Antique Works of Art from Benin / Collected by Lieutenant-General Pitt Rivers

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Antique Works of Art from Benin, by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers
The cover image was produced by the transcriber using an illustration from the book, and is placed in the public domain.

COLLECTED BY LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PITT RIVERS, D.C.L., F.R.S., F.S.A. Inspector of Ancient Monuments in Great Britain, &c.
PRINTED PRIVATELY. 1900.

LONDON: HARRISON AND SONS, PRINTERS IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY, ST. MARTIN’S LANE, W.C.

OBTAINED BY THE PUNITIVE EXPEDITION IN 1897, AND NOW IN GENERAL PITT RIVERS’S MUSEUM AT FARNHAM, DORSET.
Benin is situated on the Guinea Coast, near the mouth of the Niger, in latitude 6·12 north, and longitude 5 to 6 east.
It was discovered by the Portuguese at the end of the fourteenth or commencement of the fifteenth centuries. The Portuguese were followed by the Dutch and Swedes, and in 1553 the first English expedition arrived on the coast, and established a trade with the king, who received them willingly.
Benin at that time appears by a Dutch narrative to have been quite a large city, surrounded by a high wall, and having a broad street through the centre. The people were comparatively civilized. The king possessed a number of horses which have long since disappeared and become unknown. Faulkner, in 1825, saw three solitary horses belonging to the king, which he says no one was bold enough to ride.