As the history of the former Benin Empire is well known to the specialists, there is no need to elaborate on it in this paper. Although sporadic information about Benin was reaching Europe as early as the end of the 15th Century, real interest was aroused only in the wake of the British ‘Punitive Expedition’ to Benin City in 1897. Few had suspected the existence of such a highly developed African culture with a range and volume of works of art which were brought to Europe as booty by the returning army. Initial investigations in Benin left many questions unanswered, and it was the late J.U. Egharevba (1934) who collected and published the surviving oral traditions as a framework for understanding the past. However, despite several attempts to construct a chronology, exact dates for some events, especially before the arrival of the first Europeans, are still uncertain.