Kingdom of Benin (Edo)

Origins

The Kingdom of Benin grew up among the Edo-speaking peoples of the forest region of what is now southern Nigeria, with its capital at Benin City. It is distinct from the modern Republic of Benin to the west. According to Edo tradition, an earlier line of semi-legendary rulers called the Ogiso lost the people's confidence, and the Edo chiefs invited Prince Oranmiyan of Ife to rule. Britannica places this in the 13th century; the Metropolitan Museum dates the appeal in oral tradition to around 1300. These dates rest on tradition rather than written records.

Kingship and expansion

Benin's rulers, the obas, were both kings and chief priests, presiding over an elaborate palace administration. Under Oba Ewuare in the 15th century the army was organised and the capital was ringed with massive defensive walls. By about 1500 Benin's authority reached the Niger delta in the east and the Lagos lagoon in the west.

Portuguese visitors arrived in the late 1400s, and the two courts exchanged envoys. Benin exported pepper, textiles and ivory and received brass in return. The Met notes that for centuries Benin limited its part in the slave trade to selling prisoners of war, and that historians link a change in the 18th century to demand for European firearms.

Court art

Specialist guilds working for the palace produced works in brass, ivory, wood, leather, coral and textiles. By at least the 1500s brass casters were making portrait heads for royal ancestral altars and, in the 16th and 17th centuries, hundreds of plaques showing obas, courtiers, warriors and foreign visitors. These works belong to an older West African brass tradition that includes Ife and Igbo-Ukwu.

1897 and its aftermath

In January 1897 a British party travelling to Benin City was attacked, and seven British officials and about 230 African carriers were killed. The following month British forces captured the city. The occupation brought heavy, uncounted casualties, the burning of the palace and the execution of chiefs. Thousands of royal and ritual objects were taken to Britain as spoils of war; more than 900 brass plaques were found in one palace storeroom. Oba Ovonramwen was exiled to Calabar and died in 1913. After an interregnum his son Eweka II was installed in 1914 within a British protectorate and set about renewing royal patronage of the arts.

Legacy

The looted works, scattered to museums and collectors worldwide, influenced Black intellectuals and artists including W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke and figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Their return is one of the most prominent restitution debates in the museum world. The current oba, Ewuare II, who took the throne in 2016, and Nigeria's federal government have asked for the objects back. A small number of works went from the British Museum to Nigeria's museum service around 1950, and new museums are planned for Benin City; the British Museum, which holds over 900 Benin objects, says it remains open to discussion.