Oseo John Omoruan
Ancient Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as African Fractals – which examines the patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa – notes that the city and its surrounding villages were purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with similar shapes repeated in the rooms of each house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village in mathematically predictable patterns.
As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized 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”.
At the centre of the city stood the King’s court, from which extended 30 very straight, broad streets, each about 120 feet wide. These main streets, which ran at right angles to each other, had underground drainage made of a sunken impluvium with an outlet to carry away storm water. Many narrower side and intersecting streets extended off them. In the middle of the streets were turfs on which animals fed.
“Houses are built alongside the streets in good order, the one close to the other” writes the 17th century Dutch visitor Olfert Dapper. “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”.
Dapper adds that wealthy residents kept these walls “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. Family houses were divided into three sections: the central part was the husband’s quarters, looking towards the road; to the left the wives’ quarters (oderier) and to the right the young men’s quarters (yekogbe).
Daily street life in Benin City might have consisted of large crowds going through even larger streets, with people colorfully dressed – some in yellow, others in blue or green – and the city captains acting as judges to resolve lawsuits, moderating debates in the numerous galleries, and arbitrating petty conflicts in the markets.