Benin's art of history.

One of the most venerable ancient kingdoms of West Africa can trace its beginnings to the early 13th century when the Fon, a people closely related to the Yoruba, migrated from around the River Niger to settle in the south of what is now the Republic of Benin. They left a remarkable cultural heritage that is still celebrated both in the contemporary arts of Benin and, as Stephen Williams explains, throughout the African Diaspora.

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By the middle of the 17th century, under their monarch King Houegbadja, the first palace of the Dahomey kingdom was built at Abomey. Houegbadja was the third king of a royal lineage of Dahomean monarchs, but is considered Dahomey's founder as he successfully introduced a sophisticated bureaucracy to govern the kingdom. He built a strong army to extend his power and began to codify belief systems, particularly voudou that underpins Dahomean tradition.

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The kingdom's wealth was built on conquest and the trade with Europeans of prisoners taken in battles waged to subjugate rival kingdoms. What modern day historians know of the Dahomean kingdom is, in large part, derived from what has been passed down in the oral tradition.

However, since the 18th century and the reign of King Houegbadja's son, King Agaja, the feats and achievements of the Dahomey kings have also been explained by bas relief (low sculpture) plaques made for royal palaces. Today, the royal palaces at Abomey with their bas reliefs are recognised as one of Africa's greatest cultural treasures.

A comprehensive programme to conserve the bas relief plaques that adorn the palaces' walls have saved many of these unique historical artefacts. They tell the history of Dahomey's royal lineage through symbols and allegories that had earlier been used on royal banners and textile appliques. For example, King Houegbadja's symbols are a fish and a fishing pot. These pay tribute to the king's ability to escape the traps set by his enemies.

A European ship, on the other hand, represents King Houegbadja's son, King Agaja, as it was during Agaja's reign that the Dahomean kingdom first made direct contact with the transatlantic slave traders.

European slave-traders had been calling along the "Slave Coast" (as the Benin coast was then known) since the late 15th century. Yet Dahomey, 100km from the coast, had been denied direct contact with Europeans by the rival kingdom of Allada to its south and the coastal town of Ouidah, the principal slaving port of this part of West Africa.

In 1727, King Agaja waged a military campaign to conquer these neighbouring states and so began the Dahomean dynasty's rapid growth. Dahomey became, within a century, one of the richest and most powerful kingdoms in Africa.

The photographs of bas reliefs on these pages are of originals adorning the palace of King Agonglo, yet to receive conservation attention. Agonglo, the great grandson of Agaja, ruled between 1789 and 1797 and opened the kingdom to Christian and Muslim missionaries.

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He was also the first Dahomean ruler to take a European wife and he engaged in reforms that he had hoped would allow Dahomey to coexist with the Europeans.

Agonglo's symbol is a pineapple and its traditional explanation is that "lightning strikes the palm tree but never the pineapple that grows close to the earth". This aphorism refers to the king's move to lessen his royal prerogative in order to forge an alliance with European interlopers. But his efforts were in vain; within a century the "scramble for Africa" saw the defeat of the Dahomean monarchs and the establishment of the French colony of Dahomey, modern-day Benin.

As the French marched on Dahomey in November 1892, the last of Dahomey's independent monarchs, King Behanzin, was heavily outgunned and faced certain defeat. He ordered the palaces, tombs and temples of Abomey to be torched rather than allowing them to fall into enemy hands. Behanzin then took his remaining retinue and army into the forest to wage a guerrilla war before he reluctantly went into exile.

Each of the Dahomean monarchs had been required by tradition to build a new palace. Much of the resulting 190-acre complex of royal buildings was destroyed on Behanzin's orders. All the thatch roofs went up in flames, in later years resulting in the earthen walls and bas reliefs suffering heavy damage from the elements.

Although some effort was made at conservation by the French colonial administration, it was in 1988 that the Benin government began attempts to save the surviving bas reliefs, leading to a collaborative effort in 1993 with the Getty Conservation Institute and UNESCO to rebuild the palace walls and open the Historic Museum of Abomey.

Today, visitors to the museum can see the two fully restored palaces, of Kings Guezo (1818-58) and his son Glele (1858-89), although the thatch roofs have been substituted with corrugated metal and the bas reliefs on the exterior walls are copies. The originals are protected and displayed within the museum along with royal regalia of exceptional importance--including thrones, ceremonial staffs and umbrellas, as well as ornate jewellery.

