So far no carved objects in stone, granite, marble, or the like, have come to view in the immediate Benin territory. This, of course, is natural enough when it is remembered, as has been pointed out, that there are no such materials to be found in the country. In 1911, however, Leo Frobenius discovered in his excavations of Ilife, a few hundred miles farther back in the interior, a number of carved stone objects which are interesting from several points of view. In the first place, might be considered the circumstance and position in which these objects were found. Many of these objects were dug up out of the earth at a depth of from eighteen to twenty feet, but several were found set up in tombs and isolated spots in the African forest. These forests are described by Frobenius as being sacred groves where the present-day natives worship their gods. Frobenius testifies that there were an extraordinary number and variety of these stone figures, and that they represent very different periods. Some show a coarse type of workmanship, but others represent a very superior grade of work. The following is, in the main, Frobenius's description of these objects:
"When, on leaving the main road, we arrived at the first small palm plantation, a group of quite coarse little stone pillars about waist high came into view. They are angular, roundish, and at all events roughly hewn or chipped off, absolutely bare of any detail. Going forward we came to another, rather more to the left. Here there is a wilderness of weeds, a mass of roof battens and the straw of a collapsed thatch, surmounted by a few stakes and climbers amidst which rises a stone image. This is about thirty-two inches high, roughly executed and defaced. It has one chain around its neck and another hangs over an apron skirt down to the hands folded over the stomach. On its left side it has a peculiar hanger, something like the tassels of a Houssa sword."[23]
In another nearby spot he describes the find of a smaller statue:
"When I first made its acquaintance," he writes, "it was housed in a badly damaged little hut whose thatch almost hid it. It is a granite figure about thirty-six inches high above ground level. I could not find out whether its feet were covered by the earth. It is exactly like the other figure, with the hands over the belly, aproned and ornately tasseled on its left. It has armlets and a ruff-like ornament round its neck. The interesting part of the statuette is most decidedly its head, which had been knocked off and only insecurely replaced, when I first set eyes on it. The thick-lipped, broad-nosed face is negroid in type.... The treatment of the hair in this granite head is especially of the very greatest interest. The hair is represented by little iron pegs inserted in small holes; here, for the first time, we come upon this singular use of iron, which metal, as we shall see, played a quite extraordinary part in the realm of Ilifian antiquities."[24]
Under these same circumstances, he continues,
"a group of all kinds of well-preserved relics is met with in a carelessly constructed hut in the fourth and last enclosure. Symmetrically placed there is a stone crocodile to the right and left in front of a stone block artificially rounded and set on end. These vary but little in shape between a drop and an egg or onion, always inclining toward the first, so that I would like to call them 'drop stones,' ... before such of these drop stones, the more oval of which is twenty-four, and the more conical one nineteen and a quarter inches high, there is a crocodile. The larger and better finished of the two is twenty-four and three eighths and the other twenty-one and a quarter inches long."[25]
Frobenius further states that he had seen several other similar objects, made both of quartz granite and of other kinds of stone. In another sacred grove he reports finding several other very interesting stone objects:
"Here within a small space surrounded by a low wall there is a ring of holy stones," he writes, "some of them very valuable. Firstly, there is a twenty-nine and a half inch long sandstone block of no very remarkable general aspect, weather-worn and abraded, but ending in a jagged crowned head of some such animal as a fish. The second is a block of quartz, like the drum of a column, damaged in places by exposure, but still recognizable as a fine piece of antique work."
Finally, we come to what Frobenius calls the stone "stools," of which "there are quite a number." According to Frobenius, these stools very much resemble the stools made and used by the present-day Negroes and remind one of "negro stools with carriers." He says further: