Mbembe 95 have endured over so many generations may have been intended to reflect upon and celebrate the distinct but complementary powers attributed to an individual’s male and female lines of descent. Resonating Altarpieces: A Collective Heartbeat Prior to the twentieth century, a focal point of each autonomous Mbembe community, as well as those of the closely related Ibibio, was a monumental ceremonial slit gong with two apertures at the top, known as an ikoro (Cole and Aniakor 1984: 87). Housed in a dedicated sanctuary structure, the ikoro served as an altar. It also was the means through which its members were apprised of important developments and collectively communicated with their neighbors. The ikoro’s tonal language, or voice, had the capacity to carry announcements over a distance of ten kilometers. These ranged from emergency warnings of danger such as the threat of a fire or enemy attack to the death of an important elder or the launch of a festival. Most importantly, the beating of the ikoro was a rallying call to a community’s men that they demonstrate valor in warfare. A site of its constituents’ spiritual force, an emblem of their unity, and the centerpiece of civic life, each instrument was given a specific name and was closely identified with a particular village. Given the ikoro’s place of importance and considerable scale, the process whereby it was carved was an especially demanding one. The selection and cutting of the tree to obtain the huge log from which such an immense ceremonial drum was to be hewn was preceded by the celebration of elaborate rites (Cole and Aniakor 1984: 87). Each drum was customized by a sculptural program of figurative or animal imagery at one or both ends of the slit gong’s cylindrical body. Two human subjects were most typically depicted: a fierce male warrior brandishing weaponry and a trophy head, and a nurturing female maternity figure. While these two images might be featured at opposite ends of a single instrument, some drums featured only a single one at one end or at both ends. Upon its completion, rituals of consecration served to “open the heart” of the drum. Two intact examples of Mbembe ikoro now preserved in Berlin’s Museum für Völkerkunde were collected in the Cross River region in 1907 by the German ethnologist Max von Stefenelli (Krieger 1969: 235–6, 237; Koloss 1999: 90, 208).4 Radiocarbon dating of one of these, originally from the settlement of Abiakuri, indicates that it is between four and five hundred years old (fig. 6). This massive piece, which weighs around a ton and measures more than three meters in length, is so highly weathered that the iconographic details of the figurative elements have been
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