elefantbete, carved altar tusk, elephant tusk

Exhibition text STADEN 1998, Benin City: “WHERE THE KING OF GRACE PREVAILS OVER LIFE AND DEATH” The Kingdom of Benin is located in the tropical rainforest in southern Nigeria. The majority of its population are known as edo, but also groups of ibo, ijaw, yoruba and itsekiri live within the borders of the kingdom. The heart of the Kingdom is its capital, which was previously named Edo but today is called Benin City. Outside the capital, the farming people live in several hundred villages under the leadership of their elders. Benin’s cultural riches became known to the Western world in 1897 through British criminal expedition directed against Benin City, when thousands of works of art from the Royal Palace were seized and later spread to museums and private collections worldwide. It is a royal art created to glorify the divine king, Oba, and his predecessor. Even today, a divine king, Oba Erediauwa, sits on the throne in Benin and rules over a dedicated hoof, over grand palace rituals and over vivid artists' hairs. This together makes Benin City a religious and ritual center and by virtue of royal power a city of divine inspiration. “THE HIGH SEAT FOR THE OBIA-HEAVEN ELECTED” Benin City, today’s Nigeria home to some 200.000 people, has always been the administrative and religious center of the Kingdom of Benin, which is also reflected in its construction. The core of the city is surrounded by a dictated clay earth wall, which according to tradition has been built by the sitting Oban in the mid-14th century. The area within this ring wall is divided into two sections by a wide street, with the smaller section in the southwest housing the royal palace and the homes of the various palace societies and the palace chiefs, while the larger section north-east of the arbitration is inhabited by the city chiefs and all the professional specialists working for the king, such as the various artists. Beyond this inner wall extends an outer wall, which encircles the area where the king’s many ritual functionaries live. Within the outer wall are also the villages governed by Uzama, the most uprooted chieftains in Benin, responsible for the rituals that will safeguard the well-being of the whole kingdom. Just outside the outer wall is the two palaces of the queen mother and the throne follower. This is how the planning of the city itself illustrates the central position of the Divine King, as well as the oppositional relationship between palace chiefs and city chiefs and the special position of Uzama. The royal palace, a vast accumulation of buildings and yards, is the heart of the kingdom and the city, from where the spiritual power emanates that is so crucial to the health and well-being of the whole kingdom. There, in the center of the center, the royal ancestor salts are also kept with their bronze heads, exposed elephant beets, bells and other objects, all of which have a role to play in the worship of the royal ancestors and the earth in which they are buried.