The Walls of Benin, one of Africa’s ancient architectural
marvels, were destroyed by the British in 1897 during what has become known as
the Punitive Expedition. This shocking act destroyed more than a thousand years
of Benin history and some of the earliest evidence of rich African
civilisations.
The astounding city was a series of earthworks made up of banks
and ditches, called “Iya” in the Edo language, in the area around present-day
Benin City. They consist of 15 kilometers of city Iya and an estimated 16 000
kilometers in the rural area around Benin. The walls stood for over 400 years,
protecting the inhabitants of the kingdom, as well as the traditions and
civilisation of the Edo people.
Fred Pearce wrote the following about the city in the science
magazine New Scientist:
“In all, they are four times longer than the Great Wall of China and consumed a
hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. They took an
estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct and are perhaps the
largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet.”
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”. It was one of the first cities to
have a semblance of street lighting with huge metal lamps, many feet high,
built and placed around the city.
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 his personal account, 17th-century Dutch visitor Olfert
Dapper wrote, “Houses are built alongside the streets in good order, the one
close to the other. 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.”
“[The walls are] 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,” he continued.
A mathematical quandary
Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful
rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as “fractal
design”.
Ethnomathematician (the study of the relationship between
mathematics and culture) Ron Eglash has discussed the planned layout of the
city, commenting that “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the
architecture 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.”
“When
Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture disorganised
and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been
using a form of mathematics they hadn’t even discovered yet.” – Ron Eglash
A lost city
The great Benin City is lost to history after its decline began
in the 15th century. This decline was sparked by internal conflicts linked to
the increasing European intrusion and slavery trade at the borders of the Benin
empire. It was then completely ruined in the British Punitive expedition in the
1890s, when the city was looted, blown up and razed to the ground by British
troops.
Furthermore, the remaining ruins have not been preserved or
restored. The only remaining vestige is a house consisting of a courtyard in
Obasagbon, known as Chief Enogie Aikoriogie’s house. The house possesses
features that match the horizontally fluted walls, pillars, central impluvium
and carved decorations observed in the architecture of ancient Benin. It is
rumoured, however, that a section of the great city wall, one of the world’s
largest man-made monuments ever, may be lying neglected and forgotten in the
Nigerian bush.
Source: Wiki, This Afrika
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