Source [1-3,6,7]: From visit to the National Museum of Nigeria @nationalmuseumlagos
Source [4]: “Nzu, orhue, sacred chalk” by Paul Basu with Glory Chika-Kanu on @reentanglements
Source [5]: “Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos” by Herbert M. Cole and Chike C. Aniakor on @internetarchive
Source [8,9]: jonesarchive.siu.edu/photo-indexes/artifacts-igbo/
Source notes [4]:
“In Igbo it is nzu…As [Northcote W.] Thomas documented, this chalk is used in multiple ways – as an offering to the deities and ancestors, as a medicine, as a symbol of purity, of good fortune and hospitality. It is a sacred substance.”
Source notes [5]:
“The cultural preeminence of kola nut and chalk has inspired the Igbo to devise special containers for their ceremonial presentation. While these serving dishes are optional and not always artistically elaborated, the substances are mandatory…Chalk is, above all, whiteness, purity, beauty, and sanctity. Things are painted with white chalk to make them shine and glow, important aspects of aesthetic valuation that are tantamount to spiritual and moral purity. Chalk is rubbed on a pregnant woman’s abdomen, for example, and later on the newborn child to make this most important of the gods gifts radiant and thus to celebrate its arrival. Many shrines are piled high with cones of white chalk given as sacrificial offerings, and even more than kola, chalk has mystical and medicinal properties, which make it an almost constant ingredient in healing and life-affirming medications. Kola and chalk containers are often housed among the equipment of family and community shrines where they seem to take on a certain sanctity by association, even it they are not necessarily sacred vessels in and of themselves. Artistically embellished containers also lend dignity to any ceremony, reflecting the wealth and good taste of the person responsible. A hierarchy of such serving dishes exists, from the simple and plain to elaborated examples”
Source notes [8,9]:
“Jones notes: ‘If you wish to show that a stranger visiting your village is your guest and under your protection, you present him with a piece of chalk (local gypsum) which he takes and draws two white lines on his wrist and then returns. Big men have a special bowl (okwa) for this chalk (nzu).’
