A brass standing figure of a man in a patterned skirt, blowing a side-blown horn held up to his mouth

OC 021

A horn player

A court musician blowing a side-blown horn, cast in one piece by the lost-wax method.1,2

Date
1550 to 1680IX · Oceans crossed
Place
Benin City, Nigeria
Type
Figure · Brass and ironKingdom of Benin
Size
62.9 cm high
Made by
Igun-Ẹrọnmwọn, the brass casters’ guild
Held by
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkMuseum number 1978.412.310
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via The Met Open Access
Appears in

Where it sits in human time

Made about 400 years ago. On this strip, each step to the right is ten times closer to today.

300,000 years ago10,0003,0001,000100nowA horn player

Sources for this page

Every number on this page comes from one of these. How we check.

Last reviewed 12 November 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.

  1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Horn player. Edo peoples, Ìgùn Ẹ́rọ̀nmwọ̀n artists, 1550–1680. Collection record 310753, Open Access (CC0). www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/310753Used for: A brass figure of a horn player, 62.9 cm high. Checked 12 November 2026.
  2. Digital Benin (2020–2026), hosted by MARKK Hamburg; principal investigators K. Agbontaen-Eghafona, F. Bodenstein, J. Fine, A. Luther and B. Plankensteiner. Catalogue record for a brass plaque, British Museum Af1898,0115.18, with the museum’s curatorial notes (citing Gunsch, K. (2018). The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument. London: Routledge) and its provenance events. digitalbenin.org/catalogue/Af1898011518Used for: What the plaques are made of, how they were cast, that they were fixed in pairs to the palace pillars, and the dating to the 16th and 17th centuries. Checked 12 November 2026.