He must have been a very important man," my Ghanaian friend said, as he eased our Land Cruiser past a funeral procession on the road to Cape Coast.

"How do you know?"

"See all the bright cloth wrappers? Those are made specially for men of rank. Maybe the dead man was even a military leader."

Soldiers stood in a row behind a squat olive truck with huge wheels. They stared at us flatly. Their drab green uniforms broke off my view of the mourner's togas, covering up the brilliant handcrafted fields of yellow and red so ornately embroidered. Military strength eclipsing art.

These two-power and art-have always existed in an uneasy alliance, from the Old Testament design for the high priest's robes ("And they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, of scarlet, and fine twined linen, with cunning work"-Exodus 28:6) to the massive, built-for-awe monuments consolidated around the political core of the U.S. in Washington, D.C. Every culture has its examples, including the cultures represented by the African exhibit at the University of Iowa Museum of Art, one of the richest African art collections at any American university.

The objects on display can seem grotesque at first. Visitors may feel menaced by a wall of carved wooden masks with bulging eyes, scarified brows, and pursed lips protruding like fat cowrie shells. But a person who has read Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, can imagine the tribal elders donning these masks and becoming embodiments of the great ancestors who founded their clan-the Egwugwu. With masks in place, they would become more than mortals. They would become powerful entities to be revered and obeyed.

Primitive, perhaps, but not that far removed from classical Greece and the myths on which Achebe patterned his great novel. In fact, one mask in Iowa's collection, hammered from copper, suggests the bronze brow of a Greek helmet Hercules might have worn.

Everywhere in this exhibit, one encounters art that conveys status or strength: wooden thrones, ritual staffs, fertility dolls that promise the bearer a beautiful baby. Several carved figures are even dubbed "power figures." Designed to ward off sorcery, they once clasped magic roots in their bulky upraised hands. Embedded glass flashes between their hooded eyelids; and their protruding bellies-covered with larger lozenges of glass-reflect the viewer, mirror-like. Behind these glass bellies, hollowed out compartments used to function like primitive medicine cabinets, housing talismanic herbs that would protect the home from danger and illness.

Strange? Perhaps. But a person with imagination might naturally leap to medieval France or Germany, recalling the reliquaries created there. These church statues were really no more than Christian power figures. From the fifth to the tenth centuries, craftsmen carved crude likenesses of saints, painting the eyes with white paste and setting glass balls into the bodies so that they would magnify tiny fragments of bone, holy relics from dead saints. These figures were meant to protect believers from illness and evil. Power and art yoked once again.

One artifact stands out at the University of Iowa Museum of Art and serves as a parable for all those on exhibit: it's a blanket-sized gray cloth embroidered in silver, gold, and red. Equivalent to the togas I saw at the funeral procession in Ghana, this particular wrapper was made in the 1940s or 50s by craftsmen from the Fante tribe, and it was created on sewn-together woolen blankets procured from British traders.

The Fante call these wrappers "Akunintam," meaning "cloth of the great." Certainly, whoever created this one intended to communicate greatness. Traditional symbols of power abound, laid down in tiny loops of thread like the whirling line of a master doodler. Even Western eyes can recognize them: a crab, turtle, fish, crested crane, lion, elephant, and crocodile.

To this day in Cameroon (which shares the West African coast with Ghana), men who earn a new title of respect pick an animal bone out of a bag, becoming linked spiritually to the animal represented by that bone. Here on this "cloth of the great" are such power animals, symbols of traditional African beliefs. Yet, next to them, we find a star and crescent, and-next to that-a European crown topped by a cross. With the shifting allegiances of the time, it seems one religion wouldn't do.

Machete-like swords guard a traditional throne-stool at the bottom of this wrapper, symbolizing tribal power, but a nearby pistol glimmers in golden loops of thread, invoking the forces brought to Africa by European colonists. What's more, a traditional coat of arms occupies the very center of the wrapper-a remarkable gold and silver shield with two red birds of prey landing on it. This crest hovers over the Ashanti throne-stool as if some European aristocrat has come to settle on the very seat of African power.

What an amazing picture of the power dynamics in Africa midway through the last century. Working with borrowed British wool and knowing that the wrapper would rest on the shoulders of one of Ghana's tribal kings, the artist pulled out all the stops, grasping at every semblance of authority. The embroidered design shouts the strength of its owner, yet it secretly speaks of his demise. Though this king may have hoped to be included in the colonial system of power, the very fact that his blanket hangs on a wall in Iowa implies that his power didn't last. To see the cloth hanging here is both a privilege and a sobering lesson.

Timothy Bascom, a graduate student in Iowa's nonfiction writing program, is writing a memoir about growing up in Ethiopia as the son of missionaries. He lives in Newton, Iowa, and sculpts in his free time. Please join the UI Alumni Association.