Ama is a pictorial combination of figures that has a historical explanation or is a visual representation of a historical event. Ama had a mnemonic purpose, aiding one to recall the events or persons represented in the artwork. Benin oral traditions are popularly transmitted in the form of commemorative festivals, stories, plays, songs, poems, riddles, proverbs and other forms of oral literature. Ben-Amos (1980:28) observed the existence of over nine hundred known plaques which provided a testimony to court life at the time of Ọba Esigie, considered ‘a sort of pictorial record of events in Benin history, an aid to memorizing oral traditions’.

Although the objects grouped here are singularly described as Ama in Edo, in English they are described as relief plaques or carved wooden panels.

European historical accounts and Edo oral tradition alike describe how the relief plaques decorated the walls or pillars of the Benin royal palace as a piece of monumental architecture. By 1897, when British forces captured, looted and burnt down the royal palace, the plaques were no longer on display, they had been placed in storage within the palace. Gunsch’s (2017

) most recent survey has indicated there are at least 850 plaques in collections globally. When exactly the plaques were made is source of debate – some have argued they were cast over a period of around 150 years from the mid-sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century (Fagg, 1970

). Meanwhile, others have attributed their manufacture to a much narrower window of around fifty years from the end of fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century (Gunsch, 2017

). Despite these differences, it is agreed that some plaques were commissioned by Ọba Esigie (who reigned c. 1516/17–1550s).

Relief Plaque

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Website

Online Catalogue

Manuscript collections

Photographs, sound, film and archive collections 

Pitt Rivers Museum

Internal Data (eng)

Wikidata Link

British Museum link

Thompson, Henry Nilus

Collected in the field

Colonial administrator

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