Rights management: Linden-Museum Stuttgart
Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivs 4.0 International
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This collection item does not have a name in the language of origin. If you know the name or have comments, use this form to contact the data-providing institution.
Memorial head: male with rich pearl jewellery
These heads served the royal ancestor cult and were placed on altars, each in a separate courtyard of the royal palace. Sacrifices were given to them, and they were covered with sacrificial blood. This is the youngest of the three memorial heads of royal ancestors in the collection. This is indicated, on the one hand, by the deteriorating quality of craftsmanship. On the other hand also the ornaments attached to the sides of the beaded hood. They can be interpreted as "wings", the projections protruding forward underneath as snakes. Birds and (rainbow) snake stand for the connection between earthly this world and heavenly otherworld. King Osemwede (ca. 1816-48) used such ornaments to emphasize the spiritual powers of the kings, whose political and military power had dwindled. Thus they stylized themselves as the personification of the medicine god Osun. Even before that, however, kings were regarded as "divine beings," and their heads in particular were cultically revered as the "concentration of spiritual power and the people" even during their lifetimes. Text: Dietmar Neitzke.
- Data Provider
- Linden-Museum Stuttgart Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde Show original at data provider
Cataloguing data
- Cultural attribution
- Edo
- Object type
- Plastik
- Dimensions
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Diameter: 33 cm
Height: 55 cm - Material/Technique
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Copper alloy
Lost wax process
- Current location
- Linden-Museum Stuttgart
- Inventory number
- 005379
Provenance and sources
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Assignment to a curated holding:
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Change of physical control or legal title
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where
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Nigeria
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Change of physical control
-
when
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1899
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- Provenance
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In October 1898, the Hamburg company "H. Bey & Co" offered the Berlin Ethnological Museum a Benin collection that came directly from Africa. However, due to a lack of funds, the entire collection could not be purchased and was therefore to be passed on to other interested parties. Felix von Luschan of the Berlin Museum therefore informed Karl Graf von Linden in November 1898, and offered him a right of first refusal. The Linden Museum then made 15,000 M available for the purchase of objects. The purchase price was paid by the Heilbronn entrepreneur Karl Knorr, which is why the collection became known as "Die Karl Knorr'sche Sammlung von Benin-Altertümern". Von Luschan published a detailed description of the collection under the same title (1901) on behalf of Count Linden and Knorr. Other buyers of the collection included the museums in Vienna and Munich, but also people such as Hans Meyer (Leipzig) and Eugen Rautenstrauch (Cologne). Text: Markus Himmelsbach.
Information about the record
- Legal status metadata
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED
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