THE GREAT BENIN KIGDOM

Oral tradition
Bronze plaque of Benin Warriors with ceremonial swords. 16th–18th centuries, Nigeria.

The first name of the Benin Empire, since its creation some time in the first millennium CE, was Igodomigodo, as called by its own inhabitants. Their ruler was called Ogiso.[3]

Nowadays, nearly 36 known Ogiso are accounted for as rulers of this first form of the state. According to the Edo oral tradition, during the reign of the last Ogiso, his son and heir apparent, Ekaladerhan, was sentenced to death as a result of one of the Queens having deliberately changed an oracle message to the Ogiso. In carrying the order of the palace, the palace messengers set him free for his innocence.

On the death of the last Ogiso, a group of Benin Chiefs led by Chief Oliha mounted a search for their banished Prince Ekaladerhan who the Ife people will now call Oduduwa to Ile-Ife, pleaded for Oduduwa return(The Ooni) but were granted one of his sons as King in Igodomigodo (later known as Benin City).

Centuries later, in 1440, Oba Ewuare, also known as Ewuare the Great, came to power and turned the city-state into an empire. It was only at this time that the administrative centre of the kingdom began to be referred to as Ubinu after the Yoruba word and corrupted to Bini by the Itsekhiri, Edo, Urhobo living together in the royal administrative centre of the kingdom. The Portuguese who arrived on expedition led by Joao Afonso de Aveiro in 1485 would refer to it as Benin and the centre would become known as Benin City and its empire Benin Empire.

The Ancient Benin Empire, eventually gained political strength and ascendancy over much of what is now Mid-Western Nigeria. Nowadays, scientists discovered that the Edo people did have a writing system, their art work which had let the scientists discover their true history. Including the armor, magnificent drawing skills.
Golden Age
Benin city in the 17th century.

The Oba had become the mount of power within the region. Oba Ewuare, the first Golden Age Oba, is credited with turning Benin City into City States from a military fortress built by the Ogisos, protected by moats and walls. It was from this bastion that he launched his military campaigns and began the expansion of the kingdom from the Edo-speaking heartlands.

A series of walls marked the incremental growth of the sacred city from 850 AD until its decline in the 16th century. In the 15th century Benin became the greatest city of the empire created by Oba Ewuare. To enclose his palace he commanded the building of Benin's inner wall, an 11-kilometre-long (7 mi) earthen rampart girded by a moat 6 m (20 ft) deep. This was excavated in the early 1960s by Graham Connah. Connah estimated that its construction, if spread out over five dry seasons, would have required a workforce of 1,000 laborers working ten hours a day seven days a week. Ewuare also added great thoroughfares and erected nine fortified gateways.
Pendant ivory mask of Queen Idia, court of Benin, 16th century, (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Excavations also uncovered a rural network of earthen walls 6,000 to 13,000 km (4,000 to 8,000 mi) long that would have taken an estimated 150 million man-hours to build and must have taken hundreds of years to build. These were apparently raised to mark out territories for towns and cities. 13 years after Ewuare's death tales of Benin's splendors, more Portuguese traders were lured to the city gates.[4]

At its height, the empire dominated trade along the entire coastline from the Western Niger Delta, through Lagos to modern-day Ghana.[5] It was for this reason that this coastline was named the Bight of Benin. The present-day Republic of Benin, formerly Dahomey, decided to choose the name of this bight as the name of its country. Benin ruled over the tribes of the Niger Delta including the Western Igbo, Ijaw, Itshekiri, and Urhobo amongst others. It also held sway over the Eastern Yoruba tribes of Ondo, Ekiti, Mahin/Ugbo, and Ijebu.[6] It also established the first colony of Lagos hundreds of years before the British took over in 1851.[7]

The state developed an advanced artistic culture, especially in its famous artifacts of bronze, iron and ivory. These include bronze wall plaques and life-sized bronze heads depicting the Obas of Benin. The most well-known artifact is based on Queen Idia, now best known as the FESTAC Mask after its use in 1977 in the logo of the Nigeria-financed and hosted Second Festival of Black & African Arts and Culture (FESTAC 77).
European contact
Drawing of Benin City made by an English officer, 1897

The first European travelers to reach Benin were Portuguese explorers headed by Joao Afonso de Aveiro in about 1485. A strong mercantile relationship developed, with the Edo trading tropical products such as ivory, pepper and palm oil with the Portuguese for European goods such as Manilla (money) and guns. In the early 16th century, the Oba sent an ambassador to Lisbon, and the king of Portugal sent Christian missionaries to Benin City. Some residents of Benin City could still speak a pidgin Portuguese in the late 19th century.

The first English expedition to Benin was in 1553, and significant trading developed between England and Benin based on the export of ivory, palm oil and pepper. Visitors in the 16th and 17th centuries brought back to Europe tales of "the Great Benin", a fabulous city of noble buildings, ruled over by a powerful king. However, the Oba began to suspect Britain of larger colonial designs and ceased communications with the British until the British Expedition in 1896-97 when British troops captured, burned, and looted Benin City as part of a punitive mission, which brought the Benin Empire to an end.[8]

A 17th-century Dutch engraving from Olfert Dapper's Nauwkeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaansche Gewesten, published in Amsterdam in 1668 says:

The king's palace or court is a square, and is as large as the town of Haarlem and entirely surrounded by a special wall, like that which encircles the town. It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses, and apartments of the courtiers, and comprises beautiful and long square galleries, about as large as the Exchange at Amsterdam, but one larger than another, resting on wooden pillars, from top to bottom covered with cast copper, on which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and battles...