Sokoto Culture Nigeria 500 Bc - 500 Ad - Janus Couple Fertility Figure

This incredible two-thousand-year-old terracotta sculpture representing a woman nursing her child and a crouching man is from the Sokoto culture.

The art of Sokoto was born in the middle Niger Valley, and reveals a refined and highly evolved civilization. This civilization is contemporary to the Nok civilization. The geographical areas overlap and the exchanges between the two peoples must have been important.

Among the pieces found during the excavations are mainly preserved isolated heads, mostly male, originally belonging to statues of people standing in a frontal attitude.

Sokoto heads generally adopt the same characteristic construction: globular skull, high forehead, pupil pierced and underlined by a semicircle, flat and triangular face. A few specimens are distinguished by the formal treatment given to the face. Here the ears, for example, are prominent and simply represented by a tubular volume.

The body of this Janus couple could allude to a phallus. It is quite possible that this statue was a fertility figure.

c. 500 B.C. - 500 A.D.
Authentication certificate ASA (date unreadable).
Restorations.

Dimensions:
Height: 54 cm.
With base: 77 cm.
Width: 30 cm.
Depth: 20 cm.