Benin City, The Mighty Medieval Capital Now Lost Without Trace


Benin City was described as ‘wealthy and industrious, well-governed and richly decorated’. Illustration: Olfert Dapper, 1671


British Guardian Newspaper, UK

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/18/story-of-cities-5-benin-city-edo-nigeria-mighty-medieval-capital-lost-without-trace


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?

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.


Artistic representation Benin city based on 15th century accounts by European visitors.
Note palm oil fuelled streetlights



The 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’s 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 [in Egypt]”.

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.

This is the palace of the Oba of Benin as it looked before its destruction by British forces in 1897. It shows the traditional Benin Ikun courtyard architecture. There were a total of 209 Ikuns at the palace. The picture shows about 24, which shows how massive the palace was.

Royal Palace of the Oba of Benin, dated 13th century)


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”... 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 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.

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/18/story-of-cities-5-benin-city-edo-nigeria-mighty-medieval-capital-lost-without-trace

Oh Edo ni mo se.

My beautiful Edo State, where the king is truly king.

oba kha to kpere iseee

So what happened in the 21st century?

The government of Edo state, must work on it's tourism sector, Benin city is a goldmine in tourism, till today the British refuse to return the priceless bronze works. Create a modern transportation sector, safe environment and maintain the tourists site. Tourists will come to a state, if it's safe, has good public transportation system, and good affordable hotels. God bless the Empire state.

If it is some brainwashed historians, they will tell you that the Benin walls were built by Aliens, truth be told Africa had the technology and know how to rule the world until the colonialism came.

Apc has reduced the almighty Benin empire to a group of unviable local government areas.

Bad leadership is winning.

Then what led to the stagnation of our development?

It's high time we snapped out of this obsession with the past. Talk more about what we ought to be doing today to have a working country and build a better tomorrow so that the next generation doesn't curse us for leaving this country worse than we met it.

Today's generation of Edo State leaders, I am afraid, haven't done enough to prove that the only Nigérian state capital that has a City attached to it truly deserves it. This is the conversation we should be having today, not blaming the white man for what they did and not talking about what we do to ourselves today.

Portuguese slave trade made Benin. That is why Benin died a natural death by the end of slave trade

PinkNature:
Then what led to the stagnation of our development?

Because your initial development lacked local content. Yorubas are making similar mistake in Lagos

There were many great cities and cavillations in the past. The Mongols, the Incas of Peru, the Zulu...While it's important to know your past and where you came from, what's really important now is the present and future. If we do not invest in Education, infrastructure and create an enabling environment for investors, Edo will never come close to reclaiming it's lost glory

Then corruption entered, and they started retrogressing.

Hmm

Benin city is still far far better and developed than any other city in our sw neighbourhood.


Don't mention the former federal capital to me.

How is Benin beautiful?

Ozommadu:
Benin city is still far far better and developed than any other city in our sw neighbourhood.


Don't mention the former federal capital to me.

Show me one fine place for Benin

Typing:


Show me one fine place for Benin

Comot ogbomoso first

Ozommadu:
Benin city is still far far better and developed than any other city in our sw neighbourhood.


Don't mention the former federal capital to me.

must u drag sw into everything? If den insult u igbo's now, u go dey cry about like mumu dey write letter to your slave masters

Makunahatata:
must u drag sw into everything? If den insult u igbo's now, u go dey cry about like mumu dey write letter to your slave masters

Oya insult nau...is there any other thing you are good at??

Ozommadu:


Oya insult nau...is there any other thing you are good at??

is there any other thing u guys are good at than being inferior to the ppl of SW?

Makunahatata:
is there any other thing u guys are good at than being inferior to the ppl of SW.

You hate the truth, why?

Ozommadu:


You hate the truth, why?

which truth, your second class citizen status, or that not only you're delusional but suffering from severe inferiority complex?

igwebuike01:
Portuguese slave trade made Benin. That is why Benin died a natural death by the end of slave trade

Benin has been made under Oba Eweka 1 before the Portuguese arrived..

