A Bronze plate - Ama - of a Portuguese in the style of Benin, a human head with straight combed hair., aquiline nose, mustage and goatee, the backgrond with the usual leaf ornament; extremly thinwalled, which also explains the fragile state of preservation. The cracks and small missing pieces of the plate are not from the casting-process, they are of longlasting corriosons of the metal, the plaque has a double wooven flange and belongs according of Kathryn Wysocki Gunch to the reign of Oba Orhogbua 1550 - 1578 and not of the reign of his father Oba Esigie 1504 - 1550. Despite the wide border around the depiction of the Portuguese head, which is usually typical for the single woowen flanges, this seems to be a later plate that already shows the transition from the low relief to a finely worked out full relief. A similar plaque we collected several years ago (last photo sequence) A similar, fragmentary plaque exists in the Pitt Rivers Museum, plate 291. Kathryn Wysocki Gunch , The Benin Plaques. A 16th Century Imperial Monument. "The 16th century bronze plaques from the kingdom of Benin are among the most recognized masterpieces of African art, and yet many details of their commission and installation in the palace in Benin City, Nigeria, are little understood. The Benin Plaques, A 16th Century Imperial Monument is a detailed analysis of a corpus of nearly 850 bronze plaques that were installed in the court of the Benin kingdom at the moment of its greatest political power and geographic reach. By examining European accounts, Benin oral histories, and the physical evidence of the extant plaques, Gunsch is the first to propose an installation pattern for the series." ..and tryed to construct a timeline according the pattern of the flanges. An attempt which tryed already Philip Dark and Frank Willet with other arguments based on the appearance of the plaques.