benin art nov2015

8/18/2019 Benin Art Nov2015

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/benin-art-nov2015 1/13

Benin: an African kingdom

Ivory mask of the Queen MotherBenin, Nigeriaprobably 16th century AD



2

Ivory Salt cellar showing European traders and their shipBenin, Nigeria17th century AD



3

Benin: an African kingdomObjects from the Royal Palace

Until the late 19 th century, one of the majorpowers in West Africa was the kingdom ofBenin in what is now southwest Nigeria.

When European merchant ships began to visitWest Africa from the 15 th century onwards,Benin came to control the trade between theinland peoples and the Europeans on thecoast. When the British tried to expand theirown trade in the 19 th century, the Beninpeople killed their envoys. So in 1897 theBritish sent an armed expedition whichcaptured the king of Benin, destroyed hispalace and took away large quantities of

sculpture and regalia, including works in wood, ivory and especially brass.

Some of these things came from royal altarsfor the king’s ancestors, but among them were a large number of cast brass plaquesmade to decorate the wooden pillars of thepalace. These had been left in the palacestorerooms while part of the palace wasbeing rebuilt. As it later emerged, most ofthem were probably made between about1550 – 1650, the people and scenes that theyshow are so many and varied that they give a vivid picture of the court and kingdom of thattime.

Many of the plaques and other objects fromBenin city were taken to Europe, where alarge number of them were later given to orbought by The British Museum. When the sonof the deposed king revived the Benin

monarchy in 1914, now under British rule, hedid his best to restore the palace and continuethe ancient traditions of the Benin monarchy.Because these traditions are followed in themodern city of Benin, it is still possible torecognise many of the scenes cast in brass byBenin artists about five hundred years ago.

As decorations for the halls of the king’spalace, the plaques were designed to

proclaim and glorify the prestige of the king,his status and achievements, so they give aninformative but very one-sided view of thekingdom of Benin. They do not show how theordinary people lived in the villages outside

the city as farmers, growing their yams and vegetables in gardens cleared from thetropical forest. Nor do they show how mostof the townspeople lived, employed in craftssuch as the making of the brass plaquesthemselves. And most striking of all, there

are no women or children shown in theplaques, which means that more than half ofthe people of the k ing’s court are not shown .

The image of the Oba (king of Benin)appears on many plaques. To understandthese images we need to know about royalregalia and the role of the king in Beninsociety. The Oba is shown wearing a crownand tunic woven of red coral beads, which

only the king and some of his supporterscould wear. The coral for these beads wasrare and valuable, traded from as far away asthe Mediterranean. It is an appropriatesymbol for the king because the prosperity ofBenin city and the power of its kingsdepended largely on long-distance trade.

Long before Europeans began to sail theirships around the West African coasts, goods were being carried from the shores of theMediterranean across the Sahara to the greattrading centres of the West African savannas,such as Timbuktu, and onwards into forestregions such as Benin. Travelling the other way, the most valuable product of West Africa which reached Europe and Asia duringthe Middle Ages was gold. This was mined inthe regions far to the west of Benin, but it was the search for the source of this wealth which first encouraged the Europeans to sail

south and east around the West Africancoasts. In trying to find a way around theSahara trade routes which the Africanscontrolled, the Portuguese arrived in thecoastal territories of Benin in 1489. Thusbegan regular contact between the twocountries which lasted 400 years.

Many of t he brass plaques from the king’spalace show images of Portuguese men and

they seem to have been made during the 16th

and 17 th centuries as their costumes show.Benin. Although Benin had no gold to offer,they supplied the Portuguese with pepper,ivory, leopard skins and people, who were



4

taken as slaves to work elsewhere in Africaand in the Portuguese colonies in Brazil.Many of these people were captives taken inthe wars in which the Benin peopleconquered their neighbours far and wideand made them part of the kingdom, or they

were sent by the conquered local chiefs astribute to the king.

