ieee 
eee 4 
CAST-METAL WORK FROM BENIN. 57 
in front, the different symbols follow each other in the same order round each 
half of the circumference. The central symbol is a bullock’s head: then, in 
succession, a stone neolithic celt: an arm excised at the shoulder, with a 
tripod like ornament covering the termination, and its hand holding a three- 
pointed object : a frog: a fish, with protruding eyes, which resembles more 
nearly than any other, in my opinion, the curious mud-hopping Periophthalmus 
koelreuteri, so common on the brackish margins of West African rivers ; 
or, possibly, it may be intended for—though very unlike—the electric fish 
(Malapterurus) which is a powerful fetish* on different parts of the coast, 
because of the “quaking and trembling it produces in the arm”: then follows 
another bullock’s head, which, with a second neolithic stone axe, completes 
the series. 
The bullock’s head, which occupies the central position among the 
symbols, is doubtless some sort of fetish. The Beni have large herds of black 
and white cattle, as described by Burton; and bullocks form one of the chief 
sacrifices, human beings being the other, when the King is making “ country 
custom,” for his father and dead ancestors. The same emblem was much in 
evidence also in Dahomey, where, “ during the customs,” as Commander 
Forbes records, “a party carrying the fetish gear is headed by a man ina 
huge coat of dry grass, wearing a large bullock’s head-mask. As he passes 
all the boys follow erving, ‘Soh, soh. This is the representative of the god 
of thunder and lightning.” One of these actual masks formed part of the Benin 
loot, and is now in the National Collection. The next emblem to this, on 
each side, is the representation of an undoubted neolithic celt. These 
implements, which occur in the ground in many parts of Africa, are, among 
the Yorubas, considered to be “ thunderbolts which Shango or Jakuta, the 
thunder-god, casts down from heaven,” and are venerated as sacred relies.t 
Among the Blacks in Tobago, in the West Indies, where they disinter 
similar neolithic axes, from time to time, in digging holes for sugar canes, 
the stone is often boiled, and the water drunk to cure various kinds of 
ailments. A Chaldean cylinder, “on which a priest is represented as making 
an offering to a hatchet placed upright on a throne,” has been published by 
M. de Longperrier, who has shown “ that the Egyptian hieroglyph for Nouper, 
God, is simply the figure of an axe.” An incident narrated in the last number 
of this Bulletin t proves that we need not go far to meet with the rooted belief 
in supernatural powers residing in stone axe-heads. What may be the signi- 
ficance of the excised arm, or of the frog, I am unable to conjecture. 
The second tusk-holder differs from the one I have described, in a few 
details of the head-dress—which shows that it was cast from an independent 
mold ; and in the substitution, for the frog, of another symbol, for which 
I am unable to suggest a name, unless it be a much conventionalised 
leopard’s head. 
In his letter to me Commander Bacon writes, that in his opinion the Beni 
had no form of idol in the ordinary sense. “I do not believe in any of the 
figures being gods of the Beni; nor do I believe they were far enough 
advanced to worship any person or figure. The nearest approach to idols, 
were the carved tusks in the bronze heads in the Juju houses ; but I do not 
believe even these were objects of worship.” 
Both the tusk-holders, like some of the other pieces in the collection, are 
of so rich a terra-cotta colour, that they might easily pass, on a superficial 
inspection, for clay. Whether this colour results from a fine coating of 
laterite, from the clay molds in which they were cast—which would, of 

* Bull. Liverp. Mus. i. p. 26. 
+ Adventures and Missionary Labours in the Interior of Africa. By T. J. Bowen, 
p. 315-316 (1857). 
+ Tom. cit., p. 28. 