One of the results of this conservation programme is that age-old techniques in making bas relief wall sculptures have been rediscovered and used throughout the country. Examples of contemporary bas reliefs, once the preserve of royal palaces and temples, are now found on the walls of private houses and hotels, and even used for outdoor advertising. Even where the art of bas relief is not used, contemporary murals and wall paintings are common. Many voudou temples have the pillars along their multi-entrance facades painted with symbols (like those found on royal palaces) that reflect the legends and spirits of voudou.

Descendants of slaves who survived the notorious middle passage to reach the Americas brought with them the practice of voudou and the belief--not only in a supreme being but also in the hundreds of lesser gods and spirits that are believed to possess unique powers. These belief systems can be directly traced to important cultural traditions of the African Diaspora throughout Brazil, the Caribbean and the southern states of the USA.

In Benin's political capital, Porto Novo, even secular buildings such as the Ethnological Museum and the Musee de Silva, feature murals depicting powerful voudou gods. The Musee de Silva also displays old Brazilian carnival floats that clearly illustrate the connection between African voudou ceremonies and this Catholic-Christian celebration.

Sculpture in Benin also frequently depicts and venerates the pantheon of gods that inhabit the hidden voudou world. About 70km west of Porto Novo is Ouidah, once the principal slave centre of the region.

Ouidah itself is not actually on the coast, it is about 4km inland. The main road from the town to the beach is known to this day as the "road of the slaves" and, as it leads through the estuaries and marshland to the sea, lining its path at regular intervals are the voudou symbols and statues of mythical figures of African legend. Sky gods, thunder gods, earth gods, fate gods, ancestor gods--and importantly the spirits that can intercede with them--are all depicted.

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At the beach, the point where over one million African slaves were loaded into lighters to be taken to the European ships lying at anchor out at sea, there are two of Benin's most important national monuments. The "Gate of No Return", commissioned and built by the Benin government and UNESCO, features a huge arch embellished, appropriately enough, with the national art of bas relief. This illustrates two columns of slaves in chains. The columns are likewise decorated with kneeling figures manacled and gagged, and free-standing sculptures stand either side.

A few hundred metres to the west stands another monument, built five years ago for the millennium, and the "Door of the Return Museum". Both the national monuments carry inscriptions that honour both the victims of the transatlantic slave trade and their descendents living throughout the Diaspora.

Dahomey and slavery

It would be a mistake to romanticise Dahomey's role in the transatlantic slave trade. But it is worth recognising that, even if indigenous West African slavery had existed centuries before the white man arrived, it was of a very different nature to the Europeans' slave trade.

As the Ghanaian historian, Akosua Adoma Perbi, points out: "[The indigenous slave] was regarded as a human being and was entitled to certain rights and privileges ... no slave owner had the right of life and death over a slave. Only the kings and chiefs had that right over slaves and free persons alike."

Dahomey's kings forbade the enslavement of Dahomean subjects--only those captured in warfare or originating from outside the kingdom and traded for, could be sold to the Europeans.

Nevertheless, life for the Dahomean king's subjects could be as brutal and short as it was for a European of that age--both Europeans and Africans lived under the constant peril of war, disease and famine.

Executions were also practised regularly in Dahomey, the victims being criminals and prisoners of war, or too old or wounded to be of value to the European slavers. Royal courtiers could also be despatched to the after-world, on the king's whim, so that they might deliver messages from the monarch to the ancestors. Yet we do know that some slaves in Dahomey were treated very well. We have the amazing testimony of a European who was captured and enslaved by King Agaja. In 1722, Bullfinch Lambe was sent as an emissary of the British Royal African Company to King Sozo of Allada. When Agaja defeated Allada in battle, Lambe was captured and held captive for four years as a slave of the Dahomean king.

Undoubtedly, he was given special treatment as the first European that Agaja had ever met, but his life was not one of hardship. A slave he may have been, but he subsequently described how he was given a house, half a dozen servants, all the food, and brandy, he wanted, as well as some of King Agaja's female relatives as wives.

On the other hand, it is obvious that nobody in the kingdom of Dahomey knew of the fate that awaited those enslaved Africans sold to the European transatlantic slavers. Bartered for cowrie shells, tobacco, guns, gold and other metals, none returned to Africa to tell of the horrors of the middle-passage or, if they survived that, the brutal treatment awaiting them in the New World's plantations.

Only two first-hand accounts of the experiences of slaves transported from Ouidah are known. Mahommah Gardo Baquaqa, who was shipped as a slave to Brazil in 1845, published his autobiography in 1854--and a man named Kazoola, taken to Alabama, USA, in 1860, recalled his experience as a very old man half a century later.