A Historic Return: British Museum’s Looted Asante Ewer Set to Come Home to Ghana
A powerful symbol of heritage, resilience, and history is set to make its long-awaited journey back to Ghana. The 14th-century Asante Ewer, an extraordinary English-made bronze vessel that mysteriously travelled to West Africa centuries ago, will soon return to Kumasi on a long-term loan after more than 125 years in the British Museum.
The Asante Ewer, seized from the royal palace of the Asantehene in 1896 during the Anglo-Asante war, has remained one of the most significant looted artefacts held in the British Museum’s collection. Now, in a major step toward cultural reconnection, preparations are underway for the treasured piece to be loaned to the Manhyia Palace Museum in 2025.
This historic development is being championed by Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Director of the Manhyia Palace Museum, who will travel to London this month to formalise the request on behalf of His Majesty Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene. With warm and cooperative relations between the two institutions, the British Museum has indicated its willingness to support this arrangement, which is expected to be a long-term loan of up to three years.
While the loan acknowledges the British Museum’s current legal ownership, it also marks a significant shift, one that recognises the cultural, spiritual, and historical importance of such objects to their original communities. In recent years, both the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum have strengthened ties with Kumasi’s Manhyia Palace Museum, returning several looted artefacts on loan and opening the door for deeper collaboration.
The Asante Ewer itself is a masterpiece of medieval English metalwork: standing at 62cm tall, capable of holding 19 litres, and adorned with royal insignia that suggest it may originally have belonged to Richard II. It is the largest surviving bronze vessel of its kind from medieval England. How this royal English artefact found its way to the Asante Kingdom remains one of history’s great mysteries. Scholars propose two theories, either carried across the Sahara via ancient trade routes or transported by sea along the West African coast by early European traders.
What is undisputed is its significance within the Asante Kingdom. By 1884, the ewer was photographed in the courtyard of the royal palace in Kumasi, revered as a sacred object and woven into the cultural fabric of the Asante people. Its seizure in 1896, during the extensive looting that accompanied the fourth Anglo-Asante war, was one of many cultural losses suffered by the kingdom.
In recent years, the British Museum has taken a more transparent stance, acknowledging the Asante Ewer as “looted”, a term the institution avoided for decades. In a newly published “object in focus” monograph, the museum traces the ewer’s remarkable journey: from medieval English banquets to sacred Asante rituals, and then, through the violent upheavals of colonial conquest, into Western museum collections.
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As the ewer prepares to make its symbolic return to Kumasi, new conversations emerge. When it eventually returns to the British Museum after the loan period, where should such an object be displayed? Is it an English medieval treasure or an African royal sacred vessel? Its story straddles continents, cultures, and centuries.
For now, what matters most is the reconnection. The Asante Ewer’s return to Ghana marks more than the movement of an artefact, it represents acknowledgement, respect, and the beginning of a renewed relationship between Ghana’s cultural institutions and the global museums that hold pieces of its past.
It is a moment of pride, reflection, and anticipation for Ghanaians worldwide, as one of the most remarkable objects in British Museum history prepares to come home.
