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⁵¹ For this, we are grateful to William Fagg whose research has greatly advanced our knowledge of Benin art history. Although his chronology is the most reasonable at the moment, it has been necessary to point out its shortcomings (certainly the result of a dearth of absolute dating evidence) because for over a decade now it has been so widely quoted that it is beginning to acquire the status of absolute historical fact. Of course, in the absence of a better alternative, it will continue to be used. But let us hope that, from now on, it will be used with greater caution.

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¹¹⁰ Elsewhere (Lawal, B., ‘Yoruba Sango Sculpture in Historical Retrospect’. Unpubl. Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1970, 140–65Google Scholar), I have tried to link this cult with the ancient kingdom of Old Oyo where the ram was sacred to Sango, the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning. For in the heyday of the Old Oyo Empire, the Sango cult was used as a political weapon: a good number of Old Oyo governors resident in the vassal states were priests of the cult; and when they were not, they had Sango priests in their entourage.

¹¹¹ The task of using the ram symbolism as a guide is rendered all the more difficult by the fact that at Owo and Benin wooden ram heads are placed on ancestral altars while smaller ones in the bronze and ivory are stitched to the ceremonial dresses of some chiefs. Nevertheless, a thorough investigation of the origin and significance of the ram symbolism at Benin and Owo is likely to have some implications for the representation of the animal on the Nupe ‘Gara’ figure, and on many of the so-called ‘Lower Niger Bronzes’ as well. For a preliminary study of the ram symbolism among the Oyo Yoruba, see Lawal, B., ‘Yoruba-Sango Ram Symbolism: From Ancient Sahara or Dynastic Egypt?’ in African Images: Essays in African Iconology, eds. McCall, D. F. and Bay, E. G. (New York and London, 1975), 225–51.Google Scholar

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¹³⁰ Meyerowitz, , ‘Four Pre-Portuguese Bronze Castings’ 131Google Scholar. However, this need not imply that all ram representations in Benin once belonged to the Sango cult; and it must also be noted that the Benin thunder god is called Ogiuwu (king of death), but his historical relationship with Sango cannot yet be ascertained.

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