Ikenga (Igbo achievement figure)
Carved horned shrine figure representing a man's *chi* and the power of his right hand to achieve; a personal-agency object commissioned in life and split or buried at death.
An ikenga is a carved wooden shrine object — typically featuring one or two horns, a sword or trophy, and a seated or standing posture — representing a man's chi (personal spirit) and the power of his right hand (aka nri) to achieve goals in farming, trade or warfare. Personal ikenga are owned by individual men; compound and community grades are progressively larger and more elaborate.
The ikenga is commissioned at a specific life stage and is formally split or buried when its owner dies. It is the single most frequently encountered Igbo object in Western collections and at auction, and a precise definition corrects the persistent "idol" misclassification: the ikenga is a personal-agency object tied to an individual's accumulated achievement, not a deity figure (Cole & Aniakor 1984; Bentor 1988).