But speaking specifically upon the building which now serves as the palace of the great religious headman of Yorubaland, he says: "The edifice rests upon foundations not of sun dried, but of fine burnt brick." Taken as a whole, the present-day structure conveys "the impression of grandeur in decay." "Such," he says, "is a sketch of the city whose effect is heightened by the noble ruins of the palace of this Holiness and the consciousness of its traditional past."[15]
We may now turn for a brief consideration of those strange and most interesting structures of the Sudan, the tombs of their ancient dead. All through the Sudan, and especially in Nigeria, are to be found great conical dome-shaped structures of baked clay ranging in size from sixteen feet in height and sixty-six feet in basal diameter to seventy feet in height and two hundred and twenty feet in basal diameter.[15a] These structures were first mentioned by Lieutenant Louis Desplaynes in his report of Une Mission archeologique au Sudan francais,[16] but the first close study of these tombs was made by Frobenius in 1911. Frobenius tells us that these tombs are of three main types: first, a small size; second, an intermediate size; and third, a large size. This last type, he tells us, was an extraordinary large construction, averaging about seventy feet in height and six hundred and fifty to seven hundred feet in basal circumference. The external structure is connected with an underground structure composed of a number of subterranean chambers and compartments, extending in every direction of the compass, sufficient to accommodate the remains of a great number of notables and royal personages.
Frobenius states, regarding one of these subterranean chambers which he explored, that it contained a dome which was paneled and strengthened with wood from the borassus palm and the whole plastered with a sort of prepared clay.[17] Frobenius also believes that the external parts of the tombs, that is, the mound proper—was made layer by layer. Each layer of clay was first thoroughly worked, moulded, and baked. This process was repeated time and time again, until the mound was completed.
The veteran Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie, in the great mass of evidence adduced by him to show the African origin of the spirit and substratum of early dynastic Egyptian culture, points out that there is a very close connection between the subterranean structures of these tombs and many of those of the Egyptian pyramids, the inference being that the idea of the pyramids very probably had its origin in Central Africa.
As interesting and important as are these structures in this connection, they, like those previously mentioned and those yet to be described, are of interest in another direction; they bespeak the sometime existence here of a mighty people with a glorious past, now lying sleeping within the bosom of the earth, the silent witnesses of a world that has perished.
Beginning about three hundred years ago, and going back to an unknown period, it is evident from the above comments and extracts that the cultural life of the Negro on the West Coast of Africa, especially from the point of view of his architectural and tomb-building proclivities, was of a much higher type than anything he has produced since his contact with the European during the last four hundred years. The quality and quantity of work accomplished by these ancient black builders is especially notable when it is remembered that the type of material which they were forced to use, and the climatic conditions surrounding them, were of a most discouraging sort. The manner in which these very serious difficulties were overcome is itself a durable testimony of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the African builder and craftsman of earlier days. One can hardly avoid the speculation of what might have been the nature of their accomplishments, had they been provided with a more suitable and durable building material.
The more we study the cultural products of these people, the more pregnant such a speculation becomes; for in those fields of endeavor where they were less handicapped, or better, perhaps, where they were in a better position to overcome the destroying influence of the climate and the lack of suitable structural materials, we find the African artisan and the craftsman producing a wealth of objects of art of a very superior type. Some of these objects are notable not only in that they are of a superior type judged according to the standards of a so-called primitive art, but they compare, so far as technique and artistic qualities are concerned, very favorably with much of the best of ancient civilized art. The last generation has brought to light evidence which shows that the Negroes of the West Coast of Africa were producing hundreds and even perhaps thousands of years ago objects of art which, from the point of view of technique and artistic perfection, equal some of the best works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and compares favorably with the best masterpieces of the Solons of the Italian Rennaissance.
As was above stated, it has been the study of the technique, originality and artistic qualities as expressed in these recently found and comparatively little known African objects that has been the premier force in producing the change of opinion regarding the capabilities of African folk and the cultural history of the great continent. In this connection, however, it is perhaps well again to remind one of the fact that this change of opinion is not yet public in its scope, but is rather restricted to academic and especially to anthropological circles.
For the sake of clearness, the whole collection of African arts and crafts may be classified under three main heads, namely, carved works, glass and porcelain objects, including terra cottas, and metal castings. It will, of course, be impossible to treat exhaustively of the objects in any one of these fields. A considerable amount of selection will, therefore, be necessary; and in the interest of fairness it may be stated at the outset that the treatment and descriptions for the most part will be of the finest and best specimens so far obtained. In doing this, of course, we follow the general and most usual method of those engaged in making cultural studies. There is, however, an additional and very special reason for such a procedure in this case. It is the opinion of Dalton, Read, Ling Roth and Frobenius—perhaps the leading authorities on the whole subject—that the best objects are likewise the oldest objects; and since this purports to be a study of the ancient and medieval cultures, our purpose in following the above method of selection is doubly clear.
Among the large number of carved works discovered at Benin by the British Punitive Expedition are a large number of huge and splendidly carved elephant tusks. These objects have been carefully studied by Ling Roth, and the following is an abbreviation of his description of them:[18]