The artefact is among treasures pillaged by the British army from the sprawling old royal palace in the Asante state capital, Kumasi, in 1874, before soldiers set fire to the city and blew up the palace.
The British returned in 1896 and looted the rebuilt palace. Their commander later recalled: “I had shown the power of England.”
Courtesy Royal Artillery – The Guardian
The spoils of the Anglo-Asante wars were sold and dispersed among private and public collections, including to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, which, in 2024, together made the historic decision to return 32 pieces of gold court regalia to the Manhyia Palace Museum in Ghana – although only on long-term loan.
The most impressive of the looted objects is arguably the beautifully cast ram’s head with spiralling horns, about 19cm in width.
Among newspaper reports of 1874, the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette reported: “The best trophy is a ram’s head … This is very valuable.”
Barnaby Phillips, a former BBC correspondent who reported for over a decade from Mozambique, Angola, Nigeria and South Africa, was taken aback when his request to see it in researching his forthcoming book was turned down for security reasons.
