₦airaland Forum

Just stopping by to say I'd nominate this for thread of the year, and this section as the best one on Nairaland. Just wanted to let you know that you've got some silent observers who are impressed and interested in what you do. One quick question since I'm not sure if I just missed it earlier--did you say if the granite you're using is imported or domestic?

tpia@:
thanks.

just wondering to what extent exactly yorubas knew of the river niger.

The Yoruba name for the Niger is Oya, so it was a known geographic feature. It features heavily in Yoruba myth through the relationship of Sango and Oya (the goddess) as well. Economically, some scholars view it as a kind of trade "highway" of the past as well, possibly sending goods like gold and ivory from areas around Ife to the other centralized economies in the inland Niger Delta (today's Mali).

9jacrip: I'm going to keep this short:

I understand where you're arguing from, you showcased this in a thread with Prexios which is good, but I must say the angle from which you're arguing from doesn't interest me - Why? Because I'm no linguist, etymologist or historical linguist so it is useless trying to break down sounds, tongues, accents etc to connect one group with another. I'm going to assume you're one of specialists I listed? If yes then it would be nice to watch you break things in a conving way and if possible with links - you have the floor sir.

Furthermore, I've not read nor done a study on Yauri, Bariba or Babur. I'll do my research and see what I can find. And no I've never heard of Asara in Yoruba history - could you share something on this?

Ifa worship and Islam are at opposite ends, lets not even venture into that.

If you're dealing with this solely from the linguistic aspect then good. Educate some of us who have never looked into history from that angle.

Lastly, I'm solely against the Hamitic Hypothesis school. I'm so myopic and close minded about it, so trying to debate or convince it won't get anywhere sir. I still say where the people who settled in Ile-Ife pre-Oduduwa era origins be left while other things are focused on.

Well said.

Radoillo: OK, just to clarify a few issues:

I don't agree 100% with the article written by Dr Nwaezeigwe which Abagworo posted. And I stated that. The dates don't add up. I have independently encountered traditions saying Eri was igala, and I shared it, quoting my source in full. I don't neccessarily agree that the information I shared is the correct version of events. Indeed I'm very skeptical about all oral tradition, especially those dealing with periods earlier than the 18th century or so. I was sharing information for information's sake. Simple.

And I never denied Nri's position in the scheme of things. They cleansed abomination in my town, like they did throughout Northern and Western Igboland. They performed ozo initiation rituals for our men. Their hegemony no doubt shaped the cultural history of the people under their ritual sway (and that includes Awka people). But I just can't stand someone saying Awka was an Nri colony, or settlement, when we all know what Nri traditions say about the relationship between the two towns. Nri traditions acknowledge Awka was the older of the two.

And Chinenye is actually more knowledgeable than u give him credit for. Just had to point that out.

Sorry I could not find a less 'demeaning' term than 'ordinary' while trying to make my point. *shrugs*

Interesting discussion. There was a related one a few months ago with Physics and we raised some of the same points. I was curious about the Awka perspective on this relationship. I agree with you that it's an ancient settlement and probably a rich archaeological site for some future investigator.

madam_oringo: So you pointed out one Ibo group that chastised Odulah?? First, tell everyone YOUR OWN OPINION from the FACTS made available after the hearing so far?

TerraCotta: She has shown today that she has no sensible defense for inflating prices and dodging taxes.

That's my opinion. I'm not sure there's a question in the rest of your post.

Katsumoto: I apologize if you are disappointed by my posts on this thread but corruption is killing Nigeria.

Not disappointed at all. You're entitled to your views and I don't think they're necessarily wrong--I do think they may be exaggerated though. In all honesty, the only reason I even logged in to read and respond is that you strike me as a man with a strong sense of integrity and I wanted to point out that Stella doesn't enjoy unanimous support from her ethnic group.

Katsumoto: Dude,

I don't give a rats ar.se for your respect. I came here not to earn anyone's respect but to debate issues. You lot have always resorted to ad hominem attacks in the past; so its no big deal.

You are asking me whether Oduah's hand was caught in the cookie jar? Are you without your senses?

Maybe you should ask whether it was her wrist, elbow, or entire torso that was in the cookie jar.

The blanket support from Ndigbo for Oduah proves that Ndigbo support stealing, fraud, and corruption as long as it is committed by an Igbo. QED

Katsumoto--I don't think we have had much of an opportunity to interact in the past but you are one of the few thinkers on this site that I look forward to reading, alongside Jarus, Naptu2, Gbawe and Physics. It can be very difficult to maintain a sense of dignity and proper behavior in the face of constant provocation from tribalists, but it will never be okay to join them in filth-slinging; you'll only become as dirty as they are. There are several Igbo organizations and individuals (see here for a prominent example: http://saharareporters.tv/n255m-bmw-scandal-i-see-no-reason-stella-oduah-should-not-go-to-jail-ubani/) that have rightfully chastised Stella Oduah as a likely thief. She has shown today that she has no sensible defense for inflating prices and dodging taxes. We should be careful not to extend her crimes to people who happen to share her ethnic background.

PeterKbaba:
PLS WATCH THIS !!!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCkhZZP3HfQ



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg8yQmfQsyc

Thanks, Peter. I've watched the first video with Prof. Babatunde Lawal (a brilliant scholar hose articles I've quoted on Nairaland in the past) and I totally endorse it. Those are the sorts of discussions about Yoruba cultural history that we should all be involved with. Keep doing what you're doing and don't give the fraudsters a day of rest

9jacrip: Bro, calm down.
I posted that in reference to someone who made a comment about Egypt/Yoruba so I posted that hoping the person expatiates but no response from the person.

Hi 9jacrip--I'm just dropping by to tell you that this discussion was started and maintained by fake IDs ( probably from a notorious ethnic group consumed by hate and jealousy for everything Yoruba ). The majority of participants in this thread aren't Yoruba and you've quite rightly spotted that this nonsense about Egyptian origins and biblical roots for Yoruba culture is meaningless. You're wasting your time trying to have a decent discussion with fraudsters, pretenders and people who are ashamed of their own ethnicity.

I hope you'll save yourself the trouble of participating in their hateful nonsense. Their only goal, as posters like Gbawe and Katsumoto point out in other discussions, is to try and ridicule Yoruba culture and history out of their inferiority complex about their own backgrounds. You can look through all the discussions here and see which posters have made useful contributions to cultural discussions and which ones spend their time here talking about inane nonsense. Some well-meaning posters will be drawn into this charade because they haven't taken the time to find out who they're talking to and dealing with. Don't encourage the fraudsters with no pride or interest in their own culture or history.

I'd expect them to come in and deny or deflect the obvious truth but you should keep this in mind when reading their nonsense in the future. Writing in English doesn't make you an Englishman, and proposing stupid, nonsensical etymologies for Yoruba words certainly doesn't make you a Yoruba person either.

montelik: I don't feel sorry for Theon one bit. In fact, I was rather disappointed he didn't anally assaulted in the woods when caught (I know, I am wicked). I hate traitors and liars, but when you decide to be a traitor and snake, at least don't compound it by adding a healthy heaping of stupidity. Theon deserves all the horrors and more. Maybe after he will develop a brain.

Aye caramba! You may want to rephrase this disappointment o.

Amputations galore this season. Some characters are feeling physical loss the way that others have lost their loved ones. It's like the writer's asking us to think about what we'd miss more--your right fighting hand or your family? Your "tackling equipment" or a beloved mistress you can never marry? Maybe Theon's going to end up as smart as the master of whispers, because he's going to have a lot of time on his hands if he's really been relieved of his b*llocks.

I'm not sure if we're supposed to trust Jamie Kingslayer now he's done something chivalrous. It could all just be a ploy to turn her into a Lannister ally, even though she's still trusted by the mother of the Starks.

ThiefOfHearts: Trouble finishing your train of thought/sentence? Hope all is well

No trouble at all . I'm great--hope you are too.

I can understand 9JaCrip's point (and I'd even award him some more points "for most unusual history enthusiast's nickname" ). The earlier parts of Reverend Johnson's book are clouded in mythology and relies on earlier works with their own problems, notably Sultan Bello's writings. His book is still the gold standard on Yoruba history and culture--everything from names to the different facial marks, gods and even clothing is included in the book. I also think Rev. Johnson is trustworthy on the Kiriji war since he was an eyewitness and a treaty signatory as well--he lived through some of the events in the latter part of the wars. It's also true that his brother Obadiah had to recreate most of the book from Johnson's notes after the original manuscript was lost so there may be some material included/excluded that Johnson might not agree with.

Ezeagu--I'd thought about drafting a more detailed response with citations from Jeffreys and other colonial-era reports regarding Nri and Igala but I realized that I've been trying to end this discussion for the past few posts and that wouldn't help much. It's clear to me and perhaps other readers whether the line "Umundri tradition is that they come from the ruling stock of the Igala" constitutes proof of someone recording a claim. I've mentioned earlier that I don't have Jeffreys' dissertation at hand. I can't access one other article I've read that has relevant information and there's some related recent linguistic analysis that revives Jeffreys' perspective (if not this specific claim), but I'm not sure I want to start that discussion or whether it would even make any difference in the end.

I haven't read 'Murder at Montpelier'. Maybe other people reading would be interested in reading a summary of Chambers' new research about Nri/Igbo-Ukwu. I assume you do find Onwuejeogwu's records of several 80-100-year reigns unreliable as well.

The broader topics being discussed are more interesting to me and while Igbo-Ukwu has a clear relationship to the other cultures Physics and I are talking about, its importance to me is in the context of everything else we're discussing.

shymexx: Terracotta,

Interesting read, bro.

Can you please help me out with good books I can read about Ijebu history? I noticed you're privy to so much information about my people and I'll like to get on your level, bro.

Thanks in advance.

Hey--the best foundational books are the general Yoruba history ones. Samuel Johnson's "History of the Yorubas" is a necessary read, and then 'Kingdoms of the Yoruba' by Robert Smith and 'Yoruba Warfare in the 19th Century' (JFK Ade-Ajayi and R. smith again) are good starts. Then Toyin Falola's "Yoruba Warlords of the 19th Century" has good relevant chapters. The best essay is the one by Robin Law that I mentioned earlier. Those are the best places to start because most of the 'traditional' histories have problems separating myths and the odd recent references to origins in Waddai etc.

ezeagu: This is misleading, there's no proof that the Nri ever claimed Igala descent. Two sentences from 1930 and a reference to a 'common ancestry' isn't proof.

That's where we disagree. Two sentences from 1935 is proof that Jeffreys recorded a claim to Igala ancestry (I will leave out his dissertation references since we don't have easy online access to it). The argument isn't whether or not Nri truly was derived from Igala. That's beyond the point of this discussion. You seem to be saying that Jeffreys made this claim up arbitrarily (why not Jukun? Ife? Benin?) and didn't actually ask Nri residents of the 1930s where they thought their culture came from. Considering the useful and specific information he provided on Nri coronations, scarifications and religions, I tend to believe that he did ask and recorded a claim that he heard. That doesn't make it true that Nri was somehow an outpost of Igala, since claims aren't proof of reality as Physics and I have established in the other discussion on the thread. All we establish--if we believe Jeffreys and I have no reason not to--is that people in Nri claimed Igala ancestry when he spoke to them.

I don't think current differences in language, religion, rituals and tradition invalidate the possibility of a link. You raise good reasons to be skeptical about the claim, but you don't recognize any of the possibilities that explain the claim--ie, the Nri found Igala to be the most prestigious nearby culture they had knowledge of (perhaps through the Onoja Oboni interactions) and wanted to show some affinity to them when the colonial officials came asking about their culture. That type of exaggerated affiliation is the core of my discussion with Phsyics.

Jeffrey's claims that Chukwu is a sun-god is not proof that Chukwu is a sun god (they are not).

There's a subtle difference in the two ideas. Jeffreys interpretes Chukwu as a sun-god (or a sky-being later on; the difference seems semantic to me) and also guesses that Nri culture, like Jukun, Bini, Yoruba etc are ultimately derived from Egypt. Those are his (probably wrong) interpretations and he does not seem to credit the Nri for giving him those conclusions. When he says "Umundri traditions is that they come from the ruling stock of the Igala", he clearly attributes that to first-hand data he was told--like the meanings of the ichi, for instance--and not his own speculation or theory.

Onwuejeogwu isn't the only source that has presented dating for a kings list, others (like Douglas Chambers) have moved Nri founding to the early 13th century, which still does not match the Igala source claim. The only chance this theory has is moving Eri's existence to after the 15th/16th century, again that means revising the date of settlement of every Nri settlement in the Niger Delta (including most of the major towns of northern Delta state) the average age of settlement being 1500 CE, and the entire history of the southern Benue trough itself. By the way, there's no denial of the Igala influence on Nri.

