Half-man, half-fish statue (called bochio), Fon style. Provenance : Abomey, ancient kingdom of Dahomey.This statue would represent Béhanzin, the last king of Dahomey (now Benin). His coat of arms featured a shark. To announce his intention to fight the French fleet which was stationing at Cotonou and crossed the sandbar every day, Béhanzin compared himself to the shark: “the daring shark has troubled the sandbar” ("gbo ouele fandan agbedui brou").

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Topics:
   + 1890s statues
   + Abomey
   + Behanzin
   + Dahomey art in the Musée du quai Branly
   + Exhibitions at the Musée du quai Branly
   + Fon people
   + Native African wood carving

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• Source: commons.wikimedia.org # 15845968
• Filename: Homme-requin Dahomey.jpg
• Thumbnail: 130x196 pixels - image/jpeg
• Preview: 640x964 pixels - image/jpeg
• Full size: 2182x3285 pixels - image/jpeg - 3,819,618 bytes

Licensing:

• Artist: Sossa Dede
• License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
• Attribution Required

Media information:

• Original datetime: between 1889 and 1893
  date QS:P,+1850-00-00T00:00:00Z/7,P1319,+1889-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1893-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
• Upload datetime: 2011-07-19T22:52:48Z
• Uploader: User:Myrabella
• SHA1: 6115cf427eeedee02af124a652bdebf3e7991833
• Refreshed: 2018-08-23 15:47:09 UTC

Technical Topics:
   + Artworks without Wikidata item
   + CC-BY-SA-3.0
   + Quality images