africa.  The kingdom stretched from the coastal cities of Whydah and Contoneu, major ports of the slave trade, to the town of Save in the north and from Ketu on the present Nigerian border to the border of modern Togo.

Stylistic Classification

The monoxyle sculpture consists of a wooden bowl from which a human head emerges in the center. The void between the outer wall of the vessel and the head is filled with pink clay in which cowries, snail shells and pieces of iron are inserted. While the overall features of the head are highly naturalistic, the defining stylistic trait is the treatment of the squinted, coffee-bean shaped eyes, a typical feature of Fon statues. Cf. the janus-headed bocio in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. “1984.190”); the double headed figure previously in the collection of Jacques Kerchache, Paris (Kerchache, Paudrat and Stéphan 1988: 140, pl. 77); and a figure previously in the collection of Ben Heller, New York (sold at Sotheby's, London, July 15, 1975, Lot 166), to name but a few. The most closely related sculpture in terms of style is the bust of a female previously in the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York (sold at Sotheby’s, New York, May 17, 2007, Lot 122).  Parallels are found in the overall highly naturalistic style and specifically in the treatment of the eyes, nose, mouth and ears. According to information relayed to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery by Louis Carré at the time of its acquisition in 1937, information presumably sourced from Charles Ratton who owned the bust by 1930 and subsequently sold it to Louis Carré, it was “discovered on the outskirts of Abomey in 1926.” 

The early provenance of the Albright-Knox bust in combination with its weathered surface and fragmentary condition suggests significant age. The same impression is true for the object under consideration and in the latter case further supported by the results of C-14 testing conducted by the University of Oxford, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (January 22, 2013, sample “OxA-27185”), suggesting a date of manufacture as early as the 18^th century.

The naturalistic style of the Albright-Knox bust and the Fa divination object under consideration also brings to mind the rather life-like proportions of those human and animal images carved on the famous Ulm Divination Tray which was collected at Allada in the early 17^th century. Allada was the capital of the most powerful king in Ajaland before it fell to the armies of Dahomey in 1724. The more naturalistic features in early Fon carvings as compared to the more conceptual style of later carvings is a parallel characteristic to other major art traditions of the area, including the Yoruba-kingdom of Ife. When reflecting on Fon and Yoruba cultures, it is important to understand that as different as their histories, political and social systems were, there was a remarkable similarity in their aggressive capacity to adapt to changing circumstances and to assimilate and modify systems of thought.  There is openness to diversity, a fluidity of thought which seems to be characteristic of the Fon.  Olabiyi Yai makes a similar observation in his discussion of the Ulm Divination Tray, a gift from King Tezifon of Alada to King Felipe of Spain in ca. 1658.  For Tezifon the divination tray was “the equivalent of texts (sacred scriptures) European missionaries carried with them along the West African coast [...]. It was a carved text par excellence.  Tezifon [...] was engaging the contemporary European elite in a culture dialogue, an exchange of texts or discourses.”^[i] In the early 18^th century King Agaja of Dahomey (reigned 1708-32) conquered a large land mass in the south of the present-day Republic of Benin which brought Dahomey into direct conflict with the powerful Yoruba-kingdom of Oyo. In the war following Agaja’s death, the capital Abomey was captured by the Oyo military force in 1738 and for the next eighty years Dahomey paid annual tributes to Oyo.  Traders and the emissaries of Oyo’s king (alafin) were in constant contact with the peoples of Dahomey.

Ritual Context

Among the Fon, Fa refers to the deity of wisdom and to the system of divination, a form of geomancy brought to the Fon people by Yoruba priests of Ifa during  periods of trade and warfare from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.  Bernard Maupoil asserts that it is generally accepted by scholars that Fa was not the result of conquest.  “It may be admitted that Fa was officially introduced into Dahomey in the reign of Agaja, early in the eighteenth century, by a caravan of Nago (Yoruba) traders.”^[ii]  The system of sixteen sacred signs of Ifa, Odu, which appear on the surface of the diviner’s divination tray, opon Ifa, as he “casts” the sacred palm nuts, ikin Ifa, or the opele chain, is shared by Fon and Yoruba diviners, babalawo.^[iii]  When casting Ifa, the priest will hold in his left hand sixteen palm nuts and then, shaking them between his cupped hands, he will attempt to grab the hand full of palm nuts leaving either one or two.  If one is left, he makes two small parallel marks in the iyerosun dust on the surface of the tray.  If two are left, then one mark is made.  When four groups of marks appear, together they constitute the sign of one of the 256 Odu Ifa.  Each Odu has a name and is made up of ese Ifa, the myths, stories, and chants celebrating Yoruba personal and social values.  While the system of sixteen signs is shared by Yoruba Ifa and Fon Fa diviners, the substance of the signs reflects the distinctive cultural milieu of each language group.  As Louis Brenner observes:  “Fa was brought to the Fon by Ifa diviners and has in most ways remained very close to its classical model, probably because of the continued presence in the region of Yoruba diviners.”^[iv]  Furthermore, following Maupoil’s study of Fa, Brenner notes that “the most qualified and able [diviners…] were often required by royal order to reside in Abomey, the capital of the kingdom of Danxome [Dahomey ...] where their services were often coopted by the state.  This policy would have served to increase the prestige of Ifa/Fa, in addition to the popularity it might have gained among the general public due to its perceived power and efficacy.”^[v]    