Onwuejeogwu is pretty much the only source, but why are you ignoring his claim that there were regular 80-100 year reigns in Nri in order to match the Igbo-Ukwu radiocarbon dates? It makes his other claims a little less credible, I think. It's funny that you bring up Douglas Chambers though; he is a decent scholar (some problems with his work have been discussed by David Northrup in 'Igbo and Myth Igbo' which is worth reading) but he certainly wouldn't claim any expertise in Nri history or anthropology since his interest in Igbo participation in the slave trade and African diaspora. Chambers wrote an essay in the book I've already mentioned ("Identity In the Shadow of Slavery" containing the Sandra Greene essay on Anlo-Ewe and Yoruba connections) and has this to say about Nri:

"From his analysis of the eze or king lists, M.A. Onwuejeogwu infers that Nri was founded in 948 AD, but this date may be too early as it is based on fifteen 'reigns', and it seems more likely that the odinani Nri (Nri culture) founded at Agukwu dates from the fourteenth century"

That suggests to me that he's skeptical of the Igbo-Ukwu connection to the current Nri culture based on the likely founding date in the 14th century. The only scholars he cites for evidence that the current Nri kinglists was contemporary with the Igbo-Ukwu bronze works is ... Onwuejeogwu (and Afigbo, who cites ... Onwuejeogwu).

Again, if your problem with Jeffreys (or my view, for that matter) is that he personally believed that Nri was of Igala origin, I'd say that's incorrect. The claim comes from "Umundri tradition" according to Jeffreys and Boston etc and wasn't an interpretation or theory like their claims about Egyptian origins. Hope that clarifies my view.

The Greyjoy storyline is really interesting to me. The whole twist with the fire god's interest in the old king's bastard suggests some future developments too. I think Jon Snow and his woman are developing the core of an alliance between the Wildings and the Starks/Northmen. Kingslayer's going home and I wonder how he'd take the news about his sister-chick getting married again. I think his father's going to be devastated by the loss of his hand, but you can also see the alliances forming. The idea of growing alliances, new social combinations etc is pretty key to Game of Thrones, in my view. I don't think there's going to be just one winner since they'll probably require a whole new system to deal with the dead-walkers. Maybe I've said too much...

TerraCotta, babalawo of TV, has spoken.

To be accurate, Egharevba actually wrote "201 towns and villages," so what is written here is actually a misquotation. If he was exaggerating he would have said "201 cities" or "201 kingdoms!"

Lol. Alright--I'll accept that. I was quoting from memory so I omitted the "villages" part. If he were really pushing it, he should have said 201 confederate empires.

201 was/is clearly a symbolic number in Edo culture - it was/is a kind of expression or numerical figure of speech which basically means or signifies "an immense amount" or "a huge quantity," which Egharevba either didn't feel the need to indicate was a symbolic figure or which he may have assumed his Edo readers would understand as just symbolizing a very large amount. One will actually see the number (201) pop up multiple times in different sources relating to Benin except in different contexts (sometimes its towns or villages, sometimes it's dance steps in ceremonies, sometimes its other things), and different events relating to different people. It just means a great amount, but the number also might have some sort of religious/mystical significance (it's already been documented by other scholars that there are multiple numbers that have/had some sort of mystical association in Edo tradition).

I was aware of the symbolic quality of "201". The exact same concept is found in Ife culture and Yoruba religion more generally (see the book "City of 201 Gods: Ile-Ife in Time, Space and Imagination" by Prof. Jacob Olupona for a recent example). It's the reason why I was comfortable describing the author as having a tendency towards traditional exaggeration--the number is generally meant to represent a large multitude. Ifa verses say there were 201 irunmole that came to Ile-Ife from the sky but there are a vast array of other examples. Sixteen happens to be the most prominent mystical number in Yoruba culture, but all multiples of four, and 201 (sometimes 401) are considered auspicious as well. So, while I enjoyed your mathematical extrapolation, I think I'm safe in calling this a traditional exaggeration that was not meant to be an accurate count of the towns (and villages) Ewuare warred against.

d) I don't have a professional/academic interest in history, but I suggest that if anyone reads Egharevba's publications for research or for some other professional/academic reason, that person should try and find somebody knowledgeable (much more knowledgeable than me) about the culture or customs of the place and people whose history they are reading about, so they don't end up confused about what is actually indicated. That's what some (but definitely not all) of the foreign scholars who have published articles and books on Benin have clearly done. They have gone there to actually ask for elaboration about certain things (that were only covered briefly by Egharevba or other Edo people who wrote about the kingdom), from informants who are still engrossed in the some of the traditional ways of life and/or who have heard a lot about the stories, traditions and history of different important places, people and events. With some notable exceptions (Bondarenko being one of them), many of those foreign scholars (people like Bradbury, Nevadomsky, Ben-Amos, etc.) didn't just read something and start guessing at what is meant without asking an opinion of or explanation from people from the culture about what a statement or story really means (although they still sometimes make errors/mistakes anyway). Since some of the foreign scholars - and some of them have already noted in publications what the manner of the use of "201" and "200" was by the Edo - have actually gone and gotten first hand information on the typical use of those numbers (as a number meant to represent a very large amount), I think Nigerian researchers who have similar questions about issues in Egharevba's work should do the same thing.

All good advice. If it was meant to pertain to me however, I'd tell you that I'm far from a professional/academic historian myself, and that the history of Benin is a strong personal interest but its peripheral to my core areas of interest and late in the chronological order of the issues I find most fascinating. As I said earlier though, I was quite aware of Egharevba's purpose in using the number "201" when I called it a traditional exaggeration.

Your follow-up paragraphs on Egharevba's shifting count of Ogisos and the later elaborations that brought the count to 31 are interesting but I'm not sure they change my point. The inconsistencies and revisions in the four editions of the book are discussed in "A Comparison of Jacob Egharevba's "Ekhere Vb Itan Edo" and the Four Editions of Its English Translation, "A Short History of Benin" (Uyilawa Usuanlele, Toyin Falola and Jacob Egharevba, History in Africa , Vol. 25, (1998), pp. 361-386). A relevant quote from them:

"In Bradbury's authoritative view, the book's main substance remained unaltered and only the orthography of Benin words were changed from the original version. This view is not correct ...

Later on, they quote Egharevba:

Many, many years ago, Odua (Oduduwa) of Uhe (Ile-Ife), the father and progenitor of all Yoruba kings sent his eldest son Obagodo--who took the title of Ogiso--with a large retinue from Uhe to form a kingdom in this part of the world ... He had numerous wives but only one bore him a son (Kaladerhan) ... The Oba banished Kaladerhan with his mother from the city instead of killing him and he eventually became the founder of Guwatto (Ughoton) on the banks of a long forest ... There was an interregnum and the following leaders of the people, Ere, Orire, Akhuankhuan, Ekpigho etc. administered a republican form of government.

This story of the foundation of Benin changed from the first edition (quoted above) to the second edition ("Many, many years ago, the Binis came all the way from Egypt to find a more secure shelter in this part of the world after a short stay in the Sudan and at Ile-Ife ... The Empire of the first period was founded about 900 AD" etc. )and by the fourth edition, he'd made the refinements that yielded the most familiar stories we know of now to the Ogiso list (with the name changed from 'Obagodo' to 'Igodo', Kalhaderan to Ekalhaderan, the fuller list of fifteen Ogisos who had been previously identified as contemporary republican administrators but were now sequential Ogiso 'kings' etc). The fact that these changes were noted isn't all that remarkable; as you say, perhaps Egharevba was getting new information frequently and wanted to note what he was being told. It's just as likely to me (and the other critical readers of the Usuanlele and Falola essay) that he and/or his sources were perhaps embellishing little-known folk tales with new names and details as Bradbury suggested when he called the Ogiso period 'semi-mythical'. The footnotes in the essay I mention also discuss a Chief DN Oronsaye's criticism of Egharevba's "distortion or bias towards the reigning dynasty", which is bolstered by the fact that he submitted the book to Oba Eweka for approval and editing before publication.

So, there's a very good example of two fairly reputable scholars (at least one of whom is Edo-speaking and none of whom is humble TerraCotta ) undertaking a 'critical reading' and identifying Egharevba's inconsistencies. None of the takes away from the invaluable work that he did in sifting through palace and common myths and European sources to present us the first 'insider' coherent history of Benin. Anybody interested in West African history owes him a debt, just as they owe the other native-born writers of "itans" (the word for histories is the same in Edo and Yoruba, interestingly enough). This doesn't make his work immune from analysis for inconsistencies, mistakes or political propaganda, which was my point. I understand the respect you have for Egharevba and his pivotal role in Edo history; for me, Rev. Johnson serves that same role but I have the same criticisms/reservations about accepting all his conclusions because it's clear that his sources and influences had a Christian Missionary and specifically Oyo-Yoruba bias (or "perspective", if we're being diplomatic).

Now I don't think it's accurate to call Egharevba's work a "royalist charter" because it does not seem (at least to me) to simply be about royalist elevation, but a mostly dispassionate retelling of important remembered events.

His work talks of regicide/assassination (the death of Ezoti), a disloyal and scheming chief (the Oliha during Esigie's time) getting into disputes with the king - supposedly over a woman (at least, according to Egharevba's publication).

I think the citation I added above, which specifically mentions Oba Eweka's editorial control over Egharevba's work, justifies my description. More central is Chief Oronsaye's criticism, since he alleges that there was a notable bias towards the reigning dynasty (perhaps having to do with contemporary politics in Benin of the 1930s/1940s as the footnote speculates). I don't know what it was that Oronsaye specifically found trouble with but it suggests that other elements in Benin itself challenged the focus and veracity of Egharevba's works. Lastly, the work has elements of a "romance" in the original sense of the word, as it focused on the lives and actions of the nobility and tells us very little about the material lives of the vast majority of Benin citizens, those who fled the capital because of royal actions, those who moved away and so on.

It may be unfair to single out just Egharevba for this sort of focus since the romanticized focus on nobility was common enough around the world until a few decades ago, but it doesn't make it any less true that we have details about daring, warlike and inventive princes and kings (fewer details about princesses and queens, of course) but next to nothing about the lives of the soldiers, traders, bakers, blacksmiths, religious officers etc. that actually made the society run. No doubt, these are hard details to get in the best of circumstances when the written records are few, but the perspective of igun smithing families on their work or the Edo N' Akuhe on their business travels are virtually missing. The book's title is a "Short History" after all--maybe there wasn't space for this information after including his earlier material. Perhaps he wasn't able to glean anything useful from the oral traditions (I think Nevadomsky has done this with the smiths though). Either way, the point is that royal traditions and actions were his focus and I don't think it's unfair or even unduly critical to call the book "royalist" in outlook. It was a product of its day and that was an important (primary?) consideration in gaining approval. Your examples about ruthless princes and scheming royals does show that he tried to inject balance and deserves credit for that. I hope you can see where the more skeptical interpretation of various claims comes from as well.

I think that you may have accepted Patrick Darling's Udo thesis uncritically, given your "phantom capital" comment from earlier. From what I can tell, Darling's basic thesis has been around since the mid 1980s (almost 30 years) and yet it doesn't have even a single endorsement (not even Bondarenko endorses it, he just notes what Darling believes and uses some of Darling's information/claims for his own idea/theory) from anybody significant in the study of any aspect of Edo culture or Benin history and there is a very good reason for this. The thesis is just not credible. I will comment at length on what the problems are with Darling's various claims tomorrow or the next day, but for now, I have to get some sleep.

]
This is interesting to me so I'm looking forward to your comments on the Udo thesis (particularly since you say you haven't had much time to delve into the Udo perspective on the relationship). After my earlier comments about the importance of critical reading, I would hope it's plain to see that I'm skeptical about all claims (Jan Vansina suggests it should be an Africanist's default position and I agree in most respects). My reference to the Darling thesis is because I think it's a highly original understanding of the Ife-Benin (Ufe-Udo?) relationship and deserves further inquiry since the guy is one of the leading (semi-retired) archaeologists in the region. The reason why it has so few supporters may have more to do with the dearth of archaeological work in Nigeria than any inherent flaws, though I'm sure there are several. He also didn't originate the thesis that the original capital in the area was at Udo to my recollection and that political rivalries have suppressed its former role. Egharevba himself suggests something like this early on but I'll dig up more sources on this when you have time to discuss.

I'd intended to talk more about Dahomean political propaganda and their official policy of suppressing negative news (ie about the ignoble origins of the monarchy, losses on the battlefield and so on). I think it's a useful comparative example of how court versions of history are altered to suit political purposes. There's also an influential Robin Law (to me, anyway) essay called "My Head Belongs to the King" which goes a long way to clarifying some of the ritual necessities of the kingdom and explains their reasons for the sacrifices and decapitations that Europeans and many modern observers found/find repulsive. As part of the greater cultural sphere in the region, I think Dahomey's reasonably well-known history offers a good counterpart to how we validate oral tradition, court myths and written history by comparing them all. More related to this topic, the [url="http://agongointo.worldarchaeology.net/eng/02_caves.html]archaeological evidence can open up whole new avenues of inquiry [/url] that aren't adequately explained or even mentioned in the other conventional historical records. In the example of the habitable caves in the link I provided (hope it shows up), what's interesting is that there very few references to these in written records, incomplete or garbled references in the oral traditions (with references to Dahomean soldiers 'disappearing' in front of invading Oyos) and some confusion in contemporary traditions about who built them and what they were used for (they don't appear to be primarily graves, for instance). Yet there they are--more than 1,600 highly sophisticated underground engineering works that date back to the late 17the century (at the very latest, since those earlier models are described as being more complex than the later versions) that have escaped historical notice until a recent find. It makes you wonder what else is under the earth in West Africa that we don't know of yet or adequately understand.

