Commemorative head of an Oba of Benin.

Plaque from Nigeria, Court of Benin, c. 1600, De Young Museum, San Francisco

This is kind of a bad quality picture, but I couldn't take a better photo than this.

I saw a full page image of this in the book Benin: Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria that I've referenced before in this thread and decided to take a picture. The caption for this image in that book states that this warrior originally adorned one of the roofs of the palace.

This is one of the Benin bronzes at the Horniman Museum in London.

Saw this in a document called the "Ancient Benin Learning Pack" produced by the Horniman Museum.

They labeled this image thus:

"Ohen N’ugbor n’ome eto ene:
the elusive priest of ugbor village"

Saw this in p. 24 of that "Ancient Benin Learning Pack" produced by the Horniman museum:

"The priest of Ugbor village and Oba Ewuare

The priest of Ugbor village was a trickster. He went Oba Ewuare’s palace
and told the Oba some fiendishly difficult riddles. The priest said that if
the Oba could solve any of the riddles, the Oba could take his life.
The Oba tried all the answers he could think of, but they were all wrong.
So that night the Oba sent a beautiful woman to visit the priest. She gave
the priest sweet, strong palm wine to drink and soon he told her the
answers to the riddles. In secret she sent the priest’s stepson to the Oba
Ewuare’s palace with the answers.
The next day, the priest went back to the palace. To his horror the Oba
reeled off the answers to his riddles and had him thrown into prison. The
priest could do nothing but wait for his execution.
Suddenly it began to rain. While the executioners waited for the shower to
stop they drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sound of falling raindrops. The
priest saw his chance and sneaked off.
Scared they would get into trouble for letting a prisoner escape, the
executioners smeared their swords with chicken’s blood. They showed their
bloody swords as proof that they had obeyed their orders and executed
the priest.
The Oba Ewuare was none the wiser until a few weeks later. To his surprise
the priest turned up at the palace, wearing his hair tied up in bundles. He
told the Oba what they meant":

Another Benin bronze from the Horniman museum in London.

From p. 29 of that learning pack from the Horniman museum:

"Ezomo Agban: Deputy commander-in-chief of the
Benin army"




"The deputy commander-in-chief of the Benin
army was called the Ezomo. The Ezomo on this
plaque is probably a man called Agban.
In this plaque Ezomo Agban is wearing all his
formal military clothes. From the position he is
standing in we can guess that he is dancing a
victory dance at the victory parade after
defeating an enemy.
Ezomo Agban was sent by Oba Orhogbua to
stop a rebellion. The war lasted 2 years. Ezomo
Agban returned to Benin City in triumph,
bringing war booty and captured rebel chiefs."

A telling of the legend of Ezomo Agban by Ambrose Ekhosuehi:

http://nigerianobservernews.com/15052009/15052009/features/features4.html

Another Benin brass plaque at the Horniman museum in London.

From page 28 of that learning pack produced by the Horniman museum:



"The biggest figure on this plaque is the
commander-in-chief of the Benin army (known
as the Iyase). Ekpenede was the Iyase during
Oba Orhogbua’s reign and he was married to the
Oba’s daughter.
Once the Iyase left Benin leading an army he
could never go back. It made no difference
whether the army won or lost.
The Iyase Ekpenede is wearing all his formal
military clothes and weapons. These protect his
body in battle. He also wears a charmed bell so
that the ancestors will protect him.
The smaller figure is probably Iyase Ekpenede’s
horn blower. He is also wearing all his formal
military clothes. It seems that the horn is being
blown to celebrate one of the Iyase’s victories."



[I'm not sure whether they got the materials (lead and brass) correct for the body armor. But who knows? They might be right. I've seen contrary statements about the material from other scholars, but obviously the Horniman museum has their sources as well. So obviously there is some confusion in this area.]

From p. 5 of that learning pack document produced by the Horniman museum:

"Redisplaying the objects from ancient Benin

Since the Horniman Museum opened, more than 100 years ago, ideas have changed and the collections have grown. Now, the objects from ancient Benin are not displayed together. The musical instruments from ancient Benin are in the Music Gallery. Other objects are in the Centenary Gallery as examples from Mr Horniman’s original collection. The Benin brass plaques are in the African Worlds Gallery, which opened in 1999. This gallery celebrates Africa’s history, its creativity and its different cultures.

When the African Worlds Gallery was being created the curators wanted to change the ways the stories behind the objects are told. So they asked African people to work with them, to share ideas and to help understand the African objects. Joseph Eboreime, a museum director from Nigeria, studied the brass plaques so that they could be understood from the point of view of his own people.

Joseph Eboreime was an anthropologist: he studied people. Working in Nigeria, he was able to research the brass plaques by talking to the Edo people, including those from the Royal Palace. He recorded stories, watched ceremonies and festivals and read documents. He used this information to write the labels for the brasses in the African Worlds Gallery.

Joseph Eboreime’s work shaped the way the brass plaques are displayed. This way, Horniman Museum’s curators feel, the Benin objects and the Edo people are given a voice in the African Worlds Gallery. Joseph Eboreime also wrote booklets about the Benin objects and pictures and information were put on the Horniman Museum’s website. Museums in Africa were given computer facilities so that school children and researchers can access the information.

