The Benin Bronzes.
A few years ago very many bronzes (nearly pure copper) were sold under the hammer. They were looted from Benin City during the war which ended in the country in and around the city being taken by the British troops, and eventually incorporated in Southern Nigeria. These wonderful bronzes throw a light upon the history of that country, and tell of a powerful nation far advanced in the art of modelling and casting metals long before they had come into close touch with Western influence. This remarkable people who possessed so much wealth in copper and in ivory have long gone; their descendants or the tribes occupying their city have no knowledge of the craft, and apparently retained these relics of barbaric splendour with silent awe. The entire series of bronze panels from which the figures so cleverly stand out in bold relief, must have presented a wonderful sight to the British soldiers as they entered Benin. The collection in the British Museum was sent home to this country by Sir Ralph Moor, K.C.M.G., H.M. Commissioner and Consul-General for the Niger Coast Protectorate. It is impossible to describe their beauty or the details of the elaborate modelling of the dress, arms, and costumes of the Benin king and his chiefs and officers as they existed in the sixteenth century. There is a model of the king's house, his attendant guards, high officials, a sword-bearer, and another bearing a ceremonial axe. Some of the bronzes represent musicians playing various instruments, and others performing all kinds of functions. The bronze panels of fishes and animals are very lifelike, especially bulls, crocodiles, and the heads of oxen, even the twisted cords with which the animals were tethered being correctly modelled. The bronzes representing Europeans are exceptionally valuable in that from the costumes portrayed the date of those bronzes has been fixed, approximately. The matchlocks and flint-guns are reproduced with the greatest exactitude, as also the Egyptian figures, copied presumably from the remains of Ancient Egypt, with which these metal-workers were evidently familiar.
In addition to the panels of copper, which show marks of how they were attached to the walls, were bronze masks or warriors' heads which served as stands for the splendidly carved tusks of ivory also discovered when the expedition visited that country. There are many minor objects in bronze which show that this remarkable civilization, now lost, was far advanced in the arts.
As it has been suggested Benin relics are not entirely confined to museum specimens, and collectors are not without opportunities of securing pieces.
Many of the early tribes of Africa had knowledge of metal-working, although some have lost or neglected to practice it.