I'll stop here for now but I'm definitely up to discuss this in much more detail. Believe me, I appreciate the discussion and the fact that you're relying on more than opinions and outdated theories.

1. I own that book by Thornton and I've read it. What you've written there does not seem to be an accurate account of what Thornton wrote. He stated (in chapter 7, 'African cultural groups in the Atlantic world') that Yoruba was being used as one of multiple lingua francas in the wider region, not as a court language throughout the region. These are two different things. He also notes in chapter 8, 'Transformations of African culture in the Atlantic world', that creole versions of European languages, especially Portuguese, were used for trade and as lingua francas on the Atlantic coast of Africa. Also, Thornton's claim about Benin's soldiers and administrators going as far west as Allada is that Benin's expansion played an "integrating role" and "created a cultural unity" between different groups in a part of the wider region.

2. I don't think you read in Thornton's book that he claimed "political leaders in places like Allada preferred to speak Yoruba to their own languages". Perhaps you got that from another source or perhaps you're mixing up Allada with another place mentioned in Thornton's book. If not, please post the statement of Thornton's in the book that states this, or if the source of this statement about Allada (and places like Allada) isn't Thornton, you can just indicate that.

As I mentioned earlier, you're right about my incorrect attribution of this to Thornton. I own the book as well but I was quoting from memory when I said he suggested Yoruba was used as a court language in Allada. It was actually Robin Law who said "there was enormous Yoruba influence throughout the eastern section of the Slave Coast" (ie modern Benin Republic and Togo) and he also cites De Sandoval's claim that "Lukumi (ie Yoruba) was considered "noble" and commonly spoken by local people in preference to their own language" (cited in Sandra Greene's "Cultural Zones in the Era of the Slave Trade: Exploring Yoruba Connections with the Anlo-Ewe" in the book "Identity in the Shadow of Slavery". I don't have a copy of Law's 'Slave Coast of West Africa' handy but this is on pages 23-24 for anyone who'd like to read more.

3. Assuming there were "many Yoruba in the Benin court" as Thornton extrapolates from the possibly exaggerated/inaccurate (as you suggested) information from Alonso de Sandoval (which claims that the king at the time used them because they were foreigners so he could punish them if they erred without encountering interference/trouble from any relatives), I don't see how that would touch on the issue of administrative languages of courts - if one looks at the precolonial and early colonial documents for Benin all one sees are Edo names for titled palace officials and every palace association, title or ceremony documented in the colonial era and earlier is also Edo. I certainly can't detect any trace of an administrative Yoruba language in any of the mentions of the Benin palace societies, ceremonies and officials that were published in any of the earliest accounts.

I would assume Edo courts would use Edo language myself, though we have the issue of the origin of the term 'oba' and the purported roots of the dynasty to contend with. I'm not sure there's a disagreement here since I haven't implied otherwise. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The rest of this section of your post regarding Owo and its use of Benin court terms is puzzling--I'm guessing that you thought my reference to creative scholars extrapolating that Benin armies spread Yoruba as a court language through the empire was my own view? I thought I'd made it clear that I think that would be a wrong conclusion drawn from inaccurate or inconclusive information. If it wasn't clear earlier, I hope it is now.

I don't think this comment accurately interprets/represents my original comment that you quoted. Maybe if you re-read what I wrote and then re-read your comment, and you'll see that it does not correspond to what I said. I speculated that they were being held hostage because the king of Benin was either in negotiations with those other polities over something (exchanging hostages as insurance was a standard practice in some medieval/feudal societies around the world, as I mentioned earlier), or was holding them prisoner because he had a hostile attitude to those places and was planning something against them, or was just keeping them prisoner because they were useful in some way (perhaps for geographical knowledge). I did not say that Benin had leverage or dominion over Allada and Labadi in 1538 because Benin had two hostages.

I was saying it clearly implied contact. The point was about Benin having contact with places further west than Lagos even before the Benin war camp in Lagos. I didn't make a claim of Benin dominion over Allada or Labadi in the 16th century or imply/suggest that.

So here's the complication--if we were just discussing the notion of contact, there wouldn't be any dispute here (from my end or from any other sane, logical observer). Contacts are indisputable and proven from all aspects of the historical record (archaeological, art historical, written documentation, oral tradition etc). The disagreement we had was specifically about the military extent of Benin's reach, and I hope I've shown where my doubts and those of Robin Law and to a lesser extent Robert Smith come from. If I misunderstood your claim, perhaps you can clarify here. If we weren't talking about military incursions, I don't think we have much to disagree on.

Perhaps the founders of Ketu came from Ife (or at least somewhere near Ife) and met some Ewe people in the area they settled in and they absorbed some of them and drove others out:

"The town [Ketu] was conquered from an aboriginal population of Aja or Ewe extraction. In Ghana, many Ewe groups continue to trace their migration to the ancient city of Ketu." - Society, State, and Identity in African History, p. 384

And this link (pp. 24-27 of the book The Akpinis and the echoes of German and British colonial overrule: An archaeological investigation of Kpando, Ghana) mentions some connections of Ewe with the Ketu area:

http://books.google.com/books?id=UozFJWHRm04C&pg=PA24

(I'm too lazy to type out what is written there.)

Ewe people who would have absorbed some of the Ketu Yoruba culture or lived in the (now Yoruba dominated) Ketu area and interacted with some of the Ketu Yorubas (before migrating to a non-Yoruba controlled area or any freer and uninhabited area further west) might have learned of Ife and gleamed some idea of its importance or details about it from these interactions. The Ife stories could have spread among other Ewe who had never been near Ketu through interactions with some of the Ewe refugees who were fleeing the Ketu area.

The Ewe-Ketu claims seem to me to likely be a memory of a real event where some Ewe people left the area that they originally occupied after Ketu Yorubas expanded into and then took over that area. It doesn't seem that they are really claiming Ketu Yoruba ancestry but mostly just claiming to have previously lived in Ketu or in the Ketu area.

Your first point about Ketu and Ewe affinities are generally accepted and lots of people have written about them. As neighboring groups in all the areas between western Nigeria and eastern Ghana, there were certainly cultural connections, intermarriage and so on, through to the Dahomean era. The religious interplay between the two was particularly fertile and is probably the greatest point of integration (the Fa system, Gu, Mawu-Lisa/Orisa-Nla etc). We're at the point of trying to discern the nature of contact, not just that contact existed. And the issue is that Ewes are literally "claiming Ketu Yoruba ancestry" (which, no doubt, may be true in some instances but points to a larger symbolic importance). For claims of Ketu ancestry among the Ewe, you can see the Sandra Greene essay I mentioned earlier or this link: http://ewechicago.org/Flyers/The%20ewes/THE%20ORIGINS%20AND%20BRIEF%20HISTORY%20OF%20THE%20EWE%20PEOPLE.pdf

(there are many more spurious internet claims but there's no real point in referring to those right now).

Maybe you were unable to view the preview page I included as a hyperlink in that post, but if you could view the page shown from the hyperlink, you would see that the book makes a mention not only of slaves, but specifically of free men from the same place causing trouble there at a later date (1541) alongside some Portuguese "adventurer" (troublemaker?), and of course the first group of troublemakers from Benin mentioned in 1526 may have had some slaves among them, but if there were any slaves it is certainly not mentioned there. If there were free men in the 1541 group of troublemakers mentioned in that source, there could certainly have been many of such people in the 1526 group or they could have all been free. Even if they had come there via the Portuguese (which I said is still the most likely cause, in my opinion) and not through other means of transportation or by foreknowledge of the existence of the place through pre-Portuguese contacts, it still wouldn't necessarily mean they were slaves, since we know that Africans went on some voyages with Europeans in capacities other than as slaves.

I included a link to that particular book because I thought the relevant part would be easily accessible/viewable, but I guess you couldn't see it. The information about contact between some people from the kingdom of Benin and the kingdom of Kongo is really from Alan Ryder's book (Benin and the Europeans), where it was first published, but of course Ryder's book cannot be previewed on Google Books. Anyway, if I recall correctly (it's been a while since I read the book), Alan Ryder's mention of a few Kongo-Benin contacts does not provide evidence for anything like pre-Portuguese contact like what is suggested by the mention of Ewuare's travels in Egharevba's book, but I wouldn't assume that such contacts should automatically be ruled out just on the basis of the distance involved.

Also I did not suggest a Benin "military presence" in Congo. I think you may have misread what I wrote there. It seems clear (at least to me, upon re-reading what I wrote there) that I was talking about exploration and establishing contacts with/knowledge of far away places.

You're right--I wasn't able to view this letter so I'll just reserve comment. Again, my objection wasn't to the possibility of contact, even to places like the Congo where we might not have firm evidence of trade yet. My skepticism was about "causing trouble" through military exploits, which I would find unlikely. Since that's not your view, I'd accept the idea that there could have been little-known voyages in both directions. I'd add that my example of troublesome Jellofes/Wolofs in the early Americas is duplicated in other places and even more strikingly, there were free Angolans (quisamas) in Brazil already by the early 1500s. However, it's clear that these 'troublemaking' populations were associated with the Portuguese slave trade and not freebooting wanderers on their own or representing independent political contact.

You are certainly welcome to your opinions of his work, but I would be careful about making assumptions about intent or authorial tendencies/inclinations without first having a fuller picture of the man and his work.

I want to word this carefully, since you seem to have taken offense at a description that i thought was fairly benign. I wouldn't call this a simple opinion, although it's not a plain fact either. Egharevba used traditional stereotypes and relied heavily on court mythology. I think that could be fairly described as being "prone to exaggeration". I guess you find this to be too uncharitable to Egharevba, but as I make clear in comparing him to his peers of the colonial era, it's a tendency that was common to Rev. Samuel Johnson (and his heavily Oyo-oriented "History of the Yorubas". Robin Law's great essay "The Heritage of Oduduwa: Traditional History and Political Propaganda among the Yoruba" explains these issues in more detail. It wasn't meant to be disrespectful description; it's just my evaluation of the flaws of his approach. Any modern reader clearly owes him an enormous debt for all the information he was able to collect and provide.

The other article you've cited by Law restates the point that the Benin claim on Ijebu may be exaggerated. In fact, the passage about Benin's earliest presence on Lagos Island agrees with what I've suggested earlier on this thread--their military presence was specifically on the island, which wasn't settled as a full-time village and instead served as a vast farm for the Olofin families who were based on Iddo (there's that name again!) while the mainland coasts like Ikorodu were more connected to the Ijebu capital on the mainland. Even if Law accepts the claim of Benin origins for Ado, Ipokia etc (he refers to a Peter Morton Williams article for the origin of this information and I haven't been able to read the original), it's clear that he was skeptical about the reach of Benin's authority.

I could go into more detail about the art historical evidence of Ijebu-Benin contact (the face bells, pectoral masks and even lesser-known points of cultural cognizance like ibowo shrines) and what these suggest but it will be too much of a digression.

Hopefully you have a completely different/distinct argument for why the Benin-Ijebu claim is implausible or false that isn't just a variation/combination of the ones that I commented on immediately above.

I think it's a fairly distinct/novel reading of the claim, although it's clear that both Robin Law and Robert Smith are as skeptical of this claim as I am.

2.

I'm not sure what relevance the example of the Danish source has to the issue of Benin courtiers possibly exaggerating the range of their kingdom's influence/power for the supposed benefits in trade it would bring them. The Danish source (Roemer) did not get his exaggerated claims about Benin's former territory from Benin or any Benin informants. Roemer did not set in foot in Benin, as his original document makes very clear, even in just the translated excerpts from it. He got his information from a local informant in the Accra area and from that Englishman who once traded at the Benin river and who did not have a particularly high view of Benin's power and level of organization - this same Englishman felt Benin as a city and its government was no better than that of any of the ordinary kings in the Gold Coast (this English man might have visited Benin in the early 1700s, as the article I posted a link to earlier suggests, which was a period immediately following Benin's major civil war, when Benin was a much weaker kingdom and lost much of its influence or authority over other polities).

I've talked about my views on the commercial benefits of Benin's claims but we can go back to Robin Law again for more clues. He suggests that the rise of Lagos was directly related to Benin's waning role in trans-Atlantic trade; as Portuguese ships headed more towards Allada and other ports to the West after trade disputes with Benin in the mid-16th century, the court was extending itself in that direction to keep a foothold on the lucrative trading. From the earliest European records we have of trade in the region (again Perriera) it looks like Ijebu textiles and the controversial jewelry called akori/aggrey were some of the main items of trade. The Ijebu cloth especially was highly valued on the Gold Coast and developed similar markets in Brazil (all the way to the end of the 19th century, in fact, when Brazilian returnees to Lagos were still selling panos da costa or 'country cloths' back to their former homes). The evidence shows that Ijebu was a formidable economic power and in several ways a rival to Benin, which was a middleman for cloth and akori from inland areas. There were strong practical reasons for either claiming dominion over Ijebu or trying to usurp its role in the trade by cutting off direct trading lines in the Lagos area.

