This Yoruba sculpture in solid wood in the shape of a head with an elaborate hairstyle embellished with decorated and geometrically arranged ribbons, represents a noble leader of hunters; Egungun Layewu.
The sweet, proportioned and well polished face with traces of kaolin reveals the important scarifications on the cheeks and forehead. A labial plate, an archaic sign, is inserted in the lower lip.
Given the extreme rarity of full-head sculptures of Nigeria like this it is difficult to find valid literary references. Among the few we can count on to know the rituals associated with the honorific practices of the lineage of the Egungun ancestors and their subtype of the Egungun Layewu hunters, we remember the writings of Robert Thompson and Henry Drewal.
Splendid in beauty, rarity, antiquity, quality of carving and conservation, this work, accompanied by the label of exhibition on display held in 1964 at the Etnografische Musuem in Delft, deserves to be recognized as a museum work.