Recent Additions to the British Museum (Bloomsbury)

Abstract

SOME striking examples of West African art were among the more important of the recent additions to the ethnographical collections of the British Museum, which were reported at the meeting of the Trustees on July 8. Of these one was a gift of the National Art Collections Fund—a cast bronze head which was excavated at Ife, the religious centre of the Yoruba people, and is said to represent Olokun, the Yoruba deity of the sea. Discovered in 1938, it is in good condition, and shows traces of red paint on the head-dress. Probably it belongs to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, though the date is uncertain. Its modelling is of a quality unique among the artistic productions of negro Africa, and bears comparison with the finer sculptures of civilized art. The second example of African art is a carved ivory tusk from Benin, which bears figures of fish and animals, symbolizing the king in his supernatural aspects. There is a receptacle for magical ‘medicine’ at the larger end. No similar example is known. The gift to the Department of Manuscripts of the diaries of Robert Needham Cust, an Indian civil servant well known as an orientalist among scholars of the nineteenth century, will be welcomed by all who are interested in the history of Indian and oriental studies. The diaries were presented by his son, Mr. R. H. H. Cust.