YORUBALAND

Nigeria 100 Years Ago Daily Life

A road in Ife.
“The Yorubans are, perhaps, the cleverest and most talented nation to be
found in the whole of West Africa”

A funeral procession in Ife. A compound in Ife. Market scene in Ife.

“To show how closely forged are the “An Orisha, or family-god, presides “One comes across little shops…”
A road in Ife.
links of their philosophy and the over each Yoruba clan. His com-
“I never heard pedagogy discussed
greatness of this nation, not alone mandments regulate the course of
so concientiously, so deliberately
in its practical existence, but in its life. The entire business, especially
and with so much knowledge of its
intelectual quality permeating their of male but also female life, is cen-
aim“
religious thought” tered in his worship”

National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt/Main
 YORUBALAND
Nigeria 100 Years Ago Royal Culture

The palace of the Ooni at Ife after

the Modakeke wars.
“A minute or two after twelve
midday the monumental ruins of
the Oni’s palace met our gaze.
We stood before the portal of the
castle in the middle of an enormous
square”

The palace of the Ooni at Ife.

“It was like an enchanted castle. It
was so large and noble in design,
so superbly pure despite its broken
lines, its mouldering to decay and
the sordid exterior it now pesents”

A dignitary greeting the Oni of Ife

The Ooni of Ife.

“Clad in a gorgeous robe of bright green silk, a mag- The Emir of Ilorin among his
dignitaries

nificent tiara on his brow, and shaded by a huge silken

canopy, the Oni, the head of the Holy City of Ifé’s hier-
archy, advanced to meet us with a great crowd”

The Emir of Ilorin‘s musicians

National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt/Main
 YORUBALAND
Nigeria100
Nigeria 100Years
YearsAgo
Ago Clothing and Dressing

Dresses worn similarly among the Yoruba, Nupe, Hausa and Kanuri.
“Some women in pretty headdresses and some men in handsome
flowing garments were standing here”

Detail of light trousers, ornamented Sketch of a type of gown worn all- Sketch of a dress which was
with blue and red embroidery over Nigeria used to go to farm and in the
bush

Agbada from Ilorin Lorem ipsum

National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt/Main
 YORUBALAND
Nigeria 100 Years Ago Architecture

A streetipsum
Lorem view in Ife. sit amet
dolor
“Cities which, in the sense we, too, give to the term, deserve to be
called ‚metropolitan’”

A compound in Ife with thatched

roof. “Every one of these towns resolves
“Oh, how often did I look with itself into a definite number of
longing across the space which kept astonishingly large compounds,
me from the beautiful high roofs of all of which are severally built on
the great Yoruba houses which were a cearly organized system and in
thatched with leaves!” themselves again give expression to
an extended, powerful, systematic Plan of a compound in Ibadan
Plan of a large compound in Ibadan and social ideal”

National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt/Main
 YORUBALAND
Nigeria 100 Years Ago Crafts: Wood Carving

“The exterior of the courtyard was

charcterized by some wooden pil-
lars, embellised with carving, which
supported the overhanging roof”

Door in the Shango temple in Ibadan

“The doorway, some nine feet in

hight, was boldly sculptured with
figures in relief of a mythological
charcter”

Wooden front door with relief woodcarvings.

“Ilifé must have been a unique example of the old-
world style of timber architecture in the hundreds of
sculptured beams. Ilifé, the ancient, well-preserved
and ornamental city it once had been” Carved doors from the ruins of
Modakeke

National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt/Main
 YORUBALAND
Nigeria 100 Years Ago Crafts

Weaving by the men on an horizontal loom in Ilorin.

“The Yorubans have two very different looms. One is used only by men
and the shuttle is shot by a treadle”

Bead making in Ilorin Bronze casting in Yorubland A dyeing workshop in Ilorin

Weaving by the women on an verti-
cal loom in Ilorin.
“The hand produces the weft by
throwing the shuttle backwards and
forwards and the woof by shifting
the beam upwards and downwards”

National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt/Main
 YORUBALAND
Nigeria 100 Years Ago Traditional Religion

Shango temple in Ibadan.

“The whole scene, the richly carved columns in front of the gaily-coloured
altar, the ancient man in his circle of devotees and the upward-lifting scaf-
folding towards the front, sustaining the mighty, soaring frame of thatch,
was superbly impressive”

Shango temple in Ibadan. One of the Ifa oracle trays excavated

“The dark chamber revealed a by Frobenius in Modakeke.
georgous red ceiling, pedestrals “I consider the Orisha worship of
with stine axes on them, wooden Ceremony of enrolment in the the Yorubans as being purer and
figures, cowri-shell hangings” Ogboni cult. more original, more consistent and
“I declared, that I wanted to join the more unbroken than any other cult
membership of the Ogboni league” of the classical ages known to us”
Depiction of the 16 Odu and their
relations towards the temple

National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt/Main
 YORUBALAND
Nigeria 100 Years Ago Classical Ife I

“The head was usually kept under-

ground at the place of ist discovery
it was only brought out and sacri-
fices made to it at certain festivals”

A pencil sketch of the Olokun head

“Glaze again! We picked up some

more. The body of them all was
a substance like porcelaine clay,
similar to cement, but they were
“Before us stood a head of marvelous beauty, wonder- all coated with a glaze of many
colours”
fully cast in antique bronze, true to the life, incrusted
with a patina of glorious dark green. This was, in very
deed the Olokun, Atlantic Africa’s Poseidon!”

Excavated objects from Ife

National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt/Main
 YORUBALAND
Nigeria 100 Years Ago Classical Ife II

Terracotta head excavated in Ife.

“Two days later a terracotta head
arrived intact. I bought it”

“Eloquent of a symetry, a vitality, a

delicacy of form directly reminiscent
of ancient Greece”

“The Oni, conducted us in person

to his ‘park of monuments’”

Terracotta head excavated in Ife.

“Here we found exquisitely life-like terracotta heads,
with clear-cut features and purity of style, differentiat-
ed, however, by old-fashioned tatooing marks and the
way of dressing the hair” “Relics dating from an age and
epoch of culture, when the manipu-
lation of of quartz and granite was
thoroughly understood“
National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt/Main