Nkissi stone - Sierra Leona

Over the past century, ancient stone carvings like this have surfaced in the fields of farmers in southern Sierra Leone. Little is known about the early history of this corpus of several thousand surviving sculptures. Referred to as nomoli (found spirit) or pomdo (the deceased) by their Mende and Kissi finders, respectively, these discoveries have been understood as wondrous points of connection to a distant past. Scientific analysis of related wood and ceramic figures dates this tradition back to as early as the tenth century C.E. The subjects depicted include seated figures, sculpted heads, and human-animal hybrids. This example is notable for its exceptional size. Art historian Frederick Lamp has hypothesized that such creations relate to royal or ancestral memorials commissioned by the Sapi, the name used by early Portuguese traders for the predecessors of today's Temne and Bullom communities.

Provenance: Jean-Michel Huguenin, Paris