The Asante Basin at the Center of a Restitution Debate
A brass basin with four small lions on its rim has become the focus of a long-running argument over provenance, colonial violence, and return. The Aya Kese, a ceremonial vessel just over a meter in diameter, is owned by London’s National Army Museum and is temporarily on display at the British Museum in a presentation titled The Asante Ewer, on view until June 7.
British Museum curators believe the basin was made in England, Germany, or the Netherlands, most likely in the 16th century. By the early 18th century, and perhaps earlier, it had reached the Asante kingdom in what is now Ghana, where it became a sacred object in the royal mausoleum complex at Bantama, near Kumasi. The object’s later history is better documented than its beginnings: Thomas Bowditch recorded seeing it there in 1817, and a photograph from 1884 shows it placed outside the mausoleum entrance.
The basin was looted by British troops during the invasion of the Asante kingdom in 1896. Robert Baden-Powell, who later founded the Boy Scouts Association, took it during the military operation. He later wrote that the Bantama mausoleum was burned to the ground. In 1913, Baden-Powell donated the basin to the Royal United Services Institute, which transferred it to the National Army Museum in 1963.
The object’s meaning has also been contested for generations. Europeans long claimed it had been used to hold the blood of human sacrifices, but the National Army Museum now says that seems unlikely. Prempeh I, the Asante king, rejected the accusation in 1930, when he formally asked the British authorities to return the basin to the royal mausoleum. He described it as an object in which “all souls of Ashantis are within it.” The request was refused.
That refusal has not ended the debate. Tom McCaskie of the University of Birmingham has argued that the basin is “an integral part of the Asante past” and should be restituted to Kumasi. However it is interpreted, the Aya Kese remains a rare object whose history is inseparable from both royal ritual and imperial seizure.
