Dec. 23 (UPI) \u2014<\/span> German officials have handed over 20 artifacts known as Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, marking a major restitution of art that could lead to further restitution by other countries.<\/p>\n The restitution of the artifacts was announced in a news release by the German Foreign Office, which returned the historic objects in a ceremony held in Abuja on Tuesday.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n The Kingdom of Benin, which has no connection to the modern country of Benin, is now the Edo state in Nigeria.<\/p>\n The Benin Bronzes were largely looted by the British colonial military forces during a punitive campaign against Benin City in 1897, led by British Navy forces and members of the Niger Coast Protectorate.\n<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s Foreign Office acquired hundreds of the works after the raid and gave them to the British Museum, which now has more than 900 of them alone.<\/p>\n According to the Germain Foreign Office, around 1,100 of more than 5,000 known Benin Bronzes are in the possession of German museums.<\/p>\n Germany and Nigeria signed an agreement in July to transfer the ownership of all of the artifacts in German collections to the African nation.\n<\/p>\n \u201cNot all bronzes in the collections of German museums will return to Nigeria immediately,\u201d the German Foreign Office said in a statement in July after the agreement was signed.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe Nigerian side has declared its willingness to leave some artifacts here on loan, so that they can continue to be exhibited in Germany. This is a very special gesture of trust and of amity between the two countries.\u201d<\/p>\n The German agreement comes after the launch of a highly anticipated database called Digital Benin, a catalog of 5,246 historic Benin objects currently held in 131 institutions across 20 countries.\n<\/p>\n Some world leaders have already made moves to provide restitution to Nigeria and other African nations for the looted art.<\/p>\n French President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech in Burkina Faso that he wanted, within five years, to meet conditions \u201cfor the temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot accept that a large part of cultural heritage from several African countries is in France,\u201d he said at the time.<\/p>\n However, some in the United States have called the transfer of Benin Bronzes held by the Smithsonian to Nigeria \u201cillegal.\u201d<\/p>\n Apart from the Benin Bronzes, Western art institutions and governments have recently increased their efforts to repatriate works taken or looted from other countries.<\/p>\n The British Museum is in advanced stages of talks to return the contested Parthenon marbles in its collection to Greece, which would end a decades-long dispute between the two nations, it was reported earlier this month.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" German officials have handed over 20 artifacts known as Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, marking a major restitution of art that could lead to further restitution by other countries. Photos courtesy of Claudia Obrocki, Martin Franken\/Ethnological Museum of the National Museums in Berlin Dec. 23 (UPI) \u2014 German officials have handed over 20 artifacts known as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1269644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1269643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1269643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1269643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1269643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1269643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}