As for the territory claim itself, I would imagine that the Accran told him that Benin's territory stretched to the Gambia river (a ridiculous claim, of course) if he was somehow aware of where Gambia was, because of the apparent nostalgic and romanticized view about the supposed Benin viceroys, not because of any mischief or guile on Roemer's part, although it is also possible Roemer himself could have been the source of his own exaggerations, but I doubt that the anonymous Englishman could have been told about the "Gambia river" (or maybe he misidentified the river that he was told about) by anyone he met in Benin, since I don't see how they (the people of Benin) could have understood where exactly Gambia was or how far away the Gambia river was located relative to Benin.

The important point in my view is not whether Roemer heard the claim from a nostalgic Accran, an exaggerating Benin citizen or a mistaken Englishman; the point is that you (rightly, in my eyes) find the claim of Benin authority over The Gambia ridiculous. This claim was made in the same breath as the Ijebu one, so I think it's logical to view it with the same skepticism when there's little evidence beyond court myths and the controversial claims of Dapper, Roemer and others who relied on second-hand information. If there was nothing to gain from exaggerating Benin's territory, why would this claim have even come up?

I think your speculation about impressions made by visiting dignitaries is a pretty strong guess about how ideas of prestige and new political affinities grow, by the way. It's central to my point that relationships developed between the West African polities through means other than military conquest or subordination. I'd say there was almost a predisposition for West Africans to admire outsiders and foreigners and give them dignitary roles (possibly because they were relatively segregated from much of the cosmopolitan world at the time) and this explains why so many groups have traditions of migrations or foreign origins for their ruling groups. There was a prestige in being connected to and aware of economic and political developments outside the serenity of the forests and savannah. There are echoes of this concept in the development of Ife but again--all speculation and it'll take a whole other post to discuss Ibn Battuta and the Arab perspective on West African developments.

I found a small part of Peter Morton-Williams' 1964 article in the JHSN (his article is cited in that article by Law above that mentions Ikpokia and Ado) that states that Ipokia was founded by people from a Benin colony. I don't have the full article, but found a relevant part:

"Benin founded colonies along the shore - of these, Lagos is of course best known, but the town of Ado (the Yoruba form of Edo, i.e. Benin) north of Badagri was, so its traditions imply, also a Bini foundation or at least got its crown from it; and Ipokia, west of the River Yewa and only thirteen miles ENE of PortoNovo, claims to have been founded from Opo Bini (the Benin colonies), though it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, if not earlier (Clapperton), subject to Oyo. I am unable at present even tentatively to assign dates to this penetration by Benin, but Snelgrave seems to have been aware of it. . ." - Peter Morton-Williams.

Thanks for providing this. I think Morton-Williams' ambiguity about whether the towns were founded by Benin "or at least got their crowns" etc. is telling and supports the point that this is not a clear-cut case of a conquering army planting 'colonies' in the region. We have no clear indication of what this relationship was. I'll discuss the issues with the term 'Ado' a little later on.

TerraCotta: The name 'Ado' brings up other issues about the origins of the name Benin/"Ado"/Udo/Edo that are worth discussing in another post as well. Where do these terms come from and what might they tell us with a critical reading?

Regarding the names question, I think one has to actually ask many people from the places involved and obtain the majority opinion on the meaning/origin of the name before one can engage in a "critical reading" of the names. Forming opinions, even ones formed through critical analysis, without doing any real in-depth searching for additional and possibly more useful/direct information might just lead one astray.

Well, I don't see how anyone can disagree with that. Of course you'd have to "ask many people from the places involved and obtain the majority opinion on the meaning/origin of the name"--that's exactly what's implied by my use of the term [url="http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/writing/history/critical/index.html"] critical reading [/url] I'd sort of taken all that as a given, but I guess I shouldn't have assumed that everyone understood these terms of art. A critical reading of these place names would help us evaluate claims about their origins and meanings beyond myths and latter-day apocryphal information. Here are some quick examples--the idea that Benin was named Ile-Ibinu by a fed-up Oranmiyan is unacceptable as a historical fact to me. The tale sounds like it was made up by people who could not explain the origin of a clearly foreign term (ie it had no obvious root in either the Edo variant spoken at Benin or current standard Yoruba). This again is repeated throughout southern Nigeria, even with the Ijebu ethnonym, which has been claimed to derive from the name of an early ruler (Ajebu) but is more likely just an archaic Yoruba word for "riverain wanderers", Ije-Ibu. This also offers clues into the origin of other ethnonyms like Ijesa (especially when paired with Geoffrey Parrinder's views on the possible existence of an early 'Esa' population in current Benin Republic, but I digress). Before it starts seeming like I'm obsessed with the Ijebu, I should say I'm not Ijebu myself but I think their history and traditional political structure is fascinating and their relative isolation until the end of the 19th century is helpful in reconstructing what precolonial societies in the are may have been like.

I'd add that I see a logical inconsistency here too--you've asked for the people of Udo to have an opportunity to define their own history of interaction with any outside influences, but you don't believe the people of Ijebu when it comes to defining the issue of whether they were subject to Benin. A critical analysis would integrate all perspectives and look for the most logical explanation.

Also, you seem to believe (or maybe I'm reading too much into those backslash marks) that Udo is some dialectical variant of or altered version of the word Edo or vice versa - that one of them is an alteration/corruption of the other. In the language spoken by both groups (the Bini of Oredo/Benin City and the Bini of Udo) there is no confusion between the vowels "U" and "E" and the two are not close in pronunciation. U's do not change to E's or vice versa in Edo, the way I's and U's sometimes swap places in Yoruba names.

It won't matter what I believe once we can agree to do a critical analysis of the terms and decide on the most logical conclusions from the evidence I'm quite familiar with the story about Ewuare's beloved slave--my opinion (just an opinion, though--is that it's a fanciful rendition to cover up a forgotten origin in the same way the "Benin" story is, but with more obvious roots--and the reason I suggested a critical reading of the term is that it might help explain its ubiquity and settle some of the controversies about dynastic origins, settlements and so on. It's not central to this discussion but it's a worthy topic to tackle at some point. I would also really like to hear anything you find out about current Udo traditions about the origins of the name and their traditions about their city.

A side point on the issue of Benin/Birnin, which I'd mentioned on here some time ago here--it's a tempting idea but its unlikely for certain reasons (the lack of other identifiably Hausa influences in the are being the most obvious, but even that's a complicated matter). Alan Ryder's suggested a fairly plausible root in his "Ife Benin Relationship Reconsidered" article, and although I think he's wrong about certain conclusions, I also believe he and Ade Obayemi have gotten closest to the root of the truth on these issues. All speculation for another day's discussion though.

d) And although this may seem counter-intuitive - because it is normal for kingdoms to self-aggrandize - I'm also a little skeptical of the idea that the Benin court made really exaggerated claims about its own influence or power to the Portuguese (or even the Dutch). In previous posts, haven't we actually been discussing and alluding to reports from the Portuguese, which they got from Benin informants, which clearly place that "Hooguanee/Ogane" ruler above them in the hierarchy that existed at the time and one of which also suggests that there is another (militarily) strong power ("Licasaguou," i.e. the king of either Oyo or Nupe) besides Benin in the wider region? If it was all about boasting to the Portuguese, why not just claim to be the overlord of everyone and anything significant and just not bother to volunteer information about other important states in the interior? The already documented honesty of the Benin informants in these two instances seems to belie the suggestion that they would just lie blindly before Europeans about the extent of their territory or power for trade benefits, so I'm skeptical of the idea that their claims about territory or power can easily be dismissed as mostly just bragging.

There are two possibilities here; one, I admit, is weaker than the other. The fact is that Ijebu was and continued to be a much more closed society than Benin. There were much fewer visits and the Benin court could have made the claim knowing the Portuguese were less likely to visit there to verify. Besides, the verification of grand boasts would happen after the presumed trade benefits of boasting would have already happened. If a con artist sells you a fake watch or gold chain, he knows you'll eventually find out. His concern is to get your money and be gone before the ruse is discovered. This is a discussion about motivation so I hope this isn't misconstrued as an insult to the Benin court of that era.

More importantly: you're conflating the argument that someone has a great deal to gain by exaggerating their area of domain, and the issue of religious piety. The mafiosi in Italy and New York are often devout Catholics; virtually every corrupt Nigerian politician is either a fervent Christian or Muslim. The court at Benin told their visitors that the Houghanee/Ogare was like the pope to European nations. He was a religious potentate and not an economic rival of the time. There was no danger in admitting to a higher religious authority but it's important to see that Benin had good reasons not to admit to being militarily subservient to someone else while also being honest about their religious or 'ancestral' connections.

e) On Pereira, like other early (16th century) Portuguese sources on southern Nigeria, his descriptions don't exactly strike me as being completely thorough or extremely informative as far as including information about all the tributary states, political connections, etc. like some of the later sources do. Of course that's just my opinion, but I think his descriptions of specific places don't go into the kind of detail that would allow us to know much about the actual histories, customs, and connections of the places that he mentions in the way that Dapper's compilation of information is able to. And of course, Duarte Pereira could have simply written about the place too early - the invasion and/or conquest could have come a few years later than when he wrote, while still being an event that happened in Oba Ozolua's reign.

I've addressed my views on this. I think Pereira is many ways more accurate than Dapper, Bosman and other sources because he visited the places he wrote about and identified many of the areas that later writers built their narratives around. That's neither here nor there if you place this 'conquest' after his writing. Pereira was an earlier Portuguese equivalent of Richard Burton, who I've written about here before as a peerless first-person source precisely because they were both well-traveled, multi-lingual, experienced in both military and diplomatic roles and less likely (in my view) to exaggerate or accept exaggerations because they had comparative experiences elsewhere.

f) Furthermore, I'm not sure the logic of your reference to Pereira there is really consistent with your skepticism of, or rejection of, the claim in Dapper's work. Is it that the Portuguese sources are somehow more credible than the Dutch sources? Or that if Peirera had written something similar to what Dapper's sources wrote, then you actually would have accepted that Ijebu was tributary? Or are you saying that every place that was tributary would have automatically volunteered that information (about who they were tributary to) to the first Europeans that showed up on their doorstep?

I think skepticism is warranted when two sources disagree, especially when one of the sources is primary (Pereira, who'd been to these areas) and the others are secondhand (Olfert Dapper, Bosman etc, who were aggregating sailors' stories and earlier works). If the two sources disagree, we have reasons to analyze them to find out which might be more accurate. I'm not the first or only person who found Dapper and co. unreliable or mistaken about this claim but I'll get into that later.

g) As an additional point, although it has not been brought up yet, I should note that I am a bit puzzled by the perception that exists in some accounts I have come across that because Ijebu was a powerful kingdom at times that it could not be have been conquered by or made tributary to another powerful kingdom, whether Benin or Oyo. I know this isn't entirely what you're saying - you're really saying that any Benin influence or indications of previous authority there are not acknowledged anywhere in Ijebu tradition - but I have seen this explanation of "it was too powerful for a conquest to have happened" given before (such as by Robert Smith in his section on Ijebu in his book Kingdoms of the Yoruba, or from others on this forum) and I can't make any sense of this claim so I think I should note the problems with such an explanation before it might be brought up again as if it were a legitimate objection. Benin (a powerful kingdom) was almost conquered by the Igala, Igala (a powerful kingdom in their area) was conquered by Benin, and later by the Jukun. Allada/Ardra was conquered by Dahomey, Dahomey was conquered by Oyo, Oyo had once been conquered by Nupe in the past, etc.

All of these conquests and almost conquests suggest to me that being a powerful kingdom was not some sort of guarantee of safety against being conquered by another powerful kingdom and I find the argument that such a conquest could not have happened based on a kingdom being powerful (such as the argument made by Smith) to be a weak argument. And once again, I'm not saying that you're making this particular argument, I'm just saying that's it's a factor that should be set aside as having no real weight or relevance in considering whether the claim is true or not.

I agree wholeheartedly with all this and I'd even add that it's part of my line of thinking on this interpretation of an Ijebu-Benin relationship. A powerful kingdom had no guarantee of safety from predations, and by the same token, military expansion wasn't the only (or perhaps not even the most powerful) type of contact between African societies. We've focused on the stories of empires and conquerors to the detriment of understanding the role of travelers, traders, artisans and craftsmen, diplomats and religious personnel etc. in forming these societies. If we all agree that there were contacts beyond the borders of these empires, we should be able to imagine other types of social and cultural interaction beyond war.

h) I think the evidence of past connections is obvious from other information that has nothing to do with what Dapper's sources were told in the early or mid-17th century or what Egharevba was told in the early 20th, so I'll refer to other sources that mention other evidence of connections besides the conquest/tributary claims of Dapper's sources and Egharevba's sources:

pp. 117-120 and p. 241 of Yoruba: Nine Centuries of Art and Thought
pp. 178-181 of Benin: Kings and Rituals

Even if one ignores what Dapper's sources were told in the early or mid-17th century, and ignores what Egharevba was told in early 20th, one would still see the same obvious signs of connections or influences between the two places and nobody seems to have missed these influences so of course we can't pretend they didn't exist.

So this brings us back to the issue of interactions, influences and 'conquest'. There are a myriad ways and reasons through which Benin art styles and beliefs could have spread to Ijebu and vice versa. The idea that these fairly obvious and well-accepted connections could only have been adopted through military means (as claimed by Benin traditions and rejected by Ijebu ones) is what I disagree with and what you presumably are insisting on.

