Left arm, Nok figurine fragment, Nigeria, ca. 2000 years old.

Left arm, Nok figure fragment, Nigeria.
About 2000 years old.
Terracotta.
Measurements: 25 cm.
The pieces of Nok art that have been preserved through time, almost all of them incomplete, are terracottas of spectacular elegance, denoting a high technological and artistic degree, both in the modeling of the clay and in the firing of the pottery. The themes are generally figurative, and represent what appear to be leaders and ancestors, as well as funerary stelae and amulets. This exquisite legacy has made the Nok culture famous throughout the world, and it is especially notable for the stylized male and female figurines, in a variety of positions, wearing numerous jewels and characterized by a disproportionately large head, adorned with meticulously detailed hairstyles. The Nok figures are often broken, as they come from alluvial strata formed and destroyed by the erosion of sporadic floods.

The Nok culture appeared in Nigeria around 500 B.C., and faded away at the end of the first millennium A.D., for reasons unknown until now. Today, the social structure of this culture seems extremely advanced, considering its situation relatively distant from other great cultures, and also taking into account that the rest of West Africa was, at that time, assimilating the Neolithic. Some theories connect the Nok with Ancient Egypt. Moreover, this culture is considered the most refined producer of terracotta sculptures in sub-Saharan Africa. The theory that the Nok were descendants of the Egyptians would partly explain the maturity of their culture and the refinement of their terracotta figures, although this is a nineteenth-century explanation for which there is no evidence.