What are the Benin Bronzes? - The arts past and present (6/6)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- What are the Benin Bronzes? In the late 1800s, the Benin Empire in Africa was a hotbed of artistic skill and the British wanted a piece of it - as many pieces as they could steal, in fact. But what were the beautiful Benin Bronzes and did the current Queen of England really fence stolen goods.
(Part 6 of 6)
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What are the Benin Bronzes?
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I am author of the books: The Great Wall of Africa: The Empire of Benin’s 10,000 Mile Long Wall, The Real Wakandas of Africa and The Real Vibranium of Africa (by Maurice Miles Martinez). Most people are unaware that African people built a wall before transatlantic slavery in the Benin empire that is one of the most massive structures in the world. At 10,000 miles long, the Great Wall of Africa contains more material than all of the buildings in New York City’s Manhattan. If cut into 1 meter high blocks, it would wrap around the equator more than 65 times! It is arguably the planet’s greatest man-made structure. Yet, it has been ignored by historians. In my book The Great Wall of Africa: The Empire of Benin’s 10,000 Mile Long Wall, I explore the dimensions of the wall, the history of the Benin Empire’s Kings (Obas) and the stolen Benin Bronzes. These treasures that sit in the world’s museums amount to more than $14 Billion. Most people who read this book are left wondering why they never heard about the Great Wall of Africa in their history classes. The world needs more videos on this topic.
Maurice Miles Martinez
Some of the stuff I read on the Internet about Benin, Nigeria, Nok or any other ancient West African civilization I have never heard before. I have always learned in school about ancient empires in Europe and a little about Native Americans like the Aztecs.
History (in Anglo-Saxon majority countries) never teach of any history except its own... not even the Asian empires. I just find it bias, like if the "White man" is the center of the universe. It's nice to learn something new for a change.
I remember this story .The Oba begged the British not to come but they didn't want to comply.
Not begged, he refused to work with them.
many of the Benin bronzes were done while Europeans lived in mud huts. Beautifully rendered, as masterful as any of Michelangelo work much later. How much did the europeans borrow from africa. without proper respect and reference.
Steal
Actually nisibiri of Nigeria and Bassa of Liberia are both African writing systems as well as the bantu writing systems of the Shona, nbebele, and Congolese.
This is really good and well explained!
I was really stuck on homework and wikipidia didn't help a bit.
Then I went onto this video and I hadtons write down! I used this for my Cultural art on the Bennin bronzes. :)
Beautiful art
this really helped with my art hwk :) thankyou!!! :)
And when the queen realised that the gift was a stolen good, what did she do? ....sitll kept it, uh???
Who’s here in 2021 for school
These belong to my family Empire and are educational pieces from my Bhagwan Ram Chitroda Empire retold and made during my family visit during my ilaali Kingdom of Tripura India also known as Zooltanate 🕉🔺➕
European lairs will not mention that Afrika was not always separated by the Sahara. In the remote past, Afrika was fertile with lush vegetation. Climate change, sound familiar? caused catastrophic changes to the topography of the continent. The artwork left behind on the rock drawings clearly demonstrates this. Today's weather patterns are leaving devastation in their wake right here in America. Man-made pollution is contributing to modern climate change, but volcanic eruptions in the past caused the climate to change as well, I think the eruption of Krakatoa caused a major shift in the weather, please correct me if I am wrong about that, it just somehow came to my mind. To better understand what Afrika was like before the European invasion, read the writings left behind by the Greek scholars who went there as students and traders, also, the writings of the Portuguese who traded with Afrikans, and then later attacked those same Afrikans and stole their wealth, and then enslaved them. The story of Atlantis was told to Solon, a blind illiterate, Greek philosopher, by a priest of Kemet. In that story, Atlantis was described as being a continent, not a city. Atlantis supposedly had mountains, Elephants, and other wildlife, and concentric circular rings of waterways, and it definitely was not located in Europe. Ground penetrating Radar has now located circular structures below the sands of the Sahara, which makes perfect sense because that is where Kemet is located, and why would a priest of Kemet tell a story about Atlantis being in Europe? Actually, Europe is not a continent, it is a part of Asia.
Tellin it like it is.
