Figure Memorializing a King or Chief Sapi, Sierra Leone 14th-mid 16th century Sapi artisans carved these small stone figures to memorialize their society’s most honorable men. The earliest datable record of them, from the mid 1460s, is a description by Diogo Gomes, a Portuguese navigator, whose reports of West Africa were later printed in 1506. The emphasis on the profile with the large diamond-shaped eyes is a striking feature of the visual vocabulary shared with Sapi ivory carvers who created products for the Portuguese Christian market such as the Walters’ Pyx (container for liturgical use) . Steatite Baltimore Museum of Art, inv. 1998.608