Procession to the Temple of the Great Snake from Thomas Astley's Voyages 1745-47

ASTLEY, Thomas; PARR, N. (sc.): Procession to the Temple of the Great Snake on the Crowning of the King, Whydah (Ouidah), Dahomey.

London, in Thomas Astley, A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, 1745–1747 (Vol. II, plate 175, no. 100, p. 377).
 
Copper engraving, 350 × 220 mm (plate mark), on laid paper with deckle edges. A clean impression with full margins; light age-toning and edge losses, but overall very good.
 
A detailed ethnographic plate depicting the coronation procession at Whydah on the Slave Coast (modern Benin), showing the ceremonial approach to the Temple of the Great Snake (the royal python cult). The scene is arranged in formal ranks with extensive keyed annotations identifying the participants, including the king’s wives bearing presents, musicians (trumpeters, drummers and flautists), beadles, musketeers, the master of ceremonies, the queen mother, ladies of the palace, and the “Great Sacrificer or High Priest.” In the foreground English observers are shown seated, recording the spectacle.
 
Engraved by N. Parr after the account published by Jean-Baptiste Labat and others, and issued in Astley’s important mid-eighteenth-century English compilation of voyages, this plate forms part of one of the earliest substantial visual record of the political and religious life of the Kingdom of Dahomey at the height of its involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. The cult of the royal python at Whydah was central to Dahomian state religion, and such coronation rituals were intended to assert both sacred authority and dynastic legitimacy.