“The Great City of Benin,” at one time called Edo, is a place I wish I could time-travel back to. It was completely destroyed by Bristish armies in the late 19th century, but in pre-colonial times it was one of the largest Medieval cities in the world, the capital of the Benin Empire.
The walls of the city, begun in the 11th century, were massive (you can see a photo of some that no longer exist in the second slide): they encompassed the vast plain that the city occupied, as well as extensions out of the city of over 500 interconnected boundaries. Street lighting with metal lamps fueled by palm oil lined the avenues. Europeans who saw it were stunned by its beauty and organization.
“Great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon,” wrote a Portuguese observer in 1691, “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 had fine columns. The city . . . Is so well governed that theft is unknown and the people live in such security that they have no doors to their houses”.
Many of Benin’s walls and buildings, especially the king’s palace precinct, were adorned with fantastic artwork — like clay carvings, imprints of objects pressed into clay, and bronze plaques that depicted great deeds of kings and aristocrats from Benin’s history. The first image is one such remnant: dating from the 16th or 17th century, it portrays an aristocrat with his attendants. Bronzes like these are beautiful artworks that also preserve the most lasting remains of the fallen empire of Benin and the Edo peoples.
Source(s): _BBC_, “Story of cities #5: Benin City, the mighty medieval capital now lodtbwithout a trace,” March 18, 2016, Mawuna Koutonin. First Photo from public domain from the Metropolitan museum of art, 1990.332 is the accession number.
