The Edo kingdom of Benin (Igodomigodo, later Edo, called Benin by the Portuguese after their first contact c.1485) has two royal dynasties. The first, the Ogiso line, ruled from c.900 to c.1170 and ended in disorder. According to tradition the Edo chiefs petitioned the Ooni of Ife for a ruler; the Ooni sent his son Prince Oranmiyan, who married an Edo princess and fathered Eweka I — installed c.1200 as the first Oba of the second dynasty, which continues today in unbroken succession of 40 Obas to the reigning Oba Ewuare II (crowned 2016).
Under the warrior-Oba Ewuare the Great (r. c.1440–1473), Benin became an empire. Ewuare rebuilt the capital city with two great moats; introduced the title system of Uzama nobles and palace chiefs; standardised the royal regalia of coral beads; and conquered an empire reaching from the Niger to Lagos, including the Itsekiri (whose first Olu, Ginuwa, was a Benin prince), the Western Igbo (Aniocha, Ika), the Ijaw and the Edo-related Esan, Owan and Etsako. The Benin Walls — earthen ramparts and ditches reaching combined lengths of over 16,000 km by 1974 measurement (Patrick Darling) — surrounded the capital and its hinterland villages, making them collectively the largest single archaeological feature on earth, larger than the Great Wall of China.
Benin's metal-casting guilds — the Igun Eronmwon (brass-casters), the Igbesanmwan (ivory and wood-carvers), the Owina n'Ido (royal carvers) — produced for the Oba's court the corpus now known as the Benin Bronzes: cast brass plaques narrating dynastic history, ancestral altar heads of past Obas, ivory pectoral masks (including the iconic Idia mask), and the famous bronze leopards. These were not for export; they were sacred royal regalia stored in the Oba's palace.
The British Punitive Expedition of 9–18 February 1897 destroyed Benin. Acting Consul-General James Phillips had been killed at Ugbine on 4 January 1897 by Benin forces while attempting to enter the kingdom against the Oba's express interdiction during the Igue festival. Admiral Sir Harry Rawson led 1,200 Royal Marines, sailors and Niger Coast Protectorate troops; Benin City fell on 18 February. Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi was deposed and exiled to Calabar (he died there in 1914). The expedition force looted between 3,000 and 4,000 brass and ivory objects from the palace; the Foreign Office auctioned them to cover the cost of the expedition, dispersing them to the British Museum, the Ethnologisches Museum (Berlin), the Field Museum (Chicago), the Metropolitan Museum (New York) and dozens of private collections.
The restitution movement — beginning with Nigeria's first formal claim in 1972 — has produced returns since 2020 from the University of Aberdeen, Jesus College Cambridge, the Smithsonian, Berlin's Ethnologisches Museum, and the Horniman Museum, transferring title (in most cases) to the Federal Government and the Oba of Benin. The British Museum, holder of approximately 900 Bronzes, has not transferred title as of 2025.