Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:27:43.824Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Contribution to the Problem of Akori Beads

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Milan Kalous
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The problem of akori beads consists above all in the question of their [organic or inorganic] composition. If, according to the ‘water theory’, akori were some kind of corals, then how to explain their findings in old graves, where they remained in good state of preservation after the human bones decayed? In the present stage of research the following explanation might be offered: the term of ‘akori’ served for the designation of cylindrical and oval beads of varying composition and colour, made maybe of some now unknown kind of coral, but certainly also of stone or glass; perhaps the akori recovered from the sea-shores and rivers were not really corals but worked jewels from the corpses of those buried in the water or offerings to the sea-deity Olokun. The discovery in Ife of large production of glass beads seems to support this.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1966 , pp. 61 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘Some remarks on beads and trade in Lower Guinea in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, J. Afr. Hist. III, no. 2 (1962), 343–7.Google Scholar

2 Fage, 345.Google Scholar

3 Fage, 344–7.Google Scholar

4 Römer, L. F., Nachrichten von der Küste Guinea (Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1769), 16–17.Google Scholar

5 Ibid.

6 Isert, P. E., Reise nach Guinea (Copenhagen, 1788).Google Scholar See Fage, 345.Google Scholar Isert confirms Fage's hypothesis that the blue variety (or true akori?) was probably associated with Popo (Dahomey).

7 Isert, 177.Google Scholar

8 Quoted from Marquart, Jos., Die Benin-Sammiung des Reichsmuseums für Vöikerkunde in Leiden (Leiden, 1913).Google Scholar

9 Pacheco, 73Google Scholar, in Roth, Ling, Great Benin… (Halifax, 1903);CrossRefGoogle ScholarMarquart, clxxvi–viii.Google Scholar

10 Quoted by Ryder, A. F. C., ‘An early Portuguese trading voyage to the Forcados River’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, I, no. 4 (12,1959).Google Scholar

11 Ryder, 305.Google Scholar

12 See Fage, 346.Google Scholar

13 Ryder, 305.Google Scholar

14 Independently of Ryder, this suggestion is developed by de Negri, Eve, in ‘The King's beads’, Nigeria, no. 82 (September, 1964).Google Scholar Eve de Negri supposes (possibly on the basis of oral tradition from Benin) that various beads were already brought from Ife by Prince Oranmiyan. ‘They were described as “old coloured beads” and may have been like those excavated in and around Ife. These “old beads” went out of use and stone beads were introduced by Oba Ewuare the Great. Later agate, or “Jasper” as it was afterwards called, was obtained and made into beads. The source of supply for this was said to have been found by Oba Esigie, possibly through his campaigns to the north or through contact with traders’ (p. 210).Google Scholar

15 Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, Navigationi et viaggi, 12 (Venice, 1554), fol. 126 B.Google Scholar

16 Marquart, clxxvi–viii.Google Scholar

17 Marquart, xlix.Google Scholar

18 Die Neuntzehende Schiffarth Inhaltendt Fünf Schiffarthen Samuel Brauns…in Africam und dessen Provincien…, Franckfurt am Meyn (1626), 36.Google Scholar

19 Dapper, D. O., Description de l'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), 310.Google Scholar

20 See Egharevba, Jacob, A Short History of Benin (Ibadan, 1960), 82.Google Scholar

21 Frobenius, Leo, Und Afrika sprach (Berlin, 1912), 338–9.Google Scholar

22 Bovill, E. W., The Golden Trade of the Moors (London, 1958).Google Scholar

23 Bovill, 22.Google Scholar

24 Gautier, E. F., Le passé de l'Afrique du Nord, les siècles obscurs (Paris, 1937).Google Scholar

25 Bovill, 30.Google Scholar

26 Captain Allen, William and Thomson, T. R. H., A Narrative of the Expedition… to the River Niger in 1841, 2 vols. (London, 1848).Google Scholar

27 Allen and Thomson, 1, 121–2.Google Scholar

28 Talbot, P. Amaury, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria, 4 vols. (London, 1926).Google Scholar

29 Talbot, 1, 21.Google Scholar

30 Barbot, John, A Description of the Coasts of North- and South-Guinea…, A Collection of Voyages and Travels (Churchill), v (London, 1732), 361.Google Scholar

31 Smith, John, The trve travels, adventores and observations of Captaine John Smith, in… Africke… about the yeere 1593… to…1629, 2 vols. from London edition of 1629 (Richmond, 1819).Google Scholar

32 Smith, 1, 50.Google Scholar

33 Mauny, Raymond, Tableau géographique de l'Ouest Africain au Moyen Age (Ifan-Dakar, 1961).Google Scholar

34 Mauny, 274.Google Scholar

35 See Frobenius, 340–5;Google ScholarTalbot, 1, 25, 182;Google ScholarBovill, 26–8.Google Scholar

36 For the precision of some notions and definitions I am indebted to the kindness of Professor J. D. Fage, who sent me a letter containing an analysis of the first version of this article.Google Scholar

37 Akori possibly made of glass and recovered from the sea-shores and rivers could also be offerings to this deity of wealth, the sea and coral beads. See Fagg, William, Nigerian Images, London (1963), 13.Google Scholar

38 Fagg, William and Willet, Frank, ‘Ancient Life’, Odu, no. 8 (10. 1960), 29;Google ScholarFagg, W., Nigerian Images, 27.Google Scholar

39 Fagg and Willet, 29.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., see also Frobenius, 295–296.: ‘wertvolle, mit Glass übergossene Krüge aus einer Art Porzellanmasse.’Google Scholar

41 Römer, 16–17.Google Scholar

42 Leo Frobenius u. Ritter v. Wilm, Atlas Africanus (Berlin und Leipzig 1931), Heft 8, Blatt 49.Google Scholar