Nsude pyramid shrines
The Nsude pyramid shrines are an archaeological site located in Nsude, a village in Southeastern Nigeria in modern-day Enugu.
These pyramid-shaped shrines were constructed by the Igbo people. In the 1930s an anthropologist and colonial administrator in the area, G.I. Jones, photographed them.
Eyewitness accounts
Archaeologist Kenneth Murray published an article on these pyramids in "The Nigerian Field", the journal of the Nigerian Field Society. In it he discussed finding ten solid mud pyramids about 1.25 miles from Nsude but in open ground and not visible from Nsude. These were circular and estimated to be twenty-seven feet in diameter, 18-19 feet high and in two rows twenty yards apart and seventy yards long. In each row, they were about 12 feet apart. He talked to local people about them and was told that "tutelary or protective fetish or juju of the village of Nsude is called Uto and is said to possess the special merit of killing thieves."George Basden wrote two ethnographic studies of the Igbo. In one of them he wrote about a visit to ten pyramids near Nsude. Two years before Basden's visit Uto's priest was told by the local Dibla, a mystic or witchdoctor, that Uto wanted 10 large Nkpura built in his honor as a sign of his greatness. Basden says that there were meant to be 10 of these because "there are ten quarters or extended families in the village and each was required to erect one Nkpuru." The local laterite soil was unsuitable so they were built on soft soil nearby.