Benin Plaques
- Gallery: Room 25
- Made in: Benin City
- Date: 16thC-17thC
- Object type: plaque
- Materials: brass
- Museum number: Af1898,0115.56
- Museum: The British Museum
- Collection record: British Museum website
- Image © The Trustees of the British Museum, shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.
Listen to the free audio guide
About this object
Before you is a Benin Plaque, a remarkable work of relief sculpture in brass. It shows a tall, central figure standing proudly, holding a wide-bladed sword over one shoulder while resting their other hand on a belt decorated with intricate patterns of dots and lines. The figure is adorned with an array of regalia, including a beaded collar, armlets, and an elaborate headpiece with a knob and a feather. Their body shows marks of scarification, a sign of status or identity. A smaller, kneeling figure is placed beside them, also beaded and crowned with a tiered hairstyle.
Crafted using the ancient lost-wax method, this plaque is one of many from 16th- or 17th-century Benin, where skilled Edo artists created vivid records of court life using brass. These pieces once adorned the palace of the Oba, the king of Benin. Many were brought to Britain after the 1897 British Expedition to Benin, and today hundreds like this one are found in museums and collections worldwide.
See it in person
Benin Plaques is on display in Room 25 at the British Museum on Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London — free to enter. Choose British Museum on audioguide.london and take a photo of it to hear this free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
New, in beta. British Museum support has just launched and is still improving: over 1,000 objects so far, with more added all the time.
