A fragmentary Jukun sculpture

A fragmentary Jukun sculpture in a sitting position, the conical eyes made of bronze; a wonderful brown patina, partly shiny, the feet, a part of an arm and the penis missing, some insect damage, signs of age and use. 

Yukun statues represent "ancestors, as well as wives and slaves. They are displayed during funerals, agricultural ceremonies, and in times of danger. During these rites, the figures serve as an intermediary between the priest and the ancestor’s world.

The Jukun are an ethnolinguistic group or ethnic nation in West Africa, Nigeria. The Jukun are traditionally located in Taraba, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau, Adamawa, and Gombe States in Nigeria and parts of northwestern Cameroon. They are descendants of the people of Kwararafa. Most of the tribes in the north-central regions of Nigeria trace their origin to the Jukun people and are related in one way or the other to the Jukuns.

Jukun, a people living on the upper Benue River in Nigeria, are commonly believed to be descendants of the people of Kororofa, one of the most powerful Sudanic kingdoms during the late European Middle Ages. The ruins of a great settlement to the northeast of the Jukun’s present location are thought to be those of the capital of that kingdom, but the claim has not been thoroughly investigated by archaeologists.

The population speaks the language of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family. The people comprise of a congeries of many smaller groups, each organized on a different basis, although polygynous extended families seem to be the dominant unit.

The Jukun traditionally possessed a complex system of offices, which had both a political and a religious aspect; the priesthood practiced an involved form of religion marked by diurnal and annual rounds of ritual and sacrifice. The king, called Aka Uku, was—until he became a member of northern Nigeria’s house of chiefs in 1947—a typical example of a semi-divine priest-king." Brauer Museum of Art, Ancestral Statue.