Nigerian culture

Bronzes, which have been dated to about the 9th century ad , were

discovered in the 1930s and ’40s at Igbo Ukwu, near the southwestern

city of Onitsha. (See also African art.) They reveal not only a high

artistic tradition but also a well-structured society with wide-ranging

economic relationships. Of particular interest is the source of the

copper and lead used to make the bronzes, which may have been Tadmekka

in the Sahara, and of the coloured glass beads, some of which may have

come from Venice and India, the latter via trade routes through Egypt,

the Nile valley, and the Chad basin. It is believed that the bronzes

were part of the furniture in the burial chamber of a high personage,

possibly a forerunner of the eze nri, a priest-king, who held religious

but not political power over large parts of the Igbo-inhabited region

well into the 20th century.
History » Kingdoms and empires of precolonial Nigeria