We now have lots of ideas and information about the objects from ancient Benin. But the objects were looted from the oba’s palace. They seem to have been taken at random, and the buildings they came from were burnt down. So we don’t know how or where the objects were kept; we don’t know if they belong together, or what is missing. We may never get to the bottom of the meanings of the objects from ancient Benin."

Water holder in the shape of a leopard.

Brass plaque showing the king's leopard hunters.

A close up of part of the tusk:

PhysicsQED:

Saw this in a document called the "Ancient Benin Learning Pack" produced by the Horniman Museum.

They labeled this image thus:

"Ohen N’ugbor n’ome eto ene:
the elusive priest of ugbor village"

The Ugbor priest with four hair plaits.

Fulaman198:

Wow that's amazing.

Trust the sword to amaze Fulaman.

Portuguese rifleman, Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria, 16th century copper alloy


Note that in the Benin bronzes, almost all figures are barefoot (including some, but not all of the European figures), regardless of whether they would actually have been barefoot.

On soldiers:

"Invariably, or almost so, the West African soldier went barefoot, which increased his power of silent movement - as was subsequently noted in colonial wars" [Smith also cites a source that makes note of this] - Robert S. Smith, Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa, p. 58

This makes it hard to know who was barefoot and who wasn't but it seems to be an always adhered to artistic choice or convention. I would assume that most were barefoot though (although the Oba was supposed to have had coral beaded shoes to go with the rest of his coral attire).

Not quite sure what that is on top of the head. Any suggestions/ideas are welcome.

A Benin Bronze Plaque with Two Relief Figures, circa 1600

(I might have already posted this, not sure)

Benin warrior, war chief, or king. Held in a museum in Germany right now.

"Relations at Benin followed a similar pattern, though Europeans there were even more subordinate since the powerful kingdom did not permit them to erect any outposts on its territory. For their part, Europeans were impressed with Benin not just because of the commercial possibilities of the kingdom's pepper (Piper guineense), its cotton textiles, and its ivory, but also because of its striking capital city, its large palace complex, and its artisans' great skill. Many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century visitors commented extensively on Benin's capital city, which was surrounded by a massive earthen wall five or six miles in circumference and pierced at intervals by large gates fashioned from the trunk of a single tree. From the gates, broad streets ran in straight lines across the city, intersecting at right angles. Dutch accounts deemed the thirty main streets to be as wide as the great avenues of Amsterdam, Within the city, houses of ordinary citizens had earthen walls and thatched roofs, which European observers considered airy and very pleasant. Their walls and floors were polished "as smooth and as even as any plastered wall in Holland and as shining as a looking-glass." 13
The city's notables lived within the palace complex, which was a veritable city in itself, said by the Dutch to be easily as big as the town of Haarlem. A German account of 1603 estimated the palace precincts were as large as the entire city of Tübingen and compared the size and ceremony of the oba's annual public procession on horseback through the city to a papal appearance in Rome in a jubilee year. The palace complex was enclosed by a second set of earthen walls. Between the many structures inside ran "beautiful long galleries about as big as the Exchange at Amsterdam." The pillars of the galleries were covered with bronze castings of scenes from the kingdom's history. A Spanish account judged the representations of men, animals, and birds on the brass plaques to be as finely worked as if they had been made with an engraving tool by a Spanish silversmith. Today, examples of these plaques, removed during the British expedition of 1897, are prized collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and other collections. 14
In addition to their praise of Benin's city planning, architecture, and bronze casting, European visitors commented favorably on the quality of Benin's cotton textiles (blue or blue with white stripes), stone beads, woven baskets and mats, as well as pottery. A late sixteenth-century English account lauded the skill of Benin's ivory carvers, who made spoons adorned with depictions of fowl and wild animals. In addition, the kingdom's armorers made swords, spears, arrowheads, shields, and bows. Some Europeans brought examples of these objects back home as curiosities, along with souvenirs of Benin's musical instruments (horns, drums, and flutes). Nor were the skills of Benin's farmers confined to the cotton they grew for the local textile industry and the peppercorns they grew for export. Benin's farmers also raised yams, oranges, plantains, and bananas (which, an English account explained, resembled cucumbers), along with hot peppers, palm oil, and palm wine. 15" - David Northrup, "The Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic World", from The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624 (edited by Peter C. Mancall), pp. 177-178

Footnotes:

13. Newly translated from the Dutch account of Olfert Dapper (1668) in Thomas Hodgkin, ed., Nigerian Perspectives: An Historical Anthology, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1975), 159-61
14. Andreas Joshua Ultzheimer, translated in Basil Davidson, African Civilization Revisited: From Antiquity to Modern Times (Trenton, N.J., 1991), 235-236; Alonso de Sandoval De instauranda Aethiopum salute: El mundo de la esclavitud de negra en America (Bogota, 1956), 78-79, a reissue of Sandoval's 1627 work.
15. James Welch, "A Voyage to Benin beyond the Countrey of Guinea . . .in the Yeere 1588," in Richard Hakluyt, ed., The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation . . ., 8 vols. (London, 1927), IV, 295-297; D.R., "A Description and Historical Declaration of the Golden Kingdom of Guinea . . .," in Samuel Purchas, comp., Purchas His Pilgrimage . . . , 4th ed. (London, 1626), 716.