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

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Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 004671




Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 004671 License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)




Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 004671 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	The elephant was probably the most important royal animal in large parts of Africa. In Benin, the king had an economic monopoly on ivory and received one of the tusks from each animal hunted. They were considered charged with spiritual power and could only be touched safely by certain dignitaries. This one is richly carved and comes from the royal palace. Among other things, it depicts the fish-tailed King Ohen traveling into the realm of the water god Olokun, pulled by two crocodiles. It fits that the tusks were also considered a symbol of the court of Olokun (the god of water, wealth and beauty), who resides in the otherworld like the Oba (king) in this world. Text: Dietmar Neitzke.
Type	Elefantenzahn
Materials	Ivory
Size, Dimensions	Length: 210 cm. Diameter: 11.5 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	004671
Collector	Hans Meyer (Leipzig, Germany) donated it to the Linden-Museum. He had previously bought it in London
Acquisition date	1899
Circumstances of acquisition	Hans Meyer (Leipzig, Germany) donated it to the Linden-Museum. He had previously bought it in London. This and other carved elephant tusks were used as decoration in the room of the first chairman of the supporting association of the Linden-Museum in 1956. 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	Temporarily at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart

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	102
last Change	2023-01-26 12:15:00
License	Linden-Museum Stuttgart

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