Now--what reasons do we have of being suspicious of the Benin conquest story related by Dapper? Robin Law's exhaustive study of European sources on Ijebu agrees that the claim is probably an inflated one. Law quotes Dapper's passage and says "Dapper's statement here that Ijebu was tributary to Benin is difficult to evaluate. Although it is supported by Benin traditions claiming an early Benin conquest of Ijebu, it should be treated with reserve; since Dapper's own information was collected in Benin, it may reflect patriotic vainglory rather than political reality." (from "Early European Sources Relating to the Kingdom of Ijebu, 1500-1700: A Critical Survey", History in Africa , Vol. 13, (1986), pp. 253). If you read his quote from Dapper, you'll see that Jaboe (Ijebu) is just another claimed tributary area alongside the unidentified Isago, Gaboe (probably a misreading of Ijebu but possibly also Aboh, Istanna etc). Some of these names demonstrate the problems later readers have with Dapper's accuracy, since inconsistent spellings and multilingual translations often lead to some unintentionally garbled information. The other thing it demonstrates is that the all-conquering claim of Benin did in fact extend deep into the interior to touch even on Oyo (possibly the 'Isago' referred to here, which may also be Nupe or a currently unknown polity). You can be the judge of the accuracy of those claims but I think it's fair and sensible to take into consideration the contrary traditions of the people being discussed.

Alright--this is a pretty detailed response that I didn't have time to complete during the week. However, it's the weekend and I pulled together some sources so we'd be having a discussion about stuff we can reference instead of pure speculation. I may be off on one or two of these since some citations were things I read years ago. I'm also not a professional scholar by any means--I make a living in a less intellectually stimulating/more typically "Naija" field (in some ways) sadly--so I'd caution again that much of this stuff is from my conclusions having reading a good deal of material and developing a strong basis for comparative analyses. This is obviously a major interest of mine outside my 9-to-5.

Ezeagu

All this does not consider the dating of the Nri kings list relevant to Eri's age of origin vs. the Igala kingdoms age, the age of Nri settlements all over the Niger River Delta like Ogwanshi-Ukwu, Igbuzor, Owa on the Western side of the river, and people of Nri descent and Nri influence like that of the Aro confederacy which rose in the 1600s.

Some of the most problematic information from Onwuejeogwu is precisely because of his acceptance of these kinglists. I find it hard to accept regular 80-90 year reigns as historical realities. I'm also not sure why the Aro groups would be primary evidence for the age of Nri's foundation in the 10th century since, as you suggest, their emergence is commonly dated to the 17th century and they claim Ekoi/Ibibio ancestry and cultural affinities along with their Igbo heritage.

You also seem to imply here that I believe the Igala kingdom is truly the source of Nri; there's some suggestive evidence of this but I'm not claiming it as fact and it's not the central point of my argument. What's important is that the Nri themselves presented their ancestry as Igala to researchers in the 1930s. Again, if the evidence from these same researchers in the 1930s through 1950s and the conclusions of other modern scholars don't convince you, there's no harm in that. It does say something about what they consider a prestigious ancestry at that point in time and feeds into what I'll write below about the uses of court propaganda.

On to Physics!

Right, but the earliest written claim about any kind of Benin authority over Ijebu only appears in European records in the writings of the Dutch, not the Portuguese. So if Benin had any authority over Ijebu or claimed such during the period when there was great interaction with the Portuguese (the 16th century), rather than the Dutch (17th century), they either didn't mention it, or the proselytizing Portuguese didn't care to ask about that or write it down. There is also little information on any other areas Benin had as tributaries from the Portuguese documents throughout that whole century - or even the names of the specific neighboring groups one early Portuguese souce (the same Duarte Pacheco Pereira) claims Benin was "usually at war with".

Pereira was notable for his accuracy and for providing a baseline of knowledge about the groups in the Gulf of Guinea. He was (one of, if not the) earliest written source we have for the culture and geography of Ijebu, Urhobo, Ijo and Benin. As I suggested in my post, it's possible that the Benin 'expansion' into Ijebu just hadn't happened by the time he wrote. Of course, it's also possible that it didn't happen at all (at least not in the way Benin legends tell it), which was my initial point.

I don't see how removing or adding kingdoms from their "tributary list" (or as some would have it, "boasting list" ) would have changed the overall perception of their status/power by their trading partners considering that the perception of Benin as an important place in the area or potential good trading partner in the early documents does not seem to be dependent on how big their sphere of influence was claimed or perceived to be but on what they have to trade. Or is there some quote you've come across where the influence of the kingdom in the wider region is commented upon favorably by a European writer in the context of assessing the worthiness of the kingdom (Benin) as a profitable or reliable trading partner?

This is a common sense assumption to me. Trading partners seek out the most favorable terms with the largest vendors, rather than going through middlemen. The early Europeans would have had little incentive to venture towards Benin if they had assumed Itsekiri traders were the most powerful polity in the region and could give them the best terms for their goods.

There is a plain business incentive to aggrandize your political and economic sphere of influence. I don't think this is too controversial a claim, but I'll use the kingdom of Dahomey as an example. The all-conquering warrior kings of that expanding kingdom had what we would consider an excellent propaganda policy of never admitting defeats and promoting themselves as the African regional equivalent of the European powers like Britain and France. Richard Burton's books, which you seem to have read, is full of these bragging scenes. The Dahomeans did it to gain the respect and loyalty of their trading partners; it's no great stretch to see why Benin may have had the same motivations in an earlier era. I'll return to Dahomey later because I think it's well-studied history can suggest guideposts to critically analyze other African societies.

c) If those sort of claims were all about bragging and telling tall tales to look grand and powerful, why even bother listing any places closer to the coast (along with tributary kingdoms in the interior) that the Europeans, whether Portuguese, Dutch, or any other group might have been able to visit to see if they really were tributary? (The Portuguese did visit Ijebu on more than one occasion - this is mentioned in Robin Law's article on Lagos that is mentioned below) Why not just claim power over a vast network of tributary kingdoms extremely far into the interior that no European can verify except through weeks of traveling blindly in the interior and somehow stumbling on these kingdoms themselves? These are rhetorical questions by the way.

Happy to see the discussion revived and bulging with details. I can't respond in much detail right now but I'll write something up when I get in. I will say quickly that I misunderstood your position on the Benin interactions with the Gold Coast and the Congo, and you misunderstand my position on the Ijebu-Benin relationship, the royalist tendencies to exaggerate and Egharevba's invaluable works. Some of the citations I initially credited to John Thornton were from Robin Law etc but I'll get into more detail later today.

Ezeagu, I will also try to find more specific references to Nri claims of Igala origins since you're dissatisfied with the specific lines in Jeffreys' article on the Nri-Igala relationship ("the Umundri tradition is that they come from the ruling stock of the Igala", which I quoted earlier) and the use of specific items of regalia like the brass face mask and Igala cloths in their coronation ceremony. I don't own a copy of Jeffreys' PhD thesis, which he distilled into the short articles available on jstor etc, but I'd refer you to it if you want more details. As I've said, I don't really have much else to add on Nri since it's not central to the rest of the discussion.

ezeagu: Since this relates directly, what then is your reasoning for disbelieving Christopher Ehrets claim that "the kings of the Igala claimed descent from the Nri of Igbo-Ukwu, and they continued to be enthroned by Nri ritual experts right down to the early twentieth century."?

This is not the only person that claims Nri-Igala coronations by the way.

I want to answer your questions but I also want to move on from this discussion because I think I've covered the topic in as much detail as I know.

The Ehret quote is what kicked off the discussion. Both Physics and I found his claim strange because it's a reversal of the known records on the topic from the colonial era. Nri informants at that time claimed that the Nri government/ritual system was derived from the Igala region. Again, this is what the Nri people said to anthropologists in the early 20th century (not just to Jeffreys, but JS Boston and other field anthropologists doing government research). It is not what the anthropologists thought or interpreted; it's the claim the Nri people made at the time. They could have had lots of reasons for doing so: perhaps it was another example of the prestige-by-association tactic practiced by other groups. Perhaps it was the truth, or perhaps it was a mix of traditions. We can't say for sure. What we know is that in the early 20th century, the Nri residents interviewed believed that their mythical ancestor came from Igala country. I don't think this is too controversial a claim since it is in virtually everything you read about the area at that time. In the early 21st century, it's a politically unpalatable claim, but it can't be ignored for that reason alone.

I've never encountered Ehret's claim that the Igala kings were from Nri and were crowned by Nri ritual experts in the 20th century in the historical record (until the claims of Onwuejeogwu and Afigbo etc, which I'll discuss shortly). It's important to give the historical order of the claims of origins, because as I've said, we see shifting claims of ancient pedigrees all over Africa in oral history, and they tend to reflect current political needs and not the facts about the past. It's a well-explored issue in West-Central Africa, we have the same issues with Oyo's Nupe and Borgu ancestry etc. It's hard to give details without going off the point but we can have this discussion separately if you want. If tomorrow, the Tiv claim to be ancestors of the Ijo and have kept that knowledge secret of thousands of years, we couldn't ignore the claim outright but we'd have to look at the known historical record and consider why they might make such a claim. I hope the Ijo and Tiv can forgive the analogy.

Here's the timeline as I know it. Michael Onwuejeogwu and his peers in the late 1960s into the 1970s started popularizing an ancient pedigree of Nri after the Igbo-Ukwu finds were dated by Thurston Shaw to 900-1000 AD period (not without some controversy, by the way, but they're generally accepted dates now and I don't want to go off another tangent). Shaw suggested Nri as a source of the culture that made the bronzes, the theory gained some popularity--perhaps because of the changing political prestige needs of the era?--and here we are today. Likewise, other claims about the involvement of Nri specialists in the coronation of Benin kings appeared, which also seems unsupported in the records. If you've got some records or information showing that the attah of Igala claimed Nri descent or was enthroned by Nri specialists that predate this period of myth reorganization during the 1970s, please share it. I've said repeatedly that Nri may ultimately prove to be the source of Igbo-Ukwu--that should be clear enough from my early posts. My point was the Nri earlier claimed to be of Igala ancestry, and they currently use some items of allegedly Igala design in their regalia, so they don't seem to be the most likely source to me. Nwaezeigwe points out that there are separate and indigenous groups in the area (which is obvious from the Eri myth in any version) and suggests that they might be connected to the Igbo-Ukwu producers. That makes sense. I suggested the Oka groups from my non-specialist point of view, which you seem to agree with now.

Is there evidence of Igbo interaction with Igala? Definitely. Most scholars today assume that the ikenga personal shrines to success you alluded to earlier were adopted from Igbo areas into Igala ones (as okega), Benin areas (as ikegobo), Urhobo (as ivri) etc. Some people see this as the mark of this Nri influence. Ikenga and the ideas around masculinity and achievement it represents are almost certainly derived from Igbo inspiration, but I would find it hard to associate this specifically with Nri, since ikenga and their focus on valour, warfare, headhunting and individual glory are completely opposed to all these claims of the Nri role as peaceful priest-kings with no armies etc. Ikenga are also a general Igbo cultural feature and aren't specifically linked to Nri in any way, as far as I'm aware. Much like Igbo-Ukwu, I think Ikenga has been conflated with Nri.

I think I addressed your other points in detail earlier.

You're confusing the myth. The myth is that Eri came down to the Anambra river and had children, his second son Nri (or Menri) moved away to establish an ideal community. It was on his journey that Chukwu taught the starving Nri the ritual. That's another funny thing about this discussion, the kingship itself is claimed to have began with Nri (or Nri Ifikuanim), not his father Eri. Nri was allegedly the (half) brother of Onoja who supposedly founded a dynasty in Igala land. Source? Onwuejeogwu, from the Keith ray source you provided.

I think you missed this point in my post. The myth that credits the planting of heads/first yams to Eri--not Nri--is an alternative version recorded by Onwuejeogwu. The link to the citation is underneath the quote in my previous post. I'm not confused and I doubt Onwuejeogwu is either; it's yet another example of how inconsistent myths are and why they shouldn't be relied on as an exact history. They tell us more about general ideals (the coming of agriculture and establishment of rituals) than specific people and personalities (Eri, Nri etc. who may or may not have existed). There are several versions, just as there are several interpretations for the ichi marks.

Also--you misrepresented Nwaezeigwe on the Igala issue. He obviously believes that the current Nri lineage is from the Igala area (whether from the attah's line etc is another issue) and says that several times during the paper. He does identify an indigenous Umudiana group as the earliest settlers. I've discussed earlier on in this thread how helpful that information is. Igala origins at Nri are, once again, not my theory or anyone else's--they are the records we have from colonial interviews with residents of Nri.

I was traveling during the week when I was responding to this and when I wrote this yesterday but I have a little more access to materials on these issues now that I'm at home. Again, I don't know what else there is to add to the debate (perhaps you have sources on the Nri origin of the Igala attahship that predate Onwuejeogwu?) but I hope I've been clear and that pointing to the sources of people who know more than I do about Nri society has been helpful to readers.

"Just when I thought I was out, they.keep.pulling.me.back.in!"

