A brass head of a man wearing a tall collar of beads up to his lips and a beaded cap

OC 020

A brass head of a king

A head cast in brass to honour a past Oba on a royal ancestral altar. Heads like this stood on the altars in the palace until February 1897, when the invading British forces laid them out on the ground and took them away.1,2

Date
Early 15th to mid-16th centuryVIII · Medieval networks and empires
Place
Benin City, Nigeria
Type
Commemorative head (ùhúnmwèlaò) · Brass and ironKingdom of Benin
Size
23.5 cm high
Made by
Igun-Ẹrọnmwọn, the brass casters’ guild
Held by
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkMuseum number 1979.206.86
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via The Met Open Access
Appears in

Where it sits in human time

Made about 500 years ago. On this strip, each step to the right is ten times closer to today.

300,000 years ago10,0003,0001,000100nowA brass head of a king

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. Ùhúnmwèlaò (head of an ọ́bà). Edo peoples, Ìgùn Ẹ́rọ̀nmwọ̀n artists, early 15th–mid-16th century. Collection record 312290, Open Access (CC0). www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/312290Used for: A brass commemorative head of a king, 23.5 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. Provenance contexts: “Looting of the Ọba’s Palace”, “Looting of the Benin Ama-Ẹrọnmwọn (Brass Plaques)”, “Destruction of the Palatial Compound”, “Benin-Portuguese Ivories”, “Diplomatic Gifts”. digitalbenin.org/provenance/contextsUsed for: The invasion of February 1897, the looting and the fire; how the plaques were found, shipped and sold; the Benin-Portuguese ivories. Checked 12 November 2026.