Ewuare II
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Ewuare II was crowned the Oba of Benin on 20 October 2016. He is the thirty-ninth Oba, a title created for the Head of State of the Benin Empire at some time between 1180 and 1300.
Ewuare II in 2023
The Oba's wives, at his coronation in 2016
Procession of high priests at the coronation in 2016
Benin Bronzes
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The Benin Bronzes are a group of several thousand metal plaques and sculptures that decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now Edo State, Nigeria. The metal plaques were produc
Ewuare II
…Obaseki, a former governor of Edo State. Like many of his predecessors, he started his rule by demanding that the spiritually and historically important Benin Bronzes that were taken during the Benin Expedition of 1897 by the British Empire be returned. In October 2017, he celebrated his first anniversary on the…
A Benin Bronze plaque on display in the British Museum
Ancestral shrine in Royal Palace, Benin City, 1891: the earliest-known photograph of the Oba's compound. Note 'bronze' heads at both ends of the shrine.
A 16th-century Benin Bronze depicting a Portuguese soldier, with manillas in the background (Leipzig Museum of Ethnography)
An idealised depiction of Benin City by a Dutch artist in the 1686 French edition of Olfert Dapper's Description of Africa (1668).