Ẹyo Otọ
Ẹyo Otọ is a learning space about the objects and their Edo designations. Listen, view and read about their use, production and function.
Catalogue
Search, filter and explore data, images and linked research for 5,288 objects from 138 institutions in twenty countries.
Institutions
View objects listed in the 138 institutions in twenty countries currently holding historical Benin objects in their collections.
Provenance
Study the roles, biographies and object relations of provenance names found in the information provided by 138 institutions.
Map
Explore a present day map of Edo South (ancient Benin Kingdom) and Benin City. See the current location of the historical objects worldwide.
Oral History
Listen to oral traditions Benin people share, to transmit and preserve knowledge and cultural traditions from one generation to another.
Itan Edo
Itan Edo is the story of Benin Kingdom. Read about the cultural and historical trajectories related to kings, queens, guilds and more.
Archival Documents
Access the digitised archival documents that relate to the historic Benin objects, their provenance stories and the wider history of Benin Kingdom.
Archival Institutions
Explore a source guide of institutions that hold archival material related to the Benin Kingdom, its history and the objects shown on the platform.
Digital Research Tools
Study data on the platform with digital research tools and visualisations.
About the project
Ermeline de la Croix collaborates closely with Dr. Felicity Bodenstein on the research and writing of the Digital Benin-authored provenance data. She identified over one thousand unique provenance names in the data transferred by the institutions and co-authored over fifty biographies. She linked all provenance data to the controlled vocabularies that she established for provenance names and roles on the platform. This research led to the development of the ‘Provenance’ space on the platform, which allows users to access the provenance names and linked objects. The provenance data was linked to external websites such as Wikidata, Getty vocabulary and others. Ermeline De la Croix and Felicity Bodenstein are establishing provenance research and tool development for internal and external use.
Biography
Ermeline de la Croix studied Law, Art History and Archaeology at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University. For her research master’s degree in Heritage and Museums, she wrote a first thesis on the Iy’Ọba Idia ivory uhunmwu-ẹkuẹ kept in the British Museum. In 2021, she started working as a provenance researcher for Digital Benin with Felicity Bodenstein.
While working for the project, in 2024, her master’s second year thesis focused on the complex trajectories of the forty-seven wooden uhunmwu-elao catalogued in Digital Benin.
Now preparing her PhD at the EHESS under the co-direction of Felicity Bodenstein and Claire Bosc-Tiessé, she is interested in the larger corpus of wooden altar objects from Benin.