Switzerland’s Museum Rietberg has transferred ownership of 11 looted artifacts to Nigeria, according to the city of Zurich, which oversees the museum. They are just a few of the estimated thousands of works of art taken when British forces raided Edo, the capital of the Kingdom of Benin (now Edo state in modern-day Nigeria), in 1897. Dispersed among collections in the West, these objects have been the focus of a long—and in recent years, highly publicized—effort to retrieve them on the part of the Nigerian government. Though known as collectively as the Benin Bronzes, the artifacts, which date from the 16th to the 19th centuries, were fashioned in a variety of materials, including wood, ivory, brass, and bronze. All were looted from Edo’s royal palace, which was ransacked during the British raid. Source link