1900.39.8

Collection type

Object

Description

Small brass mask representing a crocodile's head.

Long description

Description taken from Conservation Card by Robert Pearce 02/04/2001 - Small brass mask representing a crocodile's head. Casting in form of crocodile head. Copepr (square section) strip down ventre of nose and copper rectangular sections in eyes. Rings around the edge to which bells are attached with one link between bell and ring. (Robert Pearce 02/04/2001) [LKG 27/03/2009]

Geographical reference

Nigeria

Africa > Western Africa > Nigeria

Benin City

Cultural groups

Edo

Person

Field collector 1897 Benin City "Punitive Expedition"

PRM source Charles G. Kingsley

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1897

Date collected

February 1897

Acquisition information

Donated: 1900

Materials and processes

Material Brass Metal, Material Copper Metal, Process Inlaid

Dimensions

Height: max 190 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1900.39.8

Research and responses

This object is part of a collection documented as ‘from Benin city, taken during the punitive expedition under Admiral Rawson, February, 1897’. The objects in the collection were acquired by Mary Henrietta Kingsley before her death in June 1900. They were bequeathed to her brother Charles G. Kingsley, with the understanding that they would be transferred to the Pitt Rivers Museum after his death, however he arranged for them to be immediately presented to the Museum, where they entered the collection in September 1900. [JMC 14/04/2023]

Associated publications

Illustrated in colour on page 83 of Women of the World: Women Travelers and Explorers (Extraordinary Explorers), by Rececca Stefoff (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). It is featured (along with eight other pieces from the PRM collections) in a special photographic section entitled 'Mary Kingsley's African Trophies' accompanying Stefoff's Chapter 5 'Mary Kingsley: Wandering through West Africa'. The photograph is captioned (same page): 'A crocodile mask. To the Oba and Edo people of Nigeria, the crocodile represented power and ferocity. It was associated with Olokun, god of the waters. Kingsley had several spirited clashes with Olokun's reptilian representatives in the delta of the Niger River.' NB The Oba is the king of Benin, not a people. (Copy in RDF: Biographies: Mary Kingsley.) [JC 11 9 2003] Listed as no B8/71 on page 2.1.32 of An Illustrated Catalogue of Benin Art, by Philip J. C. Dark (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1982). It is also reproduced there in black and white as illustration 49. NB The caption to the illustration mistakenly states that the object is ex [sic] Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. [JC 18 5 1997] Reproduced in black and white as figure 9 on page 15 of Symbols of Kings: Benin Art at the Pitt Rivers Museum, by Linda Mowat (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1991). [JC 10 3 1997].

Search terms: Mask, Ornament, Insignia, Religion