A plaque in the Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig features a very similar figure emerging victorious from a war scene. The two warriors wear the same crocodile-skin headdress and chin-beard, both uncommon for objects from Benin. In the Viennese Catalogue, Christine Seige suggests that both warriors represent Oba Esigie (1504-1550), but this thesis does not seem very logical given that no other depiction of Esigie features a beard or this unusual headdress.
Cp.:
Barbara PLANKENSTEINER (Hg.): Benin. Könige und Rituale. Höfische Kunst aus Nigeria, Wien 2007, S. 457. |