Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World in 100 Objects from BBC Radio 4.
So far in this history of the world through things, we've encountered all kinds of objects,
all eloquent, but not all particularly valuable or attractive.
But today's object is, in any view, a great work of art.
It's a head cast in brass.
It's quite clearly the portrait of a person.
But we don't know who.
It's without question by a very great artist,
but we don't know who.
And it must have been made for a ceremony,
but we don't know what.
What is certain is that the head is African.
It's royal and it epitomizes the great medieval civilizations of West Africa of about 700 years ago.
It was one of a group of heads discovered in 1938
in the grounds of a palace in Ife, Nigeria,
and they astonished the world with their beauty.
They were immediately recognized as supreme documents of a culture that had left no written record.
And they embody the history of an African kingdom
that was one of the most advanced and urbanized of its day.
The sculptures of Ife exploded European notions of the history of art,