            Although the design of the object under consideration is not known from any other sculpture, its iconography fits perfectly within the context of Fa shrine sculpture. The monoxyle carved wooden bowl from which the head emerges is filled with dry clay.  We see only the face and a portion of each ear.  Bowls filled with a figural sculpture (sometimes a skull), clay and shells are a frequent occurrence in Fon vodun sculpture. What is unusual here is that the bowl and sculpture are carved from one piece of wood. The face is surrounded by a ring of forty-one cowrie shells.  S.O. Biobaku notes that the number forty-one was a “royal” number in which “presents made by kings were always reckoned in Dahomey.”^[vi]    Six small snail shells were placed on each side of the face, although only four remain on the left side.  Four metal spade-shaped pieces of iron, reminiscent of forms of currency used all over Western Africa, rise from the clay touching the top of the head. Four is a sacred number in Fa rituals and ritual art.

According to Rowland Abiodun, one of the foremost Yoruba scholars on Ifa, a suppliant has the ritual of Ifa performed for one of three reasons:  ire owo, the blessing of riches, ire omo, the blessing of children, and ire aiku, the blessing of a long life.^[vii]  Cowrie shells were once used as currency throughout West Africa.  They are a sign of wealth and are frequently tied to shrine figures or used in the design of a priest’s regalia, such as a Shango priest’s headgear, or in the creation of a shrine housing, ile ori, for one’s personal destiny, ori inu.  The small snail shells are an appropriate sacrifice for orisha Orunmila, the Yoruba deity of wisdom.  The clear liquid is the life essence, the blood, of the snail which is touched to the brow of the suppliant and then poured on the face of the shrine, thereby identifying the personal destiny of the devotee and linking the power, ashe, of deity and suppliant.  In origin stories of Ifa it is said that Ifa was first performed on the ground.  It is our identity with earth, the mother, from which we are born before residing in communities built by humankind.  The dried clay in which the face, snails and cowrie shells rest is stained with the pink iyerosun dust and the fluid of the snail.  The edge of the wooden bowl calls to mind the circular divination trays used by Fa and Ifa priests.  An opon Ifa is the place where two realms meet:  the human and the spiritual.  The first act a priest performs in the ritual is to make the mark of the crossroads in the iyerosun dust sprinkled on the tray and call upon the ancient babalawo to be present and hear the prayers of the suppliant as he or she seeks to know how to fulfill their personal destiny, the inner, sacred head, ori inu, that he or she chose in the spiritual world before entering the kingdom of humankind.

The face at the center of our sculpture is visually affective, powerful!  The eyes and mouth are closed.  The forehead is bare.  The four bits of metal form a “crown,” ade.  Seated on the physical head, ori ode, they call attention to the inner, spiritual head, ori inu.  The closed eyes refer to that which is inward.  To enter the shrine room where this sculpture resided was to know that one is in a space set apart, a place where one must confront oneself, the aspirations that one possesses, the choices that one has made consistent with or apart from those aspirations.  It is also to be aware of powers such as death, disease and witchcraft that suddenly confront us and with which one must cope.  It is to realize the possibilities that present themselves in fleeting moments and a future that can only be known in part.  It is also to realize that one is in the presence of a person possessing priestly authority, ashe.

Wande Abimbola, a Yoruba priest of Ifa and former Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife, Nigeria, refers to the four stages of initiation rites through which a person must pass before becoming a Priest of Ifa.  The third stage is known as fifoju kan Odu, initiation into the secrets of Odu.  The priest-to-be is permitted to look into the “sacred pot”, the abode of Odu, the wife of Orunmila.  The actual contents of the pot are not revealed to the un-initiated.^[viii]  Maupoil refers to a similar rite in which an initiate performs a ritual in the sacred grove of Fa during which he receives his own kpoli, his personal sign which indicates his destiny.  Maupoil was told that “following this ritual, the diviner constructs his own shrine to Fa, in which the kpoli is incorporated and which he must henceforth serve on a regular basis as a devotee of the deity Fa.^[ix]  It is possible that our Fon shrine sculpture is an archetypal manifestation of the ile ori, the shrine container of the priest’s ori inu, his personal, spiritual destiny, the source of his authority.

Present in the world of the living but in contact with the world beyond, the sculptural quality of the human head is unparalleled in the corpus of Fon art and rivals the finest creations of the neighboring Yoruba peoples. It is a masterpiece of African art.

[i].  Yai, p.111.

[ii].   Maupoil in Breener, p. 54.

[iii].  The signs appear in the iyerosun dust (a pinkish powder created by termites on an irosun tree).

[iv].  Brenner p. 54.

[v].  Brenner, p. 55.

[vi]. .   Biobaku,

[vii].  Personal communication 26 March, 2014.

[viii].  Abimbola, pp. 21-22.

[ix].  Brenner p. 55.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Law, Robin The Oyo Empire c.1600-c.1836, 1977.

Lombard, J.   “The Kingdom of Dahomey.”  In D. Forde & P.M. Kaberry, eds., West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century.  London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

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