An Ẹyo Otọ, Ama

An Ẹyo Otọ, Ama,in the style of Benin, depicting a mud-fish collected in Benin city, Nigeria.

Ama is a pictorial combination of figures that has a historical explanation or is a visual representation of a historical event. Ama had a mnemonic purpose, aiding one to recall the events or persons represented in the artwork. Benin oral traditions are popularly transmitted in the form of commemorative festivals, stories, plays, songs, poems, riddles, proverbs and other forms of oral literature. Ben-Amos (1980:28) observed the existence of over nine hundred known plaques which provided a testimony to court life at the time of Ọba Esigie, considered ‘a sort of pictorial record of events in Benin history, an aid to memorizing oral traditions’.

In the Benin artistic corpus, particularly from the court workshops of the Edo people, animal plates such as an Ẹyo Otọ or Ama depicting the mud-fish (commonly identified as Clarias gariepinus, the African catfish) form part of a sophisticated symbolic and ritual repertoire. These plates are typically cast in brass using the lost-wax technique, a hallmark of Benin bronze craftsmanship, and serve both functional and emblematic purposes within the palace context.

The mud-fish is highly significant in Benin iconography. Its natural duality—capable of surviving in both water and mud—renders it a symbol of resilience, adaptability, and often, by extension, the liminal powers of kingship. Plates or plaques showing the mud-fish could function as courtly display objects, ritual implements, or insignia of the Oba’s authority, embodying metaphors of strength and persistence. The fish may appear in profile with stylized fins and prominent barbels, sometimes integrated into decorative borders of vegetal or geometric motifs characteristic of Benin bronzes.

Formally, these plates combine high-relief figuration with a polished patina, often with the animal rendered with naturalistic attention but also abstracted to emphasize symbolic meaning rather than biological exactitude. Similar examples are found in the collection of the British Museum and in historic palace ensembles, where animal motifs—including mud-fish, leopards, crocodiles, and antelopes—operate as courtly allegories, referencing both cosmological beliefs and political authority.

The specific fascination with mud-fish plates may also connect to ritual associations, possibly linked to the water cults and the Oba’s role as mediator between land and water realms. Unlike European animal plates, which often prioritize decorative or culinary function, these Benin examples are deeply interwoven with notions of power, spiritual protection, and ancestral veneration.

In the Benin corpus, there is evidence to suggest that the earliest brass and ivory plaques from the palace workshops predominantly featured human figures rather than animals. The so-called “courtly” plaques—dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries—were largely figural, depicting Obas, attendants, warriors, and ritual specialists, emphasizing lineage, hierarchy, and the power of the throne. Animal motifs, while present, appear less frequently in the earliest phases and often serve symbolic or allegorical functions rather than direct representation of courtly events.

Animal depictions, including mud-fish, leopards, or crocodiles, seem to become more prominent in later ensembles, roughly from the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, as the palace repertoire expanded and symbolic codification intensified. They are often integrated into decorative borders or cast as independent plates for ritual or emblematic purposes. Some scholars, however, note that animals may have had earlier symbolic significance—particularly in ritual contexts—though surviving examples are rare, partly because figural plaques were produced in higher numbers and have been better preserved.

Thus, while animal imagery is ancient and conceptually integral to Benin cosmology, the surviving material record indicates that plaques depicting human figures generally predate the systematic production of animal-specific plates.

Footnotes:

1. Ekpo Eyo, Benin Art: Court and Civic Bronze Sculpture, Lagos: National Museum Publications, 1982.

2. Paula Girshick Ben-Amos, Art and Power in Benin, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.

3. David W. Adjaye, “Animal Imagery in Benin Brass Plaques,” African Arts 17, no. 2 (1984): 44–55.

Height: 45 cm
Length: 36 cm
Weight: 3 kg