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ANTIQUE WORKS OF ART
FROM
BENIN,
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.
WORKS OF ART FROM BENIN,
WEST AFRICA.
OBTAINED BY THE PUNITIVE EXPEDITION IN 1897, AND NOWIN GENERAL PITT RIVERS’S MUSEUM AT FARNHAM, DORSET.
Benin is situated on the Guinea Coast, near the mouth of the Niger, in latitude 6·12north, and longitude 5 to 6 east.
It was discovered by the Portuguese at the end of the fourteenth or commencementof the fifteenth centuries. The Portuguese were followed by the Dutch andSwedes, and in 1553 the first English expedition arrived on the coast, and establisheda 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. Thepeople were comparatively civilized. The king possessed a number of horses whichhave long since disappeared and become unknown. Faulkner, in 1825, saw threesolitary horses belonging to the king, which he says no one was bold enough to ride.
In 1702 a Dutchman, named Nyendaeel, describes the city, and speaks of thehuman sacrifices there. He says that the people were great makers of ornamentalbrass work in his day, which they seem to have learnt from the Portuguese. Itwas visited by Sir Richard Burton, who went there to try to put a stop to humansacrifices, at the time he was consul at Fernando Po. In 1892 it was visited byCaptain H. L. Galloway, who speaks of the city as possessing only the ruins of itsformer greatness; the abolition of the slave trade had put a stop to the prosperityof the place, and the king had prohibited any intercourse with Europeans. The townhad been reduced to a collection of huts, and its trade had dwindled down to almostnil. The houses have a sort of impluvium in the centre of the rooms, which has ledsome to suppose that their style of architecture may have been derived from theRoman colonies of North Africa.
In 1896 an expedition, consisting of some 250 men, with presents and merchandise,left th