Who Owns Antiquity? Unraveling the Origins of Nok Sculptures of the Ancient Nok Kingdom in Nigeria

Have you read "Who Owns Antiquity?"

Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage" by James Cuno, Princeton University Press, 2008.

How can the academic luminary Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of "Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers"(Norton, 2006) ask "Whose Culture is it Anyway?" and query the origins of the sculptors of the famous Nok terracotta sculptures found in the middle belt region of Nigeria existed from around 500 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. 

He said the Nok sculptures were not made for the Nok  people.

I have to doubt his knowledge of the historical facts of Nigerian arts and culture. He should have done his research beyond the walls of Princeton University before the publication of his book.

Nok sculptures were made by the Nok people of the ancient Nok Kingdom on themselves for themselves over 2000 years. And the most recent excavations and the latest discoveries have proved that the sculptures were done by the people on different aspects of their lives like historians who wrote books on objects and subjects of different people and events in different places and times.

He should read about the latest discoveries on 

https://www.modernghana.com/news/499121/newly-discovered-nok-sculptures-exhibited-for-the-first-time.html

Kwame Akroma-Ampim Kusi Anthony Appiah FRSL (/ˈæpiɑː/ AP-ee-ah; born 8 May 1954) is a British-American philosopher and writer who has written about political philosophy, ethics, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. Appiah is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he joined the faculty in 2014.[2] He was previously the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University.[3] Appiah was elected President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in January 2022.

https://appiah.net/

By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,

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Nupe Historians Say the Original Ilé-Ifẹ̀ was Located in Nupe Land

 #ife

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#oduduwa 

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#archeology

Nupe Historians Say the Original  Ilé-Ifẹ̀ was Located in Nupe Land

I have read a very long piece of historical analysis on the origins of Odùduwà published on https://nationalsportslink.com.ng/amp/oduduwa-the-nupe-man-by-ndagi-abdullahi/ . The writer claimed that Odùduwà was a Nupe demigod by the River Niger and that the name of Odùduwà came from Odù, the Nupe name for River Niger and so Odùduwà means the man from the river. And that the Yoruba were Nupe people who migrated from KinNupe to the South West region of Nigeria.

He quoted historians and scholars, including Bishop Ajayi Crowther, Rev. Samuel Johnson and Prof. David D. Laitin, he called authorities whose analyses are indisputable and irrefutable facts of history. But unfortunately for him and his hypotheses, he did not provide any archeological evidence. If the original Odùduwà and Ilé-Ifẹ̀ were in KinNupe, then how come the sculptures of ancient Ilé-Ifẹ̀ were discovered in the present location of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ and not by the banks of the River Niger? The only sculpture found in Nupe land is included in the history of Ifẹ̀ Art on https://africa.uima.uiowa.edu/chapters/ancient-africa/ife/?start=13.

He said an Arabian historian, El Bakri, "writing in the 1060s, made it clear that the Nupe Nation, or Ed-Denden, was the greatest and most powerful empire in Africa south of the Sahara". But he failed to give any archeological evidence of this so called greatest and most powerful empire in sub-Saharan Africa. 

How come we have not discovered Bronze sculptures of ancient KinNupe in the present location of Nupe people?

Not a single archeological evidence in Nupe Art and not a single link to IFA Divination.

History is full fairy tales and hearsays, but archeology is full of concrete works of facts of life.

From the dating of Ifẹ̀ Art , I can emphatically state that the history of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ dates back to 600 BCE and not in KinNupe. 

- EKENYERENGOZI Michael Chima,

Publisher/Editor, 

NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series 

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