Up for Auction is this very primitive cast bronze by the Benin African tribe. This calf is depicted with birds sitting on him. The Benin Empire was a pre-colonial empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. Its capital was Edo, now known as Benin City, Edo state. It should not be confused with the modern-day country called Benin, formerly called Dahomey. The Benin Empire was \"one of the oldest and most highly developed states in the coastal hinterland of West Africa, dating perhaps to the eleventh century CE\",[2] until it was annexed by the British Empire in 1897.