This is the story of a lost medieval city you’ve probably never
heard about. Benin City, originally known as Edo, was once the capital of a
pre-colonial African empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. The
Benin empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in west
Africa, dating back to the 11th century.
Situated on a plain, Benin City was enclosed by massive walls in the
south and deep ditches in the north. Beyond the city walls, numerous further
walls were erected that separated the surroundings of the capital into around
500 distinct villages.
Pearce writes that these walls “extended for some 16,000 km in
all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They
covered 6,500 sq km and were all dug by the Edo people … They took an estimated
150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single
archaeological phenomenon on the planet”.
Barely any trace of these walls exist today.
Benin City was also one of the first cities to have a semblance
of street lighting. Huge metal lamps, many feet high, were built and placed
around the city, especially near the king’s palace. Fuelled by palm oil, their
burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from
the palace.
When the Portuguese first “discovered” the city in 1485, they
were stunned to find this vast kingdom made of hundreds of interlocked cities
and villages in the middle of the African jungle. They called it the “Great
City of Benin”, at a time when there were hardly any other places in Africa the Europeans acknowledged as a city. Indeed,
they classified Benin City as one of the most beautiful and best planned cities
in the world.
In 1691, the Portuguese ship captain Lourenco
Pinto observed: “Great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon;
all the streets run straight and as far as the eye can see. The houses are
large, especially that of the king, which is richly decorated and has fine
columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft
is unknown and the people live in such security that they have no doors to
their houses.”
In contrast, London at the same time is described
by Bruce Holsinger, professor of English at the University of Virginia, as being a
city of “thievery, prostitution, murder, bribery and a thriving black market
made the medieval city ripe for exploitation by those with a skill for the
quick blade or picking a pocket”.
African fractals
Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful
rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as fractal
design. The mathematician Ron Eglash, author
of African
Fractals – which
examines the patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts
of Africa – notes that the city and its surrounding villages were purposely
laid out to form perfect fractals, with similar shapes repeated in the rooms of
each house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village in
mathematically predictable patterns.
As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they
considered the architecture very disorganised and thus primitive. It never
occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics
that they hadn’t even discovered yet.”
At the centre of the city stood the king’s court, from which
extended 30 very straight, broad streets, each about 120-ft wide. These main
streets, which ran at right angles to each other, had underground drainage made
of a sunken impluvium with an outlet to carry away storm water. Many narrower
side and intersecting streets extended off them. In the middle of the streets
were turf on which animals fed.
“Houses are built alongside the streets in good order, the one
close to the other,” writes the 17th-century Dutch visitorOlfert Dapper. “Adorned
with gables and steps … they are usually broad with long galleries inside,
especially so in the case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many
rooms which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected.”
Dapper adds that wealthy residents kept these walls “as shiny
and smooth by washing and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with
chalk, and they are like mirrors. The upper storeys are made of the same sort
of clay. Moreover, every house is provided with a well for the supply of fresh
water”.
Family houses were divided into three sections: the central part
was the husband’s quarters, looking towards the road; to the left the wives’
quarters (oderie), and to the right the young men’s quarters (yekogbe).
Daily street life in Benin City might have consisted of large
crowds going though even larger streets, with people colourfully dressed – some
in white, others in yellow, blue or green – and the city captains acting as
judges to resolve lawsuits, moderating debates in the numerous galleries, and
arbitrating petty conflicts in the markets.
The early foreign explorers’ descriptions of Benin City
portrayed it as a place free of crime and hunger, with large streets and houses
kept clean; a city filled with courteous, honest people, and run by a
centralised and highly sophisticated bureaucracy.
What impressed the first
visiting Europeans most was the wealth, artistic beauty and magnificence of the
city
The city was split into 11 divisions, each a smaller replication
of the king’s court, comprising a sprawling series of compounds containing
accommodation, workshops and public buildings – interconnected by innumerable
doors and passageways, all richly decorated with the art that made Benin
famous. The city was literally covered in it.
The exterior walls of the courts and compounds were decorated
with horizontal ridge designs (agben) and clay
carvings portraying animals, warriors and other symbols of power – the carvings
would create contrasting patterns in the strong sunlight. Natural objects
(pebbles or pieces of mica) were also pressed into the wet clay, while in the
palaces, pillars were covered with bronze plaques illustrating the victories
and deeds of former kings and nobles.
At the height of its greatness in the 12th century – well before
the start of the European Renaissance – the kings and nobles of Benin City
patronised craftsmen and lavished them with gifts and wealth, in return for
their depiction of the kings’ and dignitaries’ great exploits in intricate
bronze sculptures.
“These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of
European casting technique,” wrote Professor Felix von Luschan, formerly
of the Berlin Ethnological Museum. “Benvenuto Celini could not have cast them
better, nor could anyone else before or after him. Technically, these bronzes
represent the very highest possible achievement.”
What impressed the first
visiting Europeans most was the wealth, artistic beauty and magnificence of the
city. Immediately European nations saw the opportunity to develop trade with
the wealthy kingdom, importing ivory, palm oil and pepper – and exporting guns.
At the beginning of the 16th century, word quickly spread around Europe about
the beautiful African city, and new visitors flocked in from all parts of
Europe, with ever glowing testimonies, recorded in numerous voyage notes and
illustrations.
Lost world
Now, however, the great Benin City is lost to history. Its
decline began in the 15th century, sparked by internal conflicts linked to the
increasing European intrusion and slavery trade at the borders of the Benin
empire.
Then in 1897, the city was destroyed by British soldiers –
looted, blown up and burnt to the ground. My great grandparents were among the
many who fled following the sacking of the city; they were members of the elite
corps of the king’s doctors.
Nowadays, while a modern Benin City has risen on the same plain,
the ruins of its former, grander namesake are not mentioned in any tourist
guidebook to the area. They have not been preserved, nor has a miniature city
or touristic replica been made to keep alive the memory of this great ancient city.
A house composed of a courtyard in Obasagbon, known as Chief
Enogie Aikoriogie’s house – probably built in the second half of the 19th
century – is considered the only vestige that survives from Benin City. The
house possesses features that match the horizontally fluted walls, pillars,
central impluvium and carved decorations observed in the architecture of
ancient Benin.
Curious tourists visiting Edo state in Nigeria are often shown
places that might once have been part of the ancient city – but its walls and
moats are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps a section of the great city wall, one of
the world’s largest man-made monuments, now lies bruised and battered,
neglected and forgotten in the Nigerian bush.
A discontented Nigerian puts it this way: “Imagine if this
monument was in England, USA, Germany, Canada or India? It would be the most
visited place on earth, and a tourist mecca for millions of the world’s people.
A money-spinner worth countless billions in annual tourist revenue.”
Instead, if you wish to get a glimpse into the glorious past of
the ancient Benin kingdom – and a better understanding of this groundbreaking
city – you are better off visiting the Benin
Bronze Sculptures section of the
British Museum in central London.
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