It’s not easy to keep horses in West Africa. They need a lot of food, clean water, and exercise—a luxury even for many people here. They also hate heat and humidity and are easy victims of the tsetse fly, carrier of the deadly trypanosomiasis, aka sleeping sickness. Horses were only affordable, in other words, to those who could command resources and labor from others, and became an important accessory of power for rulers of the ancient West African kingdom of Mali. In fact, the Mali Empire, one of the largest and most powerful states in West Africa during the 1300s, owed much of its military advantage to its horses.
The top army commanders of the kingdom of Mali were known as "the 16 slaves that carry the bow," even though they were more likely wealthy nobles than slaves. The bow and quiver—a case for holding arrows—were symbols of imperial power.
A warrior was equipped with a bow, two quivers, and a knife fastened to his upper arm. Their arrow tips were usually poisoned for battle.
The rider’s skull cap and beard were customary at the time, and may imply that the man is Muslim—leaders of the Mali Empire embraced Islam as early as 1300. Necklaces from this period were sometimes hung with bells or amulets, connecting their wearers to the spiritual world.
The horse is unrealistically diminutive, relative to the rider, but the native African horse—the Barb or Berber horse, known for its hardiness and fiery temperament—actually is pretty small. Of course, its size may simply reflect the fact that the sculpture was carved from a single tree trunk, and the horse could only be as long as the trunk was wide.
The base of the sculpture presents a puzzle. The figure may have been a veranda post like those that decorated the homes of West African chiefs centuries later—or a stopper for some sort of enormous container.