Terracotta urn

The term Bura refers to a group of sites in a vast territory in the middle Niger valley. The river crosses this area for several hundred kilometres in the west of the Republic of the same name, and the territory extends over an area of 250 by 150 kilometres on the border with Burkina. The Bura necropolis area, to the southeast, lies in a depression one kilometre in diameter, overlooked by a series of promontories around ten to twenty metres high. This place, located about 150 kilometers north of Niamey was discovered by chance in 1975 and excavations carried out in 1983 revealed reliquaries and funerary urns in the necropolises.

According to information provided by UNESCO Bura comprises three types of sites that are not easy to distinguish. A first site or excavation area consisting mainly of necropolises, where funeral urns have been found intended to contain some of the bones of the deceased, mainly head bones, arrowheads and some of their belongings, also pottery vases topped with anthropomorphic heads, and even skeletons in the Asinda-Sikka area, in Karey-Tondi, from which most of the objects found originate; a second site apparently intended for worship, as evidenced by the altars and mounds found, formed from piles of large stone blocks, where small objects for religious ceremonies, vessel bases and small painted cylindrical ceramic fragments were found; and, thirdly, areas with stone alignments, undoubtedly remnants of dwellings, indicating human occupation. And, next to them, numerous flint remains indicating that arrowheads and spearheads were knapped there.

The neck of many of these funerary vessels, a kind of phallic jar, is topped with heads with flat, ovoid faces with scarifications, all different, or by complete figures, some mounted on horseback, most of them in fragments. The analyses carried out allow dating this culture that flourished northwest of Niamey between the 3rd and 13th centuries. From the remains found, it is known that they practiced the cult of the deceased. Several styles have been found within a shared set of characteristics. Some of these pieces present ritual scarifications. Once they had fulfilled their function in funeral ceremonies they were buried, destroyed or reused for domestic worship.

These urns were buried, within a liturgy of the cult of the dead, with the opening upwards so that they could collect the personal effects of the deceased and supplies to make the great journey. The urn was covered with an anthropomorphic head, a complete figure representing the deceased or according to the category of the character a rider on his harnessed mount. The phallic shape of these urns buried mouth downwards is an allegory of the fertilisation of the earth and a hymn to life: the deceased, buried in the urn, returns to life through his fertilising capacity. It is the symbol of regeneration, life, death and life in a continuous process of becoming.

The lower part of the urn has an almost semicircular break. There is a large hole halfway up and, near the head of the urn, a small hole aligned with it. The surface is decorated with lines of dots crossing to form angles and different patterns. The relief decoration has suffered considerable wear with the passage of time and undoubtedly through burial.