CAST-METAL WORK FROM BENIN. 49 
On a collection of Cast-Metal Work, of high 
artistic value, from Benin, lately acquired 
for the Mayer Museum. 
By THE DrREcTOR OF MUSEUMS. 
Tue barbarous massacre, “by the orders of the King of Benin and his 
Councillors,” of the members of an official mission pacifically proceeding from 
the Niger Coast Protectorate Government to visit the King, will be fresh in 
every one’s recollection. The punitive expedition sent by Her Majesty’s 
Government, under Admiral Rawson, to bring to account the perpetrators of 
this terrible outrage, captured the city on the 18th of February last (1897), 
and among the spoils interesting to ethnologists were, besides many large 
elaborately-carved elephants’ tusks and other smaller objects in ivory, a 
great number of fiat plaques, and statuettes in the round, of cast-metal look- 
ing like bronze. The wonderful technical art displayed in their construction, 
their profuse ornamentation, and the high artistic excellence of nearly all of 
them, quite astonished students of West African ethnology, as the’ product of 
that, now, at all events, more, than less barbarous region, the Niger Delta. 
Of the plaques, some three hundred of which have been presented to the 
National Collection, where I have had the opportunity of inspecting them, 
this Museum has, unfortunately, acquired only one. The subjects upon . 
them are produced in high relief, and are almost as various as the number 
of the plaques. Of the metal figures in the round, however, the Museum 
has been fortunate in securing some important examples, of which we pro- 
pose to give an account in the following pages. 
I. Commencing with the least important specimens in the collection I have 
selected the cast-metal pipe represented in Fig. 1 (Register number : 21.12.97.1). 
The composition of the metal has not yet been analysed, but it seems to be 
brass and not bronze. The pipe consists of a wide bowl, 138 mm. deep, and 85 in 
diameter, and a large stem-socket united together at an acute angle. Incon- 
veniently heavy to hold 
in the hand, it probably 
was used standing on 
the ground on the 
diminutive pedestals 
seen on its base. On 
the strengthening bar 
between the upper rim 
of the bowl and the 
stem-socket is a rude 
representation of a 
(2) hippopotamus. The 
ornamentation on the 
stem-socket is confined 
to a few string-coil 
patterns, but on the 
bowl it is more elab- 
orate. At the junc- 
tion of the bow] with 
the stem-socket, the 
two are encircled by 
numerous turns of 
cord, as if the pipe 

Fig. 1.—Tosacco Pree 1x METAL. 
