The Asante Jug (Richard II Ewer)
- Object Name
- The Asante Jug (Richard II Ewer)
- Culture / Site
- Manufactured in England; found at Manhyia Palace, Kumase, Asante region, Ghana
- Medium
- Copper alloy
- Date
- 1390/99
- Dimensions
- 62.3 x 33 cm
- Credit Line
- The British Museum, London, England, 1896,0727.1. Photograph © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
- Section
- Shifting Away from the Sahara
- Description
This ewer, which was made in England in the fourteenth century, was taken by the British from Kumase, the capital of the Asante Kingdom, during the Anglo-Asante War of 1896. It is embellished with heraldic motifs and Lombardic inscriptions. The royal arms of England on the front of the jug reference the reigns of both Edward III and Richard II, but the badges on the lid depicting a stag indicate that it was produced during Richard’s reign, specifically between 1390 and 1400. The ewer might have traveled across Saharan trade routes soon after it was made, or it might have been imported to Asante at a later time through trade along the Atlantic coast.