The Royal Palaces of Abomey in the West African Republic of
Benin (formerly the Kingdom of Dahomey), on the Gulf of Guinea, are a
substantial reminder of a vanished kingdom. From 1625 to 1900 Abomey was ruled
by a succession of twelve kings. With the exception of Akaba, who created a
separate enclosure, each built a lavish cob-wall palace with a high, wide-eaved
thatched roof in the 190-acre (44-hectare) royal grounds, surrounded by a wall
about 20 feet (6 meters) high. There are fourteen palaces in all, standing in a
series of defensible courtyards joined by what were once closely guarded
passages. Over centuries, the complex—really a “a city within a city”—was filled
with nearly 200 square or rectangular single-story houses, circular religious
buildings, and auxiliary structures, all made of unbaked earth and decorated
with colorful bas-reliefs, murals, and sculpture; it was a major and quite
unexpected feat of contextual architecture in a preliterate society.
According to tradition, in the twelfth or thirteenth century
a.d., Adja people migrated from near the Mono River in what
is now Togo and founded a village that became the capital of Great Ardra, a
kingdom that reached the zenith of its power about 400 years later. Around 1625
a dispute over which of three brothers should be king resulted in one, Kokpon,
retaining Great Ardra. Another, Te-Agdanlin, founded Little Ardra (known to the
Portuguese as Porto-Novo). The third, Do-Aklin, established his capital at
Abomey and built a powerful centralized kingdom with a permanent army and a
complex bureaucracy. Intermarriage with the local people gradually formed the
largest of modern Benin’s ethnic groups, the Fon, or Dahomey, who occupy the
southern coastal region. Abomey is their principal town.
The irresistible Fon armies—they included female warriors—carried out slave
raids on their neighbors, setting up a trade with Europeans. By 1700 about
20,000 slaves were sold each year, and the trade became the kingdom’s main
source of wealth. Despite British efforts to stamp it out, it persisted, and
Dahomey continued to expand northward well into the nineteenth century. King
Agadja (1708–1732) subjugated much of the south, provoking the neighboring
Yoruba kingdom to a war, during which Abomey was captured. The Fon were under
Yoruba domination for eighty years from 1738. In 1863, in a bid to balance Fon
power, Little Ardra (the only southern town not annexed by Agadja) accepted a
French protectorate. France, fearing other European imperialists, tried to
secure its hold on the Dahomey coast. King Behanzin (1889–1893) resisted, but
France established a protectorate over Abomey, exiled him, and made his brother,
Agoli-Agbo, puppet king under a colonial government. By 1904 the French had seized the rest of present-day Benin, absorbing it
into French West Africa.
Tradition has it that the first palace was built for King Dakodonou in 1645
and that his successors followed with structures of the same materials and
similar design—in architectural jargon, each palace was contextual. King Agadja
was the first to incorporate 40-inch-square (1-meter) panels of brightly painted
bas-relief in niches in his palace facade. After that they proliferated as an
integral decorative device; for example, King Glélé’s (1858–1889) palace had
fifty-six of them. As esthetically delightful as they were, the main purpose of
the panels was not pleasure but propaganda. An important record of the
preliterate Fon society, many documented key events in its rise to supremacy,
rehearsing in images the (probably exaggerated) deeds of the kings. Just as
history books might do in another society, they held for posterity the Fon’s
cultural heritage, customs, mythology, and liturgy.
When French forces advanced on Abomey in 1892, King Behanzin commanded that
the royal palaces were to be burned rather than fall into their hands. Under
Agoli-Agbo I, the buildings were restored. Although contemporary documents
describe the compound as a “vast camp of ruins,” the exact extent of both the
damage and the reconstruction is unclear. The palace of King Glélé (known as the
Hall of the Jewels) was among the buildings to survive. Although there are
doubts about the age of the existing bas-reliefs, which may be reproductions,
those from that palace are probably original and the oldest of the remaining
works. In 1911 the French made an ill-informed attempt at architectural
restoration, particularly in the palaces of Guezo and Glélé. Further
inappropriate work in the early 1980s included replacing some of the thatched
roofs with low-pitched corrugated steel. Denied the protection of the
traditional wide eaves, the earthen bas-reliefs were badly damaged.
The palaces seem to have been under continual threat. After damage from
torrential rain in April 1977, the Benin government sought UNESCO’s advice on
conserving and restoring them. In 1984 the complex was inscribed on the World
Heritage List and simultaneously on the List of the World Heritage in Danger
because of the effects of a tornado. The royal compound, the Guezo Portico, King
Glélé ’s tomb, and the Hall of the Jewels were badly damaged. Several
conservation programs have been initiated subsequently. In 1988 fifty of the
fragile reliefs from the latter building, battered by weather and insect attack,
were removed before reconstruction was initiated. After removal, they were
remounted as individual panels in stabilized earth casings, and between 1993 and
1997 an international team of experts from the Benin government and the Getty
Conservation Institute worked on their conservation. The Italian government has
financed other projects.
Today the glory of the royal city of Abomey has passed. Most of the palaces
are gone; only those of Guezo (1818–1858) and Glélé tenuously stand. Their size
gives a glimpse of their splendid past: together they cover 10 acres (4
hectares) and comprise 18 buildings. They were converted into a historical
museum in 1944. Apart from them, the enclosure of the Royal Palaces is
abandoned. Many buildings, including the Queen Mother’s palace, the royal tombs,
and the so-called priestesses’ house remain in imminent danger of collapse.
Further reading
Ben-Amos, Pauline G. 1999. Art, Innovation, and
Politics in Eighteenth Century Benin. Blommington: Indiana University
Press.
Piqué, Francesca, Leslie H. Rainer, et al. 1999.
Palace Sculptures of Abomey: History Told on Walls. Los Angeles: Getty
Conservation Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