In fact, the trade with the Portugueseprobably encouraged the growth of brasscasting in Benin at this time. Although West Africans invented the smelting of copper andzinc ores and the casting of brass at least as

long ago as the 10 th century, they themselvesdid not produce enough metal to supply thecasting industry of Benin city, which gavesuch splendour to the king’s palace. ThePortuguese found a ready market for brassingots, often made in the form of bracelets

called ‘manillas’. These were made in theLow Countries (modern Holland), tradedthroughout West Africa as a kind of currency,and melted down by the brass workers ofBenin.

Brass manilla (bracelet)Europeprobably 19th century AD



5

The figure on the right shows a Portuguesesoldier. He wears a typical 16 th centuryEuropean costume, with steel helmet andsword, and he carries a flintlock gun. Guns were new to the people of West Africa whenthe Portuguese arrived. So Africans traded

them from Europeans and learnt to makethem for themselves, to help them in their wars against other peoples who still only hadhand weapons or bows and arrows.Sometimes the king of Benin even employedPortuguese soldiers, like this man, to fight asmercenaries in his wars.

One reason why the rulers of Beninconquered their neighbours was to control

the supply of goods which could be traded tothe Europeans on the coast. The king himself was in charge of trading slaves, ivory andother important goods, so that all the profit went to support his court and government.Other merchants could only trade with theking’s permission. The Europeans themselves were seldom allowed to travel inland or visitBenin city, to avoid them trading without theauthority of the king.

The plaques show how the people of Beninperceived the Portuguese traders and theirsoldiers, with their pointed noses, thin facesand beards and strange clothes. Theirpresence on the decorations of the king’spalace shows how the Portuguese wereregarded as symbols of the king’s wealth andpower, to which their trade contributed somuch.

Overseas trade was one reason why the king’spower was associated with water, the oceanand the river trade routes by which theEuropean goods came to Benin. It is said thatan ancient king of Benin once defeated thesea-god Olokun in a wrestling match on thebeach and took from him the coral which thekings have used for their regalia ever since.Mudfish are often shown on plaques becausethey hop in and out of the water in the coastal

mangrove swamps, and are at home on landas well as in the sea, in the same way that theking has authority over both domains.

Brass figure of a Portuguese soldierholding a musketBenin, Nigeria17th century AD

Brass plaque of a EuropeanBenin, Nigeria16th century AD



6

An other important symbol on plaquesare leopards. These show thatthe king is also master of the tropical forest which covered most of Benin until recenttimes. The leopard is king of the forest, justas the Oba of Benin is king of the city and

villages where his people live. The king usedto keep leopards, which were paraded onimportant occasions like mascots. The figurebelow shows one of the King’s hunters, whose work was to capture live leopards for him.

So when we see various animals on plaques,they are there for more than just decoration.Throughout West Africa people tell stories andproverbs about all kinds of creatures, wild anddomestic, and many of them have characters which reveal important human qualities, in

these cases usually those of the king. Socrocodiles , the ‘policeman of the waters’, whenshown on a plaque probably stand for theking’s authority to punish wrongdoers, whilstthe python was the king of snakes, and themessenger of the god Olokun.

Bronze figure of a huntsman

Lower Niger, Nigeria 16th-18th century AD



7

To take another example, a certain bird, akind of fish eagle, is said to prophesy thefuture, predicting good or bad fortune,depending on its cry. The story goes that itonce warned the Benin king Esige not to goahead with a war against the Ibo people. The

king ignored the warning and defeated theIbo in battle, thus proving that he waspowerful enough to overcome the prophecy.

When Esige returned from the battle intriumph, one of his attendants carried a staff with a model of the bird, which was struck toshow what the king thought of its prophecies.Thus the bird of the prophecy shows that theking is above the normal dangers of bad

omens.

Brass plaque of the Oba holding leopards and wearing a mud-fish beltBenin, Nigeria 16th century AD



8

The king was the most important person inthe government of the kingdom, and treatedby his subjects with great respect according tocomplicated rules. But his power dependedon many other chiefs and officials whogoverned the city and the surrounding

villages.

In the city itself there were two kinds of chiefs.The palace chiefs, like the king himself,inherited their positions as the seniorrepresentatives of their clans. The town chiefsare responsible for the administration of theprovinces of the kingdom and were appointedin recognition of their personal abilities andachievements.

