纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 063伊费头像（1）（在线收听）

063：EPISODE 63 - Ife Head

第六十三集:约鲁巴人的头

Ife head (probably made 15th century). Bronze statue; from NigeriaSo far in this history of the world through "things" we've encountered all kinds of objects, all eloquent, but not all particularly valuable, or attractive. But today's object is in any view a great work of art. It's a head, cast in brass. It's quite clearly the portrait of a person, but we don't know who. It's without question by a very great artist, but we don't know who. And it must have been made for a ceremony, but we don't know what.

What is certain is that the head is African, it's royal, and it epitomises the great medieval civilisations of West Africa of about seven hundred years ago. It was one of a group of heads discovered in 1938 in the grounds of a palace in Ife, Nigeria, and they astonished the world with their beauty. They were immediately recognised as supreme documents of a culture that had left no written record, and they embody the history of an African kingdom that was one of the most advanced and urbanised of its day. The sculptures of Ife exploded European notions of the history of art, and they forced Europeans to rethink Africa's place in the cultural history of the world. Today they play a key part in how Africans read their own narrative.

"We still don't know much about the African past. What we know right now is a fraction of what is yet to be discovered." (Babatunde Lawal)

"Personally I look at it and I am struck by its tranquillity, its upward gaze. It's not just the tranquillity of power, it's the tranquillity of being in an inner sanctum almost." (Ben Okri)

伊费头像

黄铜雕像，来自尼日利亚

公元一千四百年至公元一千五百年

到目前为止，我们“通过文物看历史”系列几乎已经涉及了所有类型的物品，它们都各有动人之处，但很多既说不上好看，也算不上昂贵。本节中的文物为一座黄铜头像，却毫无疑问是一件艺术珍品。很明显，它是某位人物的雕像—一虽然我们不知道他是谁；它必然出自某位伟大的艺术家之手一虽然我们也不知道他是谁；它一定曾被用于某种仪式一虽然我们仍旧不知道是哪一种。我们能肯定的只有：这座头像来自非洲，为王室藏品，是六百年前西非伟大的中古文明的典范之作。它来自一九三八年尼日利亚伊费城一座王宫遗址所出土的一组共十三座的头像。这些头像都是用黄铜精雕细琢而成，它们的美震惊了世界，立刻被奉为某个没有留下任何文字记载的文明最重要的证据，而它们也承载了一个非洲王国的历史，一个作为当时世界上最先进与最都市化的国家的历史。伊费的雕像拓展了欧洲人对艺术史的概念，迫使其重新思索非洲在世界文化史中的地位。如今，它们在非洲人的自我认知方面也发挥着关键作用。