Maybe the slave trade caused them a huge harm, I’m not sure..

kettykings:
If it is some brainwashed historians, they will tell you that the Benin walls were built by Aliens, truth be told Africa had the technology and know how to rule the world until the colonialism came.

Apc has reduced the almighty Benin empire to a group of unviable local government areas.

What has Apc to do with Benin City now

Benin city is actually most planned city in Nigeria

Look at the map

SmartPolician:
It's high time we snapped out of this obsession with the past. Talk more about what we ought to be doing today to have a working country and build a better tomorrow so that the next generation doesn't curse us for leaving this country worse than we met it.

Today's generation of Edo State leaders, I am afraid, haven't done enough to prove that the only Nigérian state capital that has a City attached to it truly deserves it. This is the conversation we should be having today, not blaming the white man for what they did and not talking about what we do to ourselves today.

Oh please shut the hell up.

This is a HISTORY thread. If you are not interested in your history as an African, YOU ARE A DISGRACE of a lost person with no roots.

You cannot claim to be a civilised or educated person if you are an illiterate of your history, and worse still, are OPPOSED to its discussion.

That makes you a sick person upstairs.

A normal person cannot be upset at the discussion of his peoples' history.

Most of us want to KNOW our African History.

You are the type that will know everything about the Roman Empire and the Greeks, and Aztecs, but nothing about your own African history.

Whites study and propagate their history every day through various movies and documentaries.

Today, we ALL KNOW what ancient Rome looked like, how the ancient Scots and English looked like, including how they dressed and even what they ate, and how they spoke, courtesy of western media and Hollywood propaganda.

Why don't you care to know what ancient BENIN was like?

Are those not your own people?

What is wrong with your head?

Are you not an African?

Why does it annoy you that we're discussing them?

You say Africans should forget about their history.

Why?

So we can be vulnerable and trust the invaders before they start their madness and manipulation again?

So we can believe the colonialist lies that our ancestors were savages who contributed nothing to world civilization?

GOD FORBID.

And nobody “blamed white man” here as you insinuated, Mr slave bodyguard for white man.

Do you even know that the white man you worship bombed and burned down this city under discussion, killing thousands of people, and looting its treasures?

We should just like a bunch of FCKING MORONS forget it ever happened, and see the white man and smile kikikiii with all 36, and take selfies with them to post on NL front page of your ''oyinbo wife'' as is popular here these days, on this godforsaken forum of mentally colonised people?

Never. This history and more African history will be told for GENERATIONS to come.

Get used to it.

Makunahatata:
which truth, your second class citizen status, or that not only you're delusional but suffering from severe inferiority complex?

Hehehe, oga Benin city is far far better and developed than any where in your region deal with that.

I know you'll mention our former federal capital ?

Ttipsy:
Benin city is actually most planned city in Nigeria

Look at the map

You are right. The city still maintains its ancient planned design.

Ozommadu:


Hehehe, oga Benin city is far far better and developed than any where in your region deal with that.

I know you'll mention our former federal capital ?

😂 nobody gives a Bleep about wetin u think, last time I checked your ppl dey move in droves daily to SW to have a chance at making it in life.. if we decide to close border tomorrow, you're doomed 😜

GeneralPula:

Benin has been made under Oba Eweka 1 before the Portuguese arrived..

Maybe the slave trade caused them a huge harm, I’m not sure..

The slave trade was banned in the Benin Empire.

Large, powerful kingdoms and empires like Benin, Oyo, etc were less susceptible to the slave trade than the weaker, southern, isolated villages closer to the Atlantic coast of West Africa, where the slave ships berthed.

Quintessence44:


The slave trade was banned in the Benin Empire.

Large, powerful kingdoms and empires like Benin, Oyo, etc were less susceptible to the slave trade than the weaker, southern, isolated villages closer to the Atlantic coast of West Africa, where the slave ships berthed.

Correct..