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=UPw-3e_pzqU&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DUPw-3e_pzqU

I've got some other stuff I want to talk about that's more related to the thread topic ("Maps of Kingdoms, Peoples, States and Cities in Africa Through Time" ) but first, a thorough (hopefully final?) response to the Nri questions. This will be a long one:

ezeagu: Okay, so, there are no four ruling families of Nri, that would mean that the various exogamous lineages in the Umunri communities are non-existant. Perhaps MDW Jeffreys was mistaking Igala for Igbo.

Like the old cliche goes, you're entitled to your own beliefs but not your own facts. Jeffreys wrote dozens of articles on the Nri religion, political system, symbolism etc. He specifically says there are four ruling families (reduced to three) and goes into long, explicit anthropological detail about the coronation ceremonies for an eze Nri. Why would someone who's spent much more time than us (I'm assuming you've studied Nri using Jeffreys' materials) studying this system firsthand all of a sudden mistake Igala for Igbo? If he doesn't name the families to your satisfaction, that's an approrpiate criticism, but the man was writing about what he saw and in a fair amount of detail as well. We can't discount that just because it doesn't fit conveniently into someone's beliefs. We have to have a reason to disbelieve or reinterpret eyewitness accounts. So far you haven't provided one. This is a minor point to me. It only suggests one possible point of connection between Igala and Nri. In fact, there are numerous of other links that are much harder to dispute.

Jeffreys and other historians and anthropologists (including Dr. Nwaezeigwe of UNN) have concluded that Nri culture has a strong Igala element. That upsets the folk mythology and fantastic village legends that some people hold dear, but it's important to give the evidence in detail so there's a sufficient amount of proof for casual readers to follow the argument:

The Nri "royal" families

Jeffreys article is clear enough for anyone who can read it. For anyone who doesn't have access, I'll quote some excerpts and you can make up your own minds:

"the king is chosen from three (originally four), royal families, by the ancestral spirits. The candidate is usually a youngest son ... Both his parents must be dead ... He discards his ordinary clothes and may thereafter wear only white or blue Igala ones (as does his wife) ... the Umundri tradition is that they come from the ruling stock of the Igala ..."

He adds some speculation about Nri links to other Nigerian cultures, which perhaps is the source of anxiety about this relatively straightforward concept on Nairaland. The statements above are detailed and clear enough for anyone to read and decide what you will. Jeffreys isn't done though; he wrote even more detailed descriptions about the coronation ceremony of Nri, the patterns of ichi markings (his illustrations are still the most consistently cited sources), and other invaluable cultural data. Again, he's not a perfect source. Few are. He may be completely wrong about the Igala ancestry in Nri; he's likely to be wrong about his Egyptian suggestions, for instance. The difference is that he's only reporting what the Nri told him about their Igala ancestry, not his personal opinion. He is speculating on his own about Egyptian ancestry and other fanciful theories later. The difference should be clear. I try to make it plain all the time in my posts too.

The Nri are not dead, it was 1930 so these families couldn't have just disappeared. You can get the lineages from Onwuejeogwu, or you can just search online.

I don't remember asking for the lineages or whether these families had disappeared. Do you own Onwuejeogwu's books? I can direct you to some passages that would tell you clearly that Eri met an indigenous population in the 'Nri' area, suggesting that he was a settler. We'll come back to this point later.

The UNN write up is politics.

This is, sadly, too weak a response for me to pass up. You may need to reread Dr. Nwaezeigwe's paper. It's clearly-written, not overly academic and presents very convincing evidence that the current Nri system (dynasty?) is of Igala ancestry. Here's a link to the full thing and, again, some useful quotes for those who care:

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/19709056/630751156/name/THE+POLITICS+OF+IGBO+ORIGIN+AND+CULTURE.pdf

In recent times, quite a number of writings on the subject of Igbo origins have emerged on the scene of historical scholarship, most of them by non-scholars and non-historian scholars. They wear the garb of history but are in their forms, structures and analysis unhistorical, lacking in depth, proven sources, critical analyses and unbiased judgment. They fundamentally aim at elevating one group in the course of Igbo history and cultural evolution at the expense of the others and against the rules of historical writings, which subsequently gravitates into a riotous contest of primacy in the body history and cultural evolution of the Igbo.

Thus, instead of teaming up to develop a unifying ground for the study and understanding of the Igbo past, these people engage on building false historical castles on a foundation of mythological fallacies and fables engrained in prejudices and uncanny sentiments. The works of the likes of Michael Angulu Onwuejeogwu, an Ibusa-born anthropologist of Nri extraction, Emmanuel Ifesieh of Oraeri, I.C.K. Anadi also of Oraeri; and B.I.O Odinanwa of Ikenga-Nri; the Enuguwu-Agidi-born S.O.N. Okafor; C.M. Ezekwugo of Nnokwa, then of the philosophy of life fame; and of recent, Ambrose Nnalue Okonkwo of Agukwu-Nri; F.C. Idigo of Aguleri; Charles Ujah of Arochkwu, Hyacinth Ugwu Ezema of Edem-Nsukka; and the most sensational of all, Cathrine Acholonu-Ulumba; are all guilty of building the castle of Igbo history and culture on a foundation of false historical precepts, fabricated myths and fables and unproven sources ...Eri, definitely an Igala warrior, is said to have founded the present Igbezunu village of Ikenga quarters while the other half, Umunkete was founded by the followers of Onoja Oboni, another Igala warrior who invaded Aguleri many years after Eri ...

Whether the artifacts beneath the present Igbo-Ukwu town were used by their ancestors or not, is immaterial at this pint of our inquiry. The commanding fact is that, unlike the Oraeri and their Nri and Umunri kinsmen who, are engaged in a perennial conflict of identity between their Igala origin and their Igbo identity, the Igbo-Ukwu are primordially of Igbo origins.

Anyone who's interested in this topic should really read the paper. Thanks again to Physics for providing the title since I wasn't aware of it before then. As I said earlier, the professor is in agreement with the views of other writers I've read on this issue.

MDW Jeffreys opinion is that 'yam furrows' is a taunt by non-mburuichi (or "ichi" as it was called) which was not accepted by the mburuichi.

I'm glad to see you're doing your own research and quoting Jeffreys' views now. I'm assuming you still think he confuses Igala and Nri though? In any case, I cited the dispute between the interpretation of ichi as an example of how easily one version of mythical history can suppress other traditions. Many people believe that the marks represent the rays of the sun. Jeffreys agrees with this, but as diligent scholars, he and Yeatman do us the great favor of recording alternative traditions. Let's quote again:

Ms. Yeatman reported that one day there were a number of men in the Mission compound, some with ichi and some without. She asked if these designs had any meaning. Peter of Amobia stated that the top lines of the scarification represented the moon and the second lot represented the sun ... what the patterns on the cheeks meant was forgotten ... She said, "I am told that the long lines on the cheeks represent farming furrows (ogba ubi). And Ndri replied, "Not at all. We cut our faces before we saw the yam..."

Yeatman presents an interview, supplemented by information she's heard before, about the meaning of various ichi. The sun, moon and farming furrows aren't contradictory claims; the sun and the moon are on the forehead while the cheeks represent the rows of yams planted, which seems quite logical. The ndiichi themselves had forgotten the meaning but reject the idea that they represent rows of yams. Perhaps they're embarrassed by this in the modernizing 20th century? Perhaps they have another secret meaning they couldn't share with the missionary? We don't know. What we do now is that the footnote shows that she got the term from Nwora, an Nri village man who had these ichi marks. Jeffreys interpreted this as a taunt, as did some of the other men; whether they're right is hard to say since the men claim to have forgotten the meaning of the other marks. I'm speculating here (how can I say this more clearly, I wonder) but I think it makes sense that both interpretations are correct and represent the ritual logic of agriculture: the sun shines on crops to make them grow, and yam and cocoyam were the staple foods of the Nri culture (after a certain point). We'll see some evidence for why I'm suggesting this a little later.

Eri was not the one that planted his son and daughters heads, it was his son Nri.

That depends who you believe. Myths evolve and have multiple versions--the reasons for that is most of the fun of cultural research. Jeffreys says it was Nri who planted his children's heads to grow the first yams. Fine. Onwuejeogwu on the other hand--who you seem to trust more--quite clearly identifies Eri as the founder, as I wrote in that post. You don't have to take my word for it; Onwuejeogwu's work is unavailable online but here's a book that quotes him. By the way, his quote also suggests quite clearly that Eri (if he was real or a myth, we don't know) settled among a pre-existing population and was not part of the autochthonous residents of the era:

"The father of Nri was Eri. No one knows where he came from. Tradition (odinani) says he came from God (Chukwu). He was a great man sent by God to rule all the people of Anambra. Before he came to the Anambra all the people were living in scattered huts. They had no kings ... When he came there was no food for the people. He prayed to God to send food for the people. God demanded that he should sacrifice his first son and daughter to him. He did the sacrifice and buried his children ... That is why the first son and daughter of Eze Nri after his coronation have ichi marks made on their faces ... Eri brought yam and all food. The earth produces it.

The 'ogba ube' or 'farm furrows' interpretation for some ichi marks on the cheeks is obviously strengthened by this version of the myth. Either side is not ultimately what's important for this discussion though; the point is that there are multiple interpretations for a phenomenon and you have to listen to every story and weigh their claims carefully.

From: http://books.google.com/books?id=9hhmzVrYPHAC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=eri+nri+yam&source=bl&ots=n1q_wwd5cc&sig=TtQbeDuRzgplQq_NOgSCol0XXnI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0EqCUavOKKHliALEuYG4Dw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=eri%20nri%20yam&f

One more note: every single one of the myths about Eri/Nri etc I've cited refer to the active participation of the Awka/Oka smithing tradition we talked about earlier in "making the earth", and some even assume that the Oka smiths were here first. Jeffreys himself says the Oka artists were responsible for making the ichi marks in the past, which I'd forgotten that he mentioned. These signs point to the Oka area as a major site of early Igbo cultural development. I'll restate my speculation that they would be a very useful guide in where to look for the production of Igbo-Ukwu metalworking when future archaeologists and historians have the funds for all that. We see this same connection between metalworking, art production and ritual/political structures all over the related Nigerian cultures and in much of Africa.

Okay, on to the next one.

The OP wanted to discuss maps, states and societies in early Africa, and I thought it would be a good time to introduce Suzanne Preston Blier's AfricaMap project. Professor Blier is a Harvard art historian that specializes in West Africa, particularly Ife and Dahomey (she's written about mudbrick architecture and Benin as well though). She is a brilliant woman that has done some rewarding and revolutionary analysis of Nigerian art history. My favorite of her essays is thankfully online: http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/artbulletin/Art%20Bulletin%20Vol%2067%20No%203%20Blier.pdf . She discusses the links between metalworking, art production and title holding in Ife society in that paper, which is relevant to the discussion above.

I bring her up because she's expected to publish her latest book on the architectural plan of Ile-Ife this summer. Here's why it's so important: she used GPS mapping technology to demonstrate that the layout of Ife/Ufe was planned to resemble a turtle, an old symbol of wisdom, and that this layout was meant to encode their society's most important spiritual and political beliefs. These are groundbreaking interpretations of what's called material culture: the physical things that people built, made and left behind, not only the myths and legends that we now use to explain the issues we don't understand. The quote below is a very good summary of her work. When the book is out, maybe I'll come back and post some maps from it:

Suzanne Preston Blier, a professor at Harvard University, said not all landscapes are enchanted in the ancient Yoruban city of Ife in southwestern Nigeria, but many are. Combining landscape architecture with a rich cosmological system, the Yoruban kings and Ifa priestly castes laid out Ife as a giant turtle, with criss-crossing pathways embedded with deep cultural and religious meaning. Interestingly, much of this has been unknown to the outside world, until Blier and others at Harvard created AfricaMap, an amazing open-source geospatial mapping Web site, to unearth the patterns underneath the buildings and vegetation. She said “technology may actually be key to uncovering the past.”

[b]Some scholars put the earliest settlements at Ife at 350 BCE, with the kingdom reaching its peak as an artistic and cultural center around 1300AD. Arriving in the area, Blier said she was “stunned by the landscape,” and the “amazing system of spatial engagement, buildings, and ritual pathways” that form the landscape of the city. The topography is like a “bolder hat,” with a palace and temple in the middle, and then a set of hills circling. The lowlands are continually covered in rain, providing fertile soils. Nowadays, the city is 50/50 Muslim and Christian. She said this “hybridity” is also reflected in the landscapes, which mixes baobab trees from the savannah with palm trees from the south.

The archeological elements of Ife follow closely the current city. Yoruban cities were “centrally planned.” Ife’s palace was an “ancient center, with a garden environment.” The back of the palace was a historic forest used to grow herbs and medicinal plants. Buildings formed a square courtyard in the center where rainwater was collected. In ancient Yoruban culture, when people died, they were buried in their living or bedrooms. She discussed how this was important in the distinction between interior and exterior spaces.

