Four Akan gold weight bronzes, Ghana, in shape of erotic motifs.

Among the Akan peoples of present-day Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, cast-bronze gold weights (abrammuo) served not only as instruments of economic precision but also as conveyors of cultural narratives. Produced from the fifteenth century until the early twentieth century, these miniature sculptures accompanied the trade in gold dust, the primary currency in the region prior to colonial rule. Their iconography encompassed a wide range of themes—animals, tools, proverbs, cosmological symbols, and occasionally, erotic scenes.

Erotic gold weights, though relatively rare within the broader corpus, provide critical insight into the Akan worldview and their attitudes towards sexuality, gender roles, and social instruction. These objects often depict copulating couples, genitalia, or symbolic representations of intercourse. Their inclusion among more didactic or proverbially themed weights suggests a conceptual parity: sexuality was neither taboo nor peripheral, but integrated into everyday life and moral discourse.

The erotic motifs may have served several purposes. On a practical level, they functioned like other weights in measuring gold dust. Symbolically, they likely embodied proverbs or moral lessons. The Akan oral tradition is replete with didactic tales involving sexual conduct, fertility, and domestic relations, many of which were encoded in visual form. Such weights may have acted as mnemonic devices, aiding the transmission of these narratives. Others might have served as playful or ironic commentary, reflecting the sophisticated humor of Akan courtly and mercantile culture.

The production technique—lost-wax casting—allowed for highly detailed and individualized creations. While some erotic weights are overtly explicit, others veil their content in symbolic forms, requiring knowledge of local idioms and cultural metaphors for full comprehension. Their survival in European collections often owed more to their novelty than to an understanding of their cultural context, resulting in underrepresentation or misinterpretation in earlier scholarship.

The appearance of such themes within a system of weights used in trade underscores a fundamental Akan principle: the inseparability of ethics, aesthetics, and economy. As with other objects in the Akan gold economy, erotic gold weights were embedded in a moral and social framework that shaped the meaning of value, wealth, and human behavior.

• McLeod, Malcolm D. The Asante. London: British Museum Publications, 1981.

• Garrard, Timothy. Akan Weights and the Gold Trade. London: Longman, 1980.

• Cole, Herbert M., and Doran H. Ross. The Arts of Ghana. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California, 1977.

• Niangoran-Bouah, Georges. Les Poids Akan de la Côte d’Ivoire: Signification des Symboles. Abidjan: NEA, 1984.

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Height: 4 cm / 5 cm / 5 cm / 5 cm
Weight: 32 g / 30 g / 28 g / 28 g