Nok Terracotta Torso of a Man with Crossed Arms

The terracotta statuary of the Nok Culture is a classic art style whose sudden appearance has radically challenged the traditional art history of African Sculpture. Four main characteristics distinguish the Nok style. (1) The treatment of the eyes, which form either a segment of a circle or sometimes a triangular form, with the eyebrow above balancing the sweep of the lower lip, sometimes making a circle. (2) The piercing of the pupils, the nostrils, the lips and the ears. (3) The careful representation of elaborate hairstyles, with complex constructions buns, tresses, locks and the profusion of beads around the neck, torso and waist. (4) The realism in the modeling of the curled lips, the straight nose with flaring nostrils and the large overhanging forehead.

The earliest known sculpture of large size in the Sudan is that produced in pottery by the Nok culture, which flourished extensively in northern Nigeria from the 5th century BC into the early centuries AD. These people were the first known manufacturers of iron in western Africa, furnaces at Taruga having been dated between the 5th and early 3rd centuries BC; they continued, however, to use stone tools. Of well-fired clay, their sculptures represent animals naturalistically; human figures, however, are depicted with heads that are usually tubular, but sometimes conical or spherical, and with simple tubular trunks and limbs. The art of Nok indicates the antiquity of many basic canons of West African sculpture, but the precise relationship between ancient and modern forms is obscure.

Nok figures were made for religious purposes as proved by subject and attitude. Nok terracotta figures are cult objects representing deities, spirit figures, mythical beings or deified ancestors.