The commemorative head, Uhunmwu Elao, of an Ọba placed at the king’s ancestral shrine could be made from bronze, wood or terra-cotta. The altar consists of a commemorative head that supported the carved ivory tusk. It could have a circular base or a rectangular-shaped base. However, they all have a unifying feature, which is the hole at the centre in which the tusk is placed.

Uhunmwu-Elao

Commemorative heads are placed on ancestral altars and shrines. They can be cast in brass, carved in wood or sculpted from clay and fired. Brass commemorative heads would only be cast to furnish a past Ọba’s ancestral shrine and, in a smaller number of cases, the Iy’Ọba. Wooden examples, sometimes with brass plate attached, would be made for titled chiefs. Terracotta heads would be used to furnish the ancestral altars of members of the Igun-Eronmwon, and it is understood that some terracotta heads date to the Ogiso period, predating the thirteenth century. Commemorative heads are not portraits of the deceased but memorials (Bradbury, 1973

Commemorative heads have been crucial in developing chronologies for Benin artworks. These studies have looked at the style and analysis of the copper-alloy composition as well as thermoluminescence dating. However, dating is still a matter of debate, with most scholars agreeing only that heads with flanges are more recent (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries), and those commemorative heads with low zinc percentages in the copper-alloy composition date from late fifteenth to early seventeenth century (for full discussion, see Junge, 2007

Commemorative Head

Germany

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Photographic collection

Museum Fünf Kontinente, Staatliche Museen in Bayern

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Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin

Museum

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Digital Benin linked field	Institution field	Value
object id	Inventarnr	99-2
designation	Objektbezeichnung, Titel	Gedenkkopf eines Oba
material	Material	Kupferlegierung
dimensions	Maße/Breite
dimensions	Maße/Durchmesser	32 cm; 24 cm auf Höhe der "Lippen"
dimensions	Maße/Höhe	51 cm
dimensions	Maße/Länge
dimensions	Maße/Objektmaß
dimensions	Maße/Tiefe
weight	Gewicht	33 kg
date made	Datierung	17. – 19. Jh.
production place	Herkunft	Benin Reich (Historische Region) (Afrika/Nigeria)
prior source	Beteiligte Personen/SammlerIn
prior source	Beteiligte Personen/VorbesitzerIn	Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin
provenance	Provenance	vorh. 1952, vorh. Feb. 2014
accession date	Eingangsdatum	1899
accession method	Erwerbungsart / Verbleib	Tausch
license	Copyright	Museum Fünf Kontinente, Nicolai Kästner (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
	Beteiligte Personen/UrheberIn	Unbekannt

Ẹyo Otọ

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