• Germany is to become the first country to hand back the Benin bronzes looted by British soldiers in the late 19th century.
• The culture minister of Germany, Monika Grütters, announced that Germany would start returning a “substantial” part of the artefacts held in its museums to Nigeria from next year.
• British troops looted thousands of artworks known as the Benin Bronzes from the Kingdom of Benin, in present-day Nigeria, in 1897.
• Berlin's Ethnologisches Museum holds more than 500 artefacts from the Kingdom of Benin, most of them bronzes.

Benin Bronzes :

• They are a group of thousand metal sculptures. These sculptures once decorated the royal palace of Kingdom of Benin, the current Nigeria. Some of these sculptures were looted by the British during the Benin Expedition of 1897.
• Though they are named as bronzes, they are mostly made of brass. They are also made of mixtures of brass and bronze. Some of them are even made of ivory, wood or ceramic.
• The golden ages of the sculptures occurred during the reigns of Esigie and Eresoyen.
• They are made using lost-wax casting process. It is a process of making copies from a model. The method had been used in Indus Valley Civilisation as well.