The works of the former kingdom of Dahomey exhibited in Paris before their return to Benin

View of the exhibition “Benin, the restitution of 26 works from the royal treasures of Abomey”, at the Quai Branly museum.

© AFP / Christophe Archambault

Text by: Pierre Firtion Follow

3 min

The Quai Branly museum in Paris is exhibiting, from this Tuesday October 26 until October 31, the 26 works of the former kingdom of Dahomey that France is preparing to return to Benin.

The transfer deed will be signed on November 9 at the Élysée Palace, in the presence of the French and Benin presidents.

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These pieces will join Benin in the wake of this exhibition at the Quai Branly museum, " 

 " says Jean-Michel Abimbola, the Beninese Minister of Culture, nearly 130 years after being looted by Colonel Dodds during the sack of the Abomey Palace.

First, there are the three large royal statues bocio, half-human, half-animal characters that the combatants salute before going into battle.

Among them, the Shark-Man, a famous statue of a man standing with the head and torso of an animal.

This piece, sculpted at the end of the 19th century by Sossa Dede, uses the emblem of King Béhanzin.

This

specifies the Quai Branly museum.

Then there are these thrones and seats including a four-legged royal, Yoruba style, made up of 41 carved figures.

There are still these doors of the royal palace of Abomey, these portable altars, these recades… 26 works of the former kingdom of Danhomèque the Quai Branly museum in Paris exhibits from this Tuesday and this, during

of the country, before their final return to Benin.

Works looted on November 17, 1892

All these pieces have one thing in common: they were looted on November 17, 1892 by Colonel Alfred Dodds and French colonial troops. Following heavy fighting, the latter had taken these treasures as spoils of war during the sack of the Abomey palace in which King Béhanzin resided. Works that Dodds, now general, will give to the Parisian museum of Ethnography of Trocadéro in 1893 and then in 1895, before they were transferred, in 2003, to the Musée du Quai-Branly.

If some of them had already made the trip to Cotonou, in 2006, for a temporary exhibition dedicated to Béhanzin, all of these pieces will return this time definitively to their country of origin thanks to the adoption, by the French Parliament, a specific law adopted in December 2020, which came to materialize a commitment made by Emmanuel Macron, two years earlier, during

Return of the works to Benin

"no later than November 15"

The countdown for the return of the 26 works has now started. First step: signing the deed of transfer. It will be on November 9 at the Elysee Palace in the presence of Presidents Macron and Talon. The date is confirmed from both Benin and French sources. The return will be

specifies the Beninese Minister of Culture Jean-Michel Abimbola.

A ceremony will be organized upon their arrival.

The pieces will then be exhibited at the Presidential Palace after a period of acclimatization of one to two months.

They will then temporarily reach the governor's house of the Portuguese Fort of Ouidah before they join their

, the museum of the epic of the Amazons and the Kings of Dahomey in Abomey.

A final destination

according to the Beninese Minister of Culture.

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