Dress of King Widah's Wives from Thomas Astley's Voyages 1745-47

ASTLEY, Thomas; CHILD, G. Dress of the Grandees and of the King’s Wives of Widah.
 
London, in A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. II, 1745.
 
Copper engraving, plate 185 (no. 105), vol. 2, p. 396. Image area c. 230 × 150 mm (sheet larger, untrimmed). Engraved by G. Child after contemporary drawings.
 
Two principal figures above, depicting (Fig. 1) a court grandee and (Fig. 2) a wife of the King of Widah, each identified by an engraved banner; below, three subsidiary scenes: “Agoye, God of Councils,” “The King’s Favourite,” and “King’s Sepulchre,” with ritual objects and funerary attendants.
In good original condition, on laid paper, with light toning and scattered foxing, a short marginal split at left, and faint offset from the facing text. Plate mark visible. Very good. 
 
Part of a series of engravings showing early European ethnographic understanding of the Kingdom of Whydah (Ouidah, present-day Benin), a major Atlantic trading and slaving port in the early eighteenth century. The plate synthesises court costume, religious iconography, and mortuary practice, and derives ultimately from the observations published by Willem Bosman and Jean-Barbot, transmitted through Astley’s great English compendium.