Benin bronzes by the Edo people of west Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries are made from brass that originated in the German Rhineland

Benin bronzes are made of German brass

By Tom Metcalfe17 April 2023

Most of the famous Benin bronzes – artworks in the forms of heads, plaques and figurines made by the Edo people of west Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries – are made from brass that originated in the German Rhineland, a new study has found.

Manillas were horseshoe-shaped copper-alloy rings that were used as a type of money in west Africa by European slavers and traders from the 16th century. They were an important source of copper and usually alloyed with zinc to make brass. But the metal was often called ‘bronze’, which implies the presence of tin.

Skowronek says that this is the case for the Benin bronzes: ‘The Benin metal is mostly brass or leaded brass, sometimes with [small] amounts of tin,’ he says.

To determine the source of the metal in the Benin bronzes, Skowronek and his colleagues analysed 67 manillas recovered from five shipwrecks in the Atlantic and three land sites in Europe and Africa, to determine their lead isotope signatures and trace levels of antimony, arsenic, nickel, and bismuth.

The researchers found strong similarities between the manillas used in early Portuguese trade and the metal used in more than 700 of the Benin bronzes, according to earlier studies of their chemical compositions.

In addition, they found the composition of the copper in the Portuguese manillas matched copper ores mined in the German Rhineland, which suggests that Germany was the main source of the metal – a discovery that is likely to apply to most of the Benin bronzes, Skowronek says.

He highlights the irony in Europe’s cheapest metal ending up in the finest art in West Africa, noting that manillas were ‘a sinister cog in a machine designed to get West Africa hooked on Western goods’.

But Benin’s craftspeople were equal to the challenge, adds Kingsley. ‘The Victorian world was shocked how accomplished [Benin’s] artists were and started re-thinking how these “heathen savages” thought and lived,’ he says.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/benin-bronzes-are-made-of-german-brass/4017281.article