With its
mathematical layout and earthworks longer than the Great Wall of China, Benin
City was one of the best planned cities in the world when London was a place of
‘thievery and murder’. So why is nothing left? By theguardian.com
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.
Th Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of
Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks
carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist Fred Pearce, Benin City’s
walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and
consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops”.
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.
“In 1485, the Portuguese classified Benin City as one of the m0st
beautiful and best planned cities in the world.”
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.
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View along a street in the royal quarter of Benin City, 1897. Photograph: The British Museum/Trustees of the British Museum
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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.”
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| A plaque showing an entrance to the palace of the Oba of Benin. Photograph: Alamy |
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 visitor Olfert
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.”
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| A drawing of Benin City made by a British officer in 1897. Illustration: akg-images |
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.
We own a responsibility
to ourselves and to the next generation to urgently revisit our history and preserve
our diverse cultural heritage. Yesterday step is a trace to today, and tomorrow
begin today.
All over, Benin
Kingdom and Nigeria our cultural heritage is underdeveloped and we need to do something
about that before it is too late. “A people
without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree
without roots.” Marcus Garvey
Please see what good
thing you can do for Nigeria today. This is the only country we call our own.
Until every Nigeria take the responsibility to build Nigeria, Nigeria will not
built itself.
Williams Patrick Praise Jr
