Credited to Nigeria. The Cross River region extends into southwestern Cameroon, where Ejagham people also live. Most scholars attribute the origin to the Ejagham, though a tradition recorded in the 1900s credited a section of the Igbo, and Nsibidi is often classed as proto-writing instead of full writing.
How it began
Nsibidi developed in the Cross River region of what is now southeastern Nigeria. Its origin is generally attributed to the Ejagham, also called Ekoi. The earliest evidence is pottery from the region dated to the 6th to 11th centuries that carries related signs. Ejagham tradition speaks of an Nsibidi society older than the Ekpe society of the Efik, which later became the institution most closely tied to the signs.
How it works
Nsibidi is a fluid vocabulary of hundreds of abstract and pictographic signs. They are usually classed as pictograms, though some may be logograms or syllabograms. Signs were drawn or cut on calabashes, brassware, textiles, wood, walls, split palm stems and skin. There was a sacred version, known to members of men's societies, and a public, more decorative version that women could use.
How it spread
Nsibidi crossed ethnic lines and was shared by the Ejagham, Efik, Igbo, Ibibio and neighboring peoples. Through the Atlantic slave trade it reached Cuba and Haiti, where it developed into the anaforuana and veve symbols. The signs were a uniting factor among the ethnic groups of the region.
Who pushed back
British officials first described the signs in the early 1900s, and one called them "a kind of primitive secret writing". The onset of colonial rule and the loss of power by the societies that used Nsibidi may have pushed it further into secrecy. The anthropologist Percy Amaury Talbot wrote that it was used for messages cut or painted on split palm stems.
What changed first
The Ekpe and Mgbe leopard societies regulated social and economic life around Calabar. They gave the signs political force by displaying them in public while keeping some meanings to initiates. The signs also served ordinary record keeping: the missionary J. K. Macgregor reported owning a record of a court case written in Nsibidi in which every detail was described.
Where it stands today
Nsibidi survives on objects in museum collections, such as a late 19th century brass tray from Calabar in the Pitt Rivers Museum, and in the continuing practice of the Ekpe society. Historians now present it as an independently invented African writing system.
