Data figures How a digital project is reuniting lost bronzes

Cheerfully gnashing their magnificent fangs as they stand side by side, the two bronze leopards look back on a journey that was as adventurous as it was cruelly absurd.

- Philip Oltermann BERLIN

Looted by British soldiers on a punitive expedition to the west African kingdom of Benin in 1897, the ekpen, or leopard figures were shipped to the UK, where they spent some time guarding the fireplace of army captain George William Neville's Weybridge home. They were later put in display at Moma in New York and bought by a French art collector - who eventually sold them back to the colonial administration in Lagos in 1952 with a considerable markup.

Digital Benin, the result of a two-year €1.5m ($1.5m) research project funded by the Ernst von Siemens art foundation, is the first comprehensive database of artefacts collectively known as the Benin bronzes.

By stitching together 12,000 images and information provided by 131 museums in 20 countries, the database charts the often winding provenance the objects' European and American holders have in the past been coy about making public. It also presents the artefacts in the context of the founders of the Benin empire, grouping them according to the significance and ceremonial function in Edo culture.