Ife head

The history of humanity as told through one hundred objects from the British Museum is back in Africa. This week Neil MacGregor is exploring high status objects from across the world around 700 years ago.

Today he has chosen a sculpture widely considered as one of the highest achievements of world art. It comes from Ife, a city now in South-Western Nigeria. It's a slightly less than life sized representation of a human head, made in brass at a time when metal casting had become a hugely sophisticated art. The head, with its deeply naturalistic features, was probably that of a great king or leader although its exact function remains uncertain. The head leads Neil to consider the political, economic and spiritual life of the Yoruba city state that produced it. The writer Ben Okri responds to the mood of the sculpture while the art historian Babatunde Lawal considers what role it might have played in traditional tribal life.

Producer: Anthony Denselow