According to a source, the University of Oxford owns 145 artifacts looted by British forces during an assault on the city of Benin in 1897 that are likely to be returned to Nigeria.
The university’s Pitt Rivers Museum owns more than two-thirds of the looted artifacts, and 45 are on loan. They date from the 13th century and include brass plaques, bronze figures, carved ivory tusks, musical instruments, weaving equipment, jewelry, and ceramic and coral artifacts.
According to a preliminary investigation by Dan Hicks, a curator at the museum, another 15 pieces may have been taken during the military raid, but their origin has not been determined.
“The work of restitution begins in part with the sharing of knowledge,” said the report. “The restitution of African cultural heritage is of the utmost importance in the 2020s.” Moves by museums “to embrace the importance of transparency about looted African collections” were welcome.
The first British colleges to return Benin bronzes to Nigeria were Jesus College, Cambridge, and Aberdeen University, which did so last month. Germany has also pledged to return the bronze medals from Benin the following year.
“We look forward to a similar repatriation of our antiques by other institutions that have them,” Nigeria’s minister of communication and culture, Lai Mohammed, said.
Approximately 10,000 artifacts plundered during the Benin raid are housed in 165 museums and several private collections around the world. The British Museum in London houses the world’s largest collection of 900 items.
According to Hicks’ investigation, the 145 pieces in the Pitt Rivers Museum’s custody comprised less than 1.5 percent of the objects taken in the incident.
It said: “The chaotic theft of royal and sacred artworks and other items by perhaps up to two hundred soldiers, sailors and administrators during the sacking of Benin City in the British naval expedition of 1897 is one of the most well-known examples of the widespread practice of military looting by European troops in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.”
The Pitt Rivers Museum had been “engaging with Nigerian stakeholders… to determine appropriate paths forward for the protection and return of these artifacts,” according to an Oxford University statement earlier this year.
The project was part of a larger attempt to “identify collections taken as a result of military brutality, theft, or other problematic circumstances, and engage in dialogues with external partners concerning the future preservation of these objects.”