They represented their people rather than theinterests of the king. When town chiefs wereshown on plaques they could be identified bytheir ceremonial costume of pangolin scales.The pangolin (or ‘scaly anteater’) is the onlyanimal which is invulnerable to the king ofthe forest, the leopard, because it can rollitself up into a scaly ball. That is why theleopard hunters wear pangolin-skin helmets,and the town chiefs wear tunics of cloth‘scales’ to show that they are protected frombeing dominated by the king.

Another key figure in the royal court was themother of the Oba.

Queen Idia, mother of Oba Esigie, king ofBenin from the late fifteenth to the earlysixteenth century, played a key role in her

son's military campaigns against the Igalapeople, which may have been over control ofthe Niger waterway. Benin finally won these wars and made the Igala king a vassal of theOba.

A brass head representing Queen Idia wasmade to be placed in her altar following herdeath. It is said that Oba Esigie instituted thetitle of Queen Mother and established the

tradition of casting heads of this type inhonour of her military and ritual powers.Such heads were placed in altars in thepalace and in the Queen Mother's residence.



9

Commemorative head of a Queen MotherBenin, Nigeria

early 16th century AD



10

There was a yearly cycle of public ceremoniesheld in and around the palace, which involvedpeople at all levels of the kingdom. Theceremonies followed the working year,ensuring success in the farming from clearingthe forest to harvest, but they

also celebrated and strengthened the powerof the king and the good order of the kingdom.

A great number of people played their ownparts in the ritual pageantry, as chiefs andofficials, craft guilds or representatives oflocal communities. Even more were involvedas craftworkers producing splendid costumesand ritual paraphernalia for the king andchiefs, like those shown in many of the

plaques, or as farmers supplying food for thefeasts.

Many of the plaques probably representevents or characters from these annualceremonies, some of which the king of Beninstill carries out today.

The one on the next page seems to show a

procession, with a king or chief flanked byattendants who shade him from the sun withtheir shields. They are dressed in fine cloth worked in elaborate patterns, whosecolourful appearance we can only nowimagine. Smaller figures, whose size as wellas their scanty clothing shows their lesserimportance, carry a ceremonial sword andthe kind of circular box used to present gifts.But, as with so many of the Benin plaques,

exactly what this scene was meant to show isnow difficult to interpret.



11

Brass plaque showing the Oba of Benin with attendantsBenin, Nigeria16th century AD



12

Finally, we can take a look at the king’s palaceitself. In the 16 th Century, when thePortuguese first came to Benin city, they weregreatly impressed by its size and grandeur, which compared well with any city inPortugal at the time. They were particularly

surprised at the size of the palace, whichcomprised about a third of the whole city.

An 18 th century Dutch engraving, based oneyewitness accounts, helps us to understandthe plaque shown on the next page. In themiddle is one of the tall towers on the wood-shingled palace roof, decorated with agigantic brass python. Above the snake arethe feet of a bird and although the rest of the

bird has been broken off we know from theDutch engraving that it stood without-stretched wings on the top of the tower,looking rather like the bird of prophecy.

The posts upholding the roof are decorated with miniature copies of brass plaques likethe ones illustrated in this leaflet. At the baseof the posts, on what may be steps into thebuilding or perhaps an altar, are twoleopards, probably representing the brass or

ivory models of leopards which adorned thepalace.

The men standing in front of the buildinginclude two armed soldiers, no doubt palaceservants who also f ormed part of the king’sarmy. The young men next to them would bepages, possibly the sons of provincial chiefssent to serve the king. They were onlyallowed to dress in the kind of clothes and

regalia worn by other palace officials whenthey were fully initiated as adults.



Plaque showing figures in front of the Oba’s palace r

Benin, Nigeriaearly 16th century AD

Benin at the British Museum

The pictures in this leaflet show just a small selection of the hundreds of objects from Benin nowin the British Museum and other museums around the world. The British Museum Sainsbury Africa Gallery, gallery 25, includes artefacts from Benin with more than 60 of the brass plaques ondisplay in the gallery.For further information on The British Museum schools education programme please visit thelearning section of our website at www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

benin art nov2015

Documents