Yoruban mythology centers around two primary figures: Obatala and Odudua. Obatala was sent down from the heavens (on a chain or boat) to create earth, but instead got drunk on palm wine. So the supreme god sent down his younger brother who managed to finish the job. As a result, Obatala is considered the sky god, and is associated with ritual power, while Odudua is associated with earth, and earthly political power. “These are the cosmological heroes,” but they also stand for “the division of Ife and different dynastic rulers.” Obatala is connected with the first dynasty, while Odudua is with the second. Along with sky and earth, there is light, which is represented in the mica Yoruban kings where in their crowns. Mica is spread throughout the soil in Ife so “when it rains, the pathways become glittery and enchanged landscapes, powered by light.”[/b]

Unearthing the city’s turtle shape via AfricaMap, Blier found that each of the four main gods in Yoruban religion had different spaces associated with different roles, which “coincide with Ife divination.” There were also divisions according to family and a ward system that follows those lines. Each have different pathways. She emphasized the “primacy of pathways” and their role in preserving “time – past, present, and future.” Also, chiefly compounds with old and new dynastic leaders have specific locations around the palace, with guaranteed “viewsheds” that allow the priestly caste to “keep the king in view and in check.” The viewsheds actually represent the political landscape as well.

From: http://dirt.asla.org/2011/09/23/the-primacy-of-pathways/

A beautiful, little-known indigenous tradition of architecture and urban design that hasn't been understood for centuries became clear because she approached the issue with modern tools, an open mind, respect for cultural traditions but also an understanding of how to evaluate and interpret mythology. I think it teaches anyone interested in culture and history something profound. The reason I stick around to write stuff like this on the Internet is because I really hope there's some bright Nigerian boy or girl who is inspired to study history, anthropology or archaeology reading this sometime in the future. I'd want them to be inspired and to contribute to the next set of groundbreaking scholarship on the world-class, connected cultural treasures we have in Nigeria. I also hope it's helpful for anyone interested in the topic.

Physics--there are also some interesting correlations in the concept of the four cardinal points and their similarities, which you've alluded to in some old posts. You were definitely on to something, in my opinion.

Dr. Blier's upcoming book is called "Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power and Identity circa 1300: http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9781107021662

The AfricaMap project can be found here: http://worldmap.harvard.edu/africamap/

shymexx: Why are some people so sensitive and innately addicted to whining?

Terracotta, don't let them distract you...

You're winning the debate against both PhysicsQED and Ezeagu...

Hey--no troll-feeding allowed here. There are other threads in this zoo for that.

This isn't a debate with Physics in my mind. It's a discussion since he's one of the few posters (Katsumoto, ChinyenyeN and Jarus are others) that are civil and back up their points with evidence. You might be too but you like the e-brawling too much

I'd tell other people to just skip the discussion if there's too much reading or it's too boring or whatever. I skip past stuff on here all the time. I wish I had the same free time as some of the people on here.

Omorotionmwan: I like Sansa precisely because she is not the stereotypical 'strong tomboy badass' female heroine.
I love Arya, but you have to admit she is a walking, talking stereotype. Femininity is not bad, neither is masculinity absolutely good.
I love sword wielding heroines as much as the next person, but the focus on this type of heroine seems to suggest that femininity is bad and that a woman can only be strong by taking on stereotypically male roles and attittudes.
There is strength in being active,but I also think it takes strength of character to remain passive.
I still say it: Do you think Arya would have survived at Kings Landing as long as Sansa has?

You're right. Arya's too much of a tomboy stereotype sometimes. Maybe she'll end up being like Brienne (I'm guessing these two meet at some point) and it'll make sense because she's grown up under these circumstances. Your last point misses something too, though. How long could Sansa have passed for a boy page or summoned the courage to help Jaqen the faceless man? They've both survived by playing up their talents, but I think Arya had it rougher. She went from Ikoyi to Ajengule; Sansa just took a long drive to a new house in Lekki.

The most interesting siblings have gone through the biggest role reversals to me. Jon Snow went from cop to outlaw; Arya from heiress to house girl. Robb and Sansa are the ones still playing dress up in castles. They need a hot dose of harsh reality.

I had a feeling this might turn into an Nri-focused discussion. I don't have anything else to add on this so I'll be moving on to other topics if/when Physics is available. This side conversation about Nri is speculative. I thought that was clear but maybe you missed it. I've said several times that if you're happy with the current popular beliefs about Nri, I think that's fine. I'm not an Nri specialist and I don't claim any secret knowledge about its history. Physics posted an excellent paper earlier in the thread by a Professor Nwankwo Nwaezeigwe of UNN. I'd never heard of the article before but it raises many of the same points I'm making here in explaining why there are problems with the Nri = Igbo-Ukwu theory. Have you read this paper?

ezeagu: Jeffreys goes on to link Igbo culture with Nile-valley civilisations through similarity in sun-veneration and sun-cults. Relying on an article from the 1930s isn't advisable. There are major errors throughout the writing, Jeffreys claims Chukwu to be a sun-god, Jeffreys claims that the Nri people are responsible for the majority of the Igbo culture, and then there's the claim that the Igala, Edo, Igbo, etc have a uniform culture based on cultural/ritual similarities. Jeffreys is an interesting source and useful for names, but it isn't something to rely on.

Another point I thought I'd made several times: We have to be careful about sources and over-relying on any of them until they've been rigorously tested and vetted by trained historians and anthropologists. I've written enough on here about my distrust of people who link every culture in West Africa to Egypt, so obviously I'd disagree with Jeffreys on that interpretation. As an eyewitness/first person source on Nri traditions in the 1930s on the other hand, I'd say Jeffreys is more accurate than not. However you choose to interprete him, he clearly says there are four royal families (reduced to three) that produce the Nri titleholder.

The actual "royal families" being referenced in that 1935 article are either the four quarters of Agukwu-Nri, or the communities of Umunri. Since he did not explain or give a name for these "four (or three) royal families" then no one can say for sure what this actually meant.

It seems clear enough to me. Four royal families, now reduced to three.

There is also a lack of other sources for these supposed royal families (if this isn't in reference to the Umunri communities), and there are further question like from what Umunri community do these families hail? What is their origin? What is their relation to the rest of the Umunri lineage?

Yes. There are lots of questions. It's why this is difficult but rewarding to think about and a rich topic for speculation.

On the other hand you could say the Umunri are the royal lineage and that the various communities are the sources for kingship, but to say "Nri rotated its kingship around four noble families, just like the Idah kingship" is not true, because there's no evidence of this ever happening.

That's an argument you should have with the original source. I wasn't there, you weren't there but Jeffrey's was. You say he's mistaken and that's fine if you have some proof--perhaps contrary evidence from another observer during that same time period, or evidence that he lied, deliberately manipulated what he was told etc. Do you? If not, I'd go with his own words about what he saw in the early 1930s in Nri. Rotational 'kingships' are hereditary, even though they don't pass directly from father to son. It's a common system in West Africa. The heir is chosen through divination in many (I'd guess a majority) of West African 'monarchies'. Primogeniture or first-son inheritance as in Benin and perhaps Oyo and Dahomey is rarer and innovative where it's found.

Nri kings were solely chosen through the consultation of ancestral spirits, as I'm sure is somewhat the case of Igala kingship, to a lesser extent, but in no way the same. What I meant by 'no hereditary kingship' was that there is no evidence that kingship was passed from father to son in Nri communities, or even close relatives, while that is often the case in Igala society.

See above.

'Historical sociological development' is referring to the fact that there is no major sun-cult among the Igala. Most of the information in that paragraph is introductory information on Nri. Jeffreys himself wrote an article in 1951 on Ichi (in which Chukwu turned from a sun-god in his 1935 article to a sky-being) and noted the names for the sections of the scarifications which included the Igbo names onwa and anwu, 'moon' and 'sun'. According to him, the scarification represented the bearing of the moon and the sun on initiated Umunri mburuichi's heads, and then what followed was more Nile-valley propaganda. bla bla.

See above on my above of the Nile Valley stuff. I already noted the solar interpretation of ichi. Keith Ray mentions the agriculture-inspired interpretation in the essay I mentioned earlier: http://books.google.com/books?id=Pv48AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=ichi+marks+agriculture+eri&source=bl&ots=t9aAmkbfCI&sig=G09swCrXEY0Uo0tqTacPJJXrWhI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tz-AUfuUGMiJiwL0g4CQBA&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=ichi%20marks%20agriculture%20eri&f=false

He quotes a missionary's interview with a native-born Nri woman who says the marks are also called "ogba ubi" (farming furrows) and then elaborates on the story about Eri planting the heads of his first-born children to grow the first yams, as mentioned above. Just an example of how a common belief or interpretation can have alternative explanations.

This can be applied to any history. It's just speculation. What we have now is evidence, and the evidence points to Nri or a pre-Nri people.

That's true. You've got me there. it should be clear now that I am speculating--that's how the discussion with Physics got started in the first place. The point is that you can't look at the Igbo-Ukwu markings, compare them to later/current Nri markings and call it a day. Some Oyo body markings are probably from Nupe and Borgu; if you know about the history of intermixture/conquest in that region, it makes perfect sense. The Nupe currently say they adopted some markings (the ' cat's whiskers' marks on some Ife and Benin artworks) from Yagba, their Yoruba-speaking neighbors. Also a logical conclusion if you understand their history. Marks are very helpful for tracing genealogies but they also have a history of development and change--they're worn by people, so they're not static. When Nigerians lived in Ghana in the 1960s, some of them gave their children Ghanaian marks as a sign of social integration in their new community. Hope the gist is clear.

Posting here can be a pain when you're not using a keyboard. I've said all i have to say on this issue though. On to something else.

ekt_bear: Grey worm is my nig

I like the plot but It was a little predictable to make the slave army so obvious. I like the subtle ways in which their world mirrors our's but its not good to guess who the slaves would be before the helmet came off.

I liked the kingslayer's backstory and motive. No good or evil, just lighter and darker shades of grey.

Also interested in where The Lord of Light cult is headed, and the scheme whorin' Tyrion will come up with to get out of his father's plan.

pleep: The only people who use can their native language for all the concepts they know are usually stark illiterate and/or very old. The fact that they are uneducated makes language mastery impossible because that cannot truly be done without knowlege of writing.

That seems unlikely. It's too broad a generalization since there are Yoruba newspapers, radio shows, movies and so on (even novels, though they're less common now) that assume and maintain fluency in the language. There are also university courses in Yoruba that go beyond teaching the functional vocabulary people might learn at home and go deeper into poetry, interpretstion etc.That's the example I'm most familiar with but I wouldn't be surprised if there are others in Nigeria.

ezeagu: The Nri kingdom is not a dynasty. It is not a hereditary kingship, in fact it's hardly a kingship at all, at least, in the Igala sense. Nri kings are chosen through a ritual process from supposedly random Nri families, the member of such a family would have had to be an Ozo title holder (priest-like member of a council for the Eze Nri, another feature of Nri organisation that is markedly Igbo). This whole process is already completely different from the more centralised Idah kingship which is rotated around four branches of a royal clan.

You've made some claims that are wrong or that aren't consistent with historical records.

1) I'm not particularly wedded to the term 'dynasty'--as you should be able to tell from my earlier posts, I'm a skeptic when it comes to royal lineages and claims of ancient genealogies--but the word is consistently used by other observers to describe the Nri political lineage. You can see an essay by Keith Ray in the book "Interpretive Archeology" for several examples, but a Google search would produce many more. I agree that it might be misleading, though.

2) You're wrong in claiming that Nri is not a hereditary kingship and demonstrates differences from the Idah system. Nri rotated its kingship around four noble families, just like the Idah kingship. We are fortunate enough to know this because MDW Jeffreys wrote his account of the Nri system in his article "The Divine Umundri King" in 1935. Jeffreys is an important early writer on Igbo culture. You should try to read this article if you haven't already.

The king of Nri held no military power, it was almost a completely religious role. Completely opposite to Igala kingship. For lack of a better example, the role of Eze Nri is similar to that of the Dalai Llama. The transliteration of 'Eze' along with generalisation of Igbo cultures has led to some misunderstandings. The state religion of Nri was sun veneration, which I do not believe follows Igala historical sociological development. Linguistic terms for religious and political structure also bear faint similarity with the Igala, if we are talking about something similar to the scale of Benin-Ife relationship, then it's a very loose connection because Eri, Nri, Ozo, etc are all easily translatable into modern Igbo, there are no significant Igala words for political/religious things, such as how we know Ikenga/Okega among the Igala.

Since you don't provide any sources or references for this speculation (is this oral history? Website copy? Distilled from Onwuejeogwu's works?), there's no way for me to critically assess them and no real benefit I can see in speculating on how it relates to Igala 'historical sociological development' (I think you mean 'religion' here). "Sun veneration" is general enough to be applicable to many non-Judeo-Christian religions, for obvious reasons. If you're referring to ichi scarification as depicting rays of the sun/anyawu, there's also a suggestion that the scarification represent the hoeing of the earth a farmer does to plant yams. This may well be linked to Eri's role as someone who planted the heads of his children from which the first yams grew, according to the myth I remember. I don't know enough to argue for either interpretation. I'm just pointing them out.

On to Igbo-Ukwu. It's classification as an Nri cultural site is not as lazily placed as is thought. The artefacts origins hint to Nri culture with much stronger links than just similarity in animal symbolism. Among Igbo-Ukwu animal figures were human figures fashioned with Nri Ichi scarifications on their foreheads, temples, and cheeks; many of these scarifications were used by different Nri clans until the start of the last century as allegiance to the sun cult of Nri and followed precise styles depending on the community.

