The ownership of this object was transferred to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) in November 2022.
A side-blown horn (oko). Benin City. Made by Igbesanmwan guildmembers (ivory and wood carvers). Oko are frequently used by priests to evoke spirits and by traditional doctors to drive away witches when attending to a patient that may have been afflicted by a witch. Oko can also serve as an object of commemoration. Register: 'ceremonial whistle'.
These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.
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