Intersting
ok
EPIC
@Jonathan Joestar why done u "jonathan joestar"
@Jonathan Joestar no u really should
@Bulllseye2012 If the ethnic cleansing of the San is what troubles you (and similar occurences) then I encourage you in your efforts to spread awareness. It needs to have attention brought to it. However, that is a modern occurence to my knowledge and to bring it up in this video is at the least, confusing. The purpose of this video is not at all to ignore genocide of blacks on blacks, its to spread awareness of cultural achievements that have been ignored. Different subjects.
lets act like Greeks didn't get their writing script from Semites.
...and Semites got it from Egyptians.
What about the Nubians?
VIVA LA BORIS UP THE BOIS
Big up Boris!,
Ayyyyy
KNT Jewel ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyuyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
If they couldn't read or write latin characters, then why do most African languages use the Latin alphabet for writing?
Do you know the ge'ez writing system is used in Ethiopia to this day? Go spread your lies someplace else
@Godgenes The British or any other European colonial powers never came to Africa to help indigenous Africans. They already in so many years of the slave trade. They came to exploit Africa, once more. Excuses such as Christianization, civilization was a bunch of you know what! One of Africa's most vicious colonial rulers King Leopold II of Belgium at least acknowledges that in one of his first speeches to the missionaries before their "mission" to the Congo.
@Bulllseye2012 I really don't get what you're trying to prove. You state that the "leftist propaganda" (this video) ignored the African empires, yet it both names and emphasizes that Benin grew from a kingdom to an empire. It ignores their subjugation of other Africans because that is not the subject of this video, nor is the empire of Benin around anymore to account for its crimes. This about the British looting Benin, and the fact that white culture still denies African achievements.
@Bulllseye2012 This video doesn't state anything that isn't fact, except perhaps that the Queen was "unknowing" when she accepted the bronze. I can't imagine that, but I dont care about that either way. Regardless, this isn't propaganda. Its a statement of fact. If you find it to slant a different way than you're used to I can understand that, Africa never gets credit for shit. Of course it seems slanted, compared to the norm. Everything else is slanted against Africa.
@Bulllseye2012 What? I don't know of a San empire lol. I was responding to "So basically your only real argument here pal, is that it was a white Empire, however according to your moral compass a black one is fine!". Empires kill empires, that's a given. What's still wrong today is that everyone is told ours never existed.
stupidly the weapons were locked away, well if your an EMPIRE,who just destroyed an army you'd feel very confident won't you
Come on then, I assume you're an expert on West African colonial history. Tell us what REALLY happened.
This viewpoint is heavily biased and has awfully negative perceptions of Africa. The standpoint of this "history lesson" was depicted from the "heroic colonizer." I'm truly disappointed in the blatant perception in this video and hope a truly unbiased video is available to other students.
@independenceuk Please explain in detail how this is propaganda and not fact? What is the truth if you believe this is a lie? Also explain why you can find many of these Benin Bronzes in UK museums today? Let me guess the Benin people just gave them away correct?
Gave what away, they loot it, they took is by Force, how do u think people who made such masterpiece will just give their property away just like that, that's not how man works, if u value it, u won't give it away, and because they were not giving it away, the white people didn't like it
Ethiopia had Arab influence, I was talking about the Sub-Saharan Africans with no Arab or Islam influence
Ethiopia is the ONLY AFRICAN COUNTRY THAT wasn’t colonized by anybody. Ethiopia has NO ARAB INFLUENCE! I have visited Ethiopia twice and they say they fought off the Arabs and the expand of Islam and they fought and beat the Italians twice. From your comment you have never ever visited the African continent.
You mean Arabs had Ethiopian influence.
@@marielaveau6362
This. The Ethiopians colonized southern Arabia.
Lmao did this guy just say Ethiopia had Arab influence???.
@independenceuk um... this is what happened. If you want to believe europeans went to africa to be nice and give out free cuddles you are woefully misinformed. All that about us spreading religion to the heathens is right-wing propaganda. Just because you can't handle the truth doesn't mean others can't.
Actually, they couldn't read or right. Sub-saharan Africans didn't really develop any writing systems (with the exception of the ones influenced by Islam, who used Arabic as their writing system) until the Europeans introduced the Latin Alphabet to Africans
Wrong. Ge'ez Script in Ethiopia, Meriotic in Nubia/Sudan, Nsibidi in SouthWestern Nigeria, Tifinagh by the Tuaregs.
And while we're at it, 98% of Europe was illiterate until the Romans so quit acting high and mighty.