Sculptured Parts Research Articles

Orí: The Significance of the Head in Yoruba Sculpture

This paper discusses why the head (orí) is the most prominent part of Yoruba sculpture. An analysis of Yoruba ontology of the person reveals that the Yoruba regard the head as the locus of the àse (divine power) of the Supreme Being (Olódùmarè) in the individual, constituting the person's life-source and controlling personality and destiny. Three different modes of representing the head are identified in Yoruba sculpture: the naturalistic, which refers to the external, or physical, head (orí òde); the stylized, which hints at the inner, or spiritual, head (orí inú); and the abstract, which symbolizes the primeval material (òkè ìpòrí) of which the inner head was made. Although the fate of each individual is believed to have been predetermined in heaven before birth "into" the earth, a good or bad destiny is no more than a potentiality for success or falure; a successful life depends on how well one makes use of one's head here on earth. The prominence given to the head in Yoruba sculpture is thus a reflection of its sociobiological importance as the coordinating center of human existential struggles.

The Problem of Restoration in Teaching Ancient Art

The teaching of the history of art is naturally dependent on the examples which have been preserved from any period. Nowhere in the wealth of material which has come down to us is this more evident than in the area of ancient civilizations. Chance and time have left only meager clues to the development of artistic style and what is left to us is only too often falsified by the attempts of man to make whole what is no longer perfect. Styles in conservation have changed over the centurcis and the current attitudes tend not to allow the carving away of damaged parts of sculpture to be replaced with “whole” restorations. Pieces are still restored in slightly less permanent materials and it is often difficult without firsthand inspection to know what parts are the original.

Roman Milestones in Cyrenaica

The ancient coast road of Libya which runs close to the shore from Berenice (Benghasi) to Teuchira (Tocra) and Ptolemais (Tolmeita) later swings inland to reach Cyrene, and climbs to the second plateau of the Gebel Akhdar (some 500 metres above sea-level), which it reaches in the vicinity of Messa. From Messa eastwards the road can be traced without difficulty, in the form of a shallow cutting in the rock (probably of Greek origin), to Zavia Beda where the remains of the Roman town of Balagrae are still visible. On the Peutinger Map Balagrae is marked as 12 Roman miles from Cyrene, and this figure is accurate if one follows the course of the old road from Beda to the south gate of Cyrene. For its last three kilometres before reaching Cyrene, the ancient road is very clearly visible as a sunk track cut in the rock, with numerous wheel-ruts, and with ancient tombs flanking it. It is far from straight and makes several sharp bends, but there is no indication that Roman engineers attempted to eliminate these eccentricities when the road became one of the highways of the Empire.Roman milestones previously found in the area of Cyrene have all come from the Cyrene—Apollonia road, and the Trajanic column which marked the first mile on that route was found in 1915 by Italian military engineers in the course of bringing back into use the long-abandoned Roman road, which descends the upper escarpment of the Gebel. The column is now in the Museum at Cyrene, but its exact original site can be identified from photographs taken at the time of its discovery: it stood a little east of the large circular tomb immediately below the gallery which now houses the greater part of the ancient sculpture from the Italian excavations.

Hygieia on Acropolis and Palatine

There is in the Acropolis Museum at Athens a battered and mutilated fragment of the head of a woman, which has twice been published as part of the Parthenon sculptures (Pls. I. and II.). The remains of its fine surface and dark brown patina, resembling those which one finds in the Helios of the East pediment and other of the pediment figures, have, together with its high quality, allowed its claim to belong to that building to pass unquestioned. But it has no connection with the Parthenon, for its scale is too large for the metopes and too small for the pediments. It must, then, be judged and assigned to a school by other means.