German Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts: Benin-Bronzes in Germany

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Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 097400




Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 097400 License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)




Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 097400 License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Object description
This information was provided by the German museum where the object is currently located or where it was located prior to restitution.

Object Name	Carved elephant tusk
Description	This richly carved elephant tusk stood vertically on one of the royal ancestral altars in the palace courtyards. It thus embodied the world axis, i.e. the connection between earth (this world) and heaven (the otherworld). This perpendicular is a central stylistic element in the formal language of Beninese art. These altars with their objects served the ancestor cult. The king as the highest priest offered sacrifices here in order to draw the blessings of the heavenly powers over his royal ancestors to earth. The tusks were thus covered with sacrificial blood. The burn marks, however, are from the British plunder during the conquest in 1897. Depicted here are King Ohen (with fish tail, snake belt and ceremonial sword), a soldier (with bell), King Ewuare (supported by the throne prince and by the supreme commander of the army) King Ohen (drawn by two crocodiles into the realm of the god Olokun), the messenger of the king of Ife (who had to agree to the election of a new Oba of Benin) and two Portuguese. Text: Dietmar Neitzke.
Type	Elefantenzahn
Materials	Ivory
Size, Dimensions	Length: 155 cm. Diameter: 11 cm.
Dating of Object

Museum / Collection / Acquisition
This information was provided by the German museum where the object is currently located or where it was located prior to restitution.

Museum	Linden-Museum Stuttgart
Museum Inv.-No	097400
Collector	Gustav Umlauff (Hamburg, Germany)
Acquisition date	1922
Circumstances of acquisition	The carved elephant tusk was bought from the ethnographic dealer Gustav Umlauff (Hamburg, Germany). Text: Markus Himmelsbach.

Notes

Current ownership status and location

Status	restituted
Date of last status change	14 December 2022
Current ownership	Federal Republic of Nigeria
Holding institution	National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM, Nigeria)
Current location	Linden Museum Stuttgart (permanent loan)

Categorization for the search functions
This information was included by the German Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts and is intended to make the object easier to find in the database.

Object Type	tusk
Materials	ivory
Tags

Dataset

ID	158
last Change	2023-01-26 12:15:00
License	Linden-Museum Stuttgart

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