Benin Plaques
- Gallery: Room 25
- Made in: Benin City
- Date: 16thC-17thC
- Object type: plaque
- Materials: brass
- Museum number: Af1898,0115.72
- 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 remarkable brass plaque from Benin City. It’s a narrow rectangular relief made using the lost-wax casting technique. The background is covered in intricate river leaf patterns and dotted details. At each corner sit decorated rosettes, and the plaque is mounted with four small holes.
At the center stands a powerful figure, facing forward. Their right hand holds a flexible switch, while the left is clenched — a pose often seen in Benin royal art. The figure’s face is marked with three vertical lines above each eye, and there’s a detail along the nose, suggesting high status. They’re richly dressed in a beaded deep collar, a coral bead undergarment, crossed baldric, and a basketry cap with an oro extension — a sign of leadership.
These brass plaques once adorned the palace of the Oba, or king. Created in the 16th to 17th centuries, they reflect a period of great artistic and political strength in the Benin Kingdom.
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.
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