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.

Wooden panels are carved to tell stories of recorded events. Their function is similar to that of bronze plaques.

Carved Wooden Panel

Austria

Website

Online Catalogue

Weltmuseum Wien

Internal Data (ger)

Schädler, Karl-Ferdinand

Collector

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juju 

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dwarf

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aboriginal

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tribe

This word was redacted from the catalogue as a derogatory racialised word.

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non-western

western-art

western museum

tribal

hofzwerg

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British Colonial Military Campaign on Benin, February 1897

expedition

exotic

negro

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Black Africa

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primitive

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medicine man

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