Bas-relief sculpture adorning small building, near Kumasi, Ghana

"Clearly it is important for many Asante artefacts and images to be witty: to express certain truisms concisely and pleasingly. Many of these images are thus absorbed into a wider system of debate and discourse: they suggest ideas about ideal forms of relationship and, by their public appearance, serve to keep these to the forefront of Asante consciousness. Today, the favoured image depicting a crocodile with a mudfish in its mouth has a range of proverbial meanings which turn upon problems of weak and strong living together. For gods the image is doubly appropriate: the power of god to man is likened to that of crocodile to mudfish, while the god's power to exist independently but also to enter partially the world of man is paralleled by the crocodile's amphibious abilities." [McLeod M.D., 1981: The Asante. British Museum Publications Ltd]. This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon traveled to Africa from March 17, 1970 to July 17, 1970.