The image below is a sketch of some of the faces found on the metal works, I do not know the origin of this image, but the faces match the faces of the artefacts from Igbo-Ukwu. You can clearly see sun-imagery in the scarification. They are all similar to scarifications borne by different Umunri communities, particularly the middle figure (e) is most similar to that on photographed Nri people from the early 20th century, below this image is an example.

I didn't say the classification of Igbo-Ukwu as part of the Nri culture area was lazy. I don't want to imply it either. You'll see in my post that I say several times that the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes may very well be Nri productions. I'm not a specialist in this field and I'd defer to them (after I've examined the evidence with my own skepticism and sources). The fact that some Nri figures bear scarifications that are currently associated with ichi is interesting but inconclusive. You can't rely solely on contemporary evidence to explain past patterns and behavior. What if the contemporary ichi were adopted to imitate whatever culture/people that created Igbo-Ukwu? What if the ichi cicatrizations have evolved over time to mean something completely different by the time they enter the verifiable historical record? That sort of cross-fertilization has definitely happened in other contexts in Nigeria and beyond. We can't divine answers easily just by looking at the depiction of something today and extrapolating vast histories from a glance. .

I'm familiar with the images you quoted. It is reproduced in the Keith Ray essay I mentioned earlier. You can see it for yourself if you do a Google Books search.

I wrote about ichi/ichie etc in this thread a few years ago (that discussion was one of the reasons I stopped posting, actually): https://www.nairaland.com/59913/what-significance-yoruba-tribal-marks/1#1229362

I think there are some images and links to other information there.

The most telling sign of Nri influence is that the area of the rediscovered burial chamber is on a piece of Igbo Ukwu claimed to have been part of Oraeri at one point, an Umunri clan.

Another interesting but unsourced and uncertified claim. How long was it part of Oraeri? Why isn't it anymore? Etc. etc.

I'm also confused as what modern Nri bronze items are of Igala design.

I'd suggest you read a few art historical essays. There should be some good material in back issues of African Arts, which isn't available for free online any longer unfortunately. I'll provide references when I have some time.

Another word of caution--A lot of the really interesting material on these issues will not be found online or through Google searches. You'll have to buy a ton of books and read a variety of journal articles if you're interested in getting a more rigorous analysis than village myths and old wives' tales.

I've said enough about Igbo-Ukwu and Nri for now though. It's part of the the thread and (to me) it's a logical relative of the other Niger Valley bronze crafting centers (Ife, Benin, Nupe, Ijebu, Igala, the 'Lower Niger Bronze Industry' in the Urhobo/Niger Delta etc) but I didn't post here to focus on it. There are clear common threads to all of these areas, along with differences, like the composition/source of metal, styles, symbolic emphasis etc. Each culture group is distinct and original in its interpretation; for example, Benin and Ife are different in their naturalism, composition, subject matter etc even if we accept a link between the two schools. They developed strikingly different art traditions and cultures despite acknowledged common roots.

What interests me (and hopefully those reading) is their common use of copper alloys to depict the most sacred/important political, ritual, military and possibly economic/diplomatic figures of their times. They also show that inter-ethnic exchange in the Nigerian region probably precedes colonization and enriched each group technically, politically and probably financially. As the Ogboni society says about its brass emblems, brass doesn't corrode or rust, and in many ways it's the most permanent record we have precolonial Nigerian cultures and societies that we would only know through half-remembered myths and fables. Lots more to talk about and it's very hard to write short posts about complicated issues but I'll end it here for now.

Edits: I wrote this in a hurry late yesterday. Should be a little more clear/ cleaned up now.

PhysicsQED: Interesting post above Terracotta. However, I see a lot of things embedded in the above post that strike me as not being accurate, so I'll have to respond at even more length tomorrow or the next day. There are so many things in your response that I would have to give detailed responses to that I can already guarantee that my response will be pretty long, and will probably have to be split into parts.

I'd like to see your responses. If it's too detailed to fit in here, let me know and you can email it. I would have elaborated much more on sources and ideas in my post but it wouldn't fit this conversational tone too well.

And on the Bondarenko paper, I have already read it - I've read all of his papers that are available online in English, so I won't need to re-read that. It's an interesting paper, although I disagree with several of his conclusions and interpretations and I'll comment on that when I comment on the rest of that same post of yours (I'm assuming you posted it because you wanted my opinion on the contents/conclusions of the authors).

I thought you would have already seen it, but it cites a variety of sources on the origins and development of Benin that directly contradict the current Oba's preferred narrative (re: Ekaladerhan etc). Some of these sources are collected from older Benin royal sources in the early part of the 20th century who presumably would have known of Oba Akenzua II's version if it were current/believed at that time (I recognize of course that it might have been omitted for other reasons, but I think it's logical to ask about the first time the story became widely known). The archaeological evidence also offers clues and suggestions re: the "phantom capital" called Udo that also don't match current royal myths of origin at Benin. I say all this because I think it's a useful example of the political/'court' manipulation (perhaps 'interpretation' is a less loaded word) of heritage. I am not singling out Benin in this regard, since the current court myths at Ife, Oyo, Ijebu (and to lesser extent Ilesha, Ado, Lagos etc.) show signs of similar distortion and for many of the same likely reasons.

FYI, I made some edits to my previous posts to clarify points that I glossed over earlier.

Thanks for the photos. Jerryile/Sharubutu--what does Oboni mean in Igala? How would you translate it?

Alright. I want to respond in detail but I also want to keep this shorter than my other posts so let me know if you think I'm skipping/glossing over points. I had some issues quoting the post so I've had to edit extensively.

As for Oyo and Benin both claiming Ijebu was tributary, I'm not sure the claims of conquest/tribute are really from around the same time or that there's any contradiction there. The Benin claim is that the conquest and tributary status was from Oba Ozolua's reign to some time afterward, and this period of time afterward when Benin had authority or considered Ijebu as tributary could have been only a century or less. Benin would obviously have lost any kind of influence over Ijebu as Benin's power declined in the late 17th century. So Oyo, which was enjoying a period of greater prominence/power around this same time (late 17th century), could certainly have made Ijebu a tributary kingdom after Benin's loss of influence there. And of course, after Oyo's decline, Ijebu could once again have re-asserted or regained its status as being tributary to nobody.

Again, I don't know the certain answers to these issues. If you think the conventional explanations are factual/satisfactory, i dont have a problem with that. Is it possible that great Benin warriors conquered Ijebu, retreated in a period of decline, and were replaced by great Oyo warriors who also skulked off when their military prowess was waning? Yes. It's entirely possible and that's the way various historians present the timeline right now. My position of skepticism is to ask a) what someone has to gain by their claims and b) how are these claims validated by outside/third-party records? Duarte Pacheco Pierera wrote the earliest account of a visit to Ijebu in 1502 and makes no mention of a Benin influence. Ijebu oral traditions do not recongize either group's influence. Compare this with Lagos or Onitsha, re: Benin or Dahomey and Nupe/Borgu re: Oyo. Pierera was accurate in his ethnic catalogue of the area (from Lagos to Urhobo to Ijo etc). Why not mention this issue? Perhaps he missed the reign of Ozolua by a few years (this would fall into the 16th century time frame you propose) or perhaps the Benin court made an exaggerated claim to their Portuguese trading partners to bolster their assumed sphere of influence. The Danish source you quoted already shows signs of this by claiming Benin's limits reach the Gambia. It's not impossible either, but it's unlikely for a number of reasons I won't go into here. However, you can absolutely see the utility of such claims in a trading relationship.

I definitely agree that empires do exaggerate their territorial extent and power. But several of these claims about the extent of Benin's westward reach are not from Benin informants, but later informants from other groups who were making such claims on their own. In some cases it doesn't come off merely as hankering after prestige, but stating real Benin influence or authority in their areas. What makes me believe the story about the soldiers that were sent westward originally wanting to exact tribute from a place further away than Lagos (maybe they wanted to use Lagos as a war camp to branch out further west or to regroup) are

a) the Benin colony of Idole near Dahomey/Republic of Benin that the Dahomeans apparently destroyed in the early 1700s (according to that article I posted a link to) and the two settlements, "Ado" and "Ikpokia" (which are mentioned in that same article as well) which were right on the border of Dahomey/Republic of Benin with Nigeria. ("Ikpokia" (or is it "Ipokia"?) was apparently founded by people from a nearby Benin colony, and not directly by people from Benin.)

This claim cites Robin Law but I'm not aware of any Benin provenance for these two towns. I'd be open to being corrected. The name 'Ado' brings up other issues about the origins of the name Benin/"Ado"/Udo/Edo that are worth discussing in another post as well. Where do these terms come from and what might they tell us with a critical reading?

b) the report from the Portuguese missionaries in Benin in 1538 that the Oba of Benin who ruled at the time was holding the ambassadors of "Labidda" (Labadi, in the Accra area of modern day Ghana) and "Arida" (Allada/Ardra, a coastal kingdom located in the modern day Republic of Benin) as hostages. Hostage exchanges during negotiations were a common practice in some other societies elsewhere in the world in Asia and Europe, but these ambassadors might not have been held hostage merely as some form of insurance during negotiations but as real prisoners from places that the Oba at the time was not on good terms with or viewed as enemies that he planned to attack. Or the king of Benin at that time could have just have been holding them prisoner because he thought they were useful as far as providing knowledge about regions further west. Whatever the reason was, the evidence of contact further west is pretty clear from this alone.

The issue of contact isn't the dispute though. There's already evidence of the akori/aggrey bead trade and shared religious ideology that establish firm cultural relationships from what is now eastern Ghana to Benin and centered on Ife/Ufe (according to most contemporary academics). The problem is the interpretation or inspiration for the link. Other scholars (John Thornton among them in "Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World" ) cite a writer named De Sandoval as evidence that Lucumi (Yoruba) was the court language throughout this region during this period, and that political leaders in places like Allada preferred to speak it to their own language. A creative scholar could extrapolate from these points that Benin conquered all the way to Allada but imposed Yoruba as the language of court all the way down the coast. Is it possible? Absolutely. It's again not too likely in my book. The logical answer would be to consider the source mistaken or misinformed by someone who had some political stake in exaggerating the Yoruba linguistic link. People like Sandra Greene have talked about these broad generalizations and the problem of substantiating them. Ambassadors were detained at courts all the time. If this were proof of dominion over foreign entities though, then we'd have to revise a whole series of histories to reflect this. We'd have to accept that 1970s Iran was an imperial power in America because they held American diplomats hostage there, for instance.

As for Ghana, there are Benin traditions of early migrations to Ghana, such as those mentioned by Egharevba, and the fact that what Egharevba published somewhat matches up with independent information from various other people from before and after his publications makes me suspect that there was a real connection there. But I don't know if there is any knowledge of an actual colony or tributary state in Ghana in Edo traditions that matches up with what Römer was claiming. At least I haven't come across such information.

Again, not the first time a group will claim descent or affiliation with a prestigious neighboring group. The Ewe claim to have come from Ife by way of Ketu. Keep in mind that Ife and Ketu trasitions dont claim any specific dominion or ancestry over the Ewe and the Ewe are obviously an independent language and culture group. So why would they claim this? In my opinion, for the same reasons Christian Nigerians see their roots in Israel and Muslim ones see their roots in Saudi Arabia. A few more years and we may start to unearth cultural links with China, Malaysia and other emerging economic/political powers. In the book "Making The Town" about the history of Accra, there's a long discussion about the Beninois and Lagosian origins of certain quarters in the city (now James Town) that are now 'Ga'. These people were enslaved and brought there by Portuguese merchants. They were called "Alladas" which over the years became 'Alatas'. That's now a common term for Nigerians or anyone from east of Ghana. The descendants of these people would certainly prefer a prestigious origin in Benin than the more ignoble truth. I'm not saying this explains the claims but it's another possibility to be aware of.

In his main book, Egharevba makes the claim that Oba Ewuare traveled very widely: “Ewuare was a great magician, physician, traveller and warrior. He travelled over every part of Nigeria, Dahomey, Ghana, Guinea and the Congo”

While this is obviously exaggeration, even the most unbelieveable part of it, the part about Oba Ewuare even reaching Congo, is not as implausible as it seems at first. The paper I posted a link to doesn't even mention this, but there is a complaint in a letter sent to the Portuguese king by the king of Kongo from 1526 that "people from Cachen and Benin" were causing trouble in his country (Kongo).

What some Benin people were doing there stirring up trouble in Kongo at such an early date (1526) is something I've wondered about. I assumed they got there through the Portuguese when I read it initially, and I'll probably stick with that assumption, but it may be possible that even though Egharevba was exaggerating, there was a bit of truth in his idea of widespread travel by some royalty. This is mere speculation, but perhaps some people from Benin that Oba Ewuare took with him or informed about his travels might have gone on to do some exploration of their own later on, after his reign, and established contacts to the south or outposts to the west, well before Oba Orhogbua's expedition to Lagos.

For me, this is the exact type of imperial exaggeration I wouldn't take seriously. Ewuare almost certainly wouldn't have made it to the Congo.How and why? What contemporary evidence do we have? The letter suggests that people from Benin were making trouble in the Kongo. The letters from Spanish viceroys in Latin America around the same period complain about Jellofes (Wolofs) making trouble in Hispaniola and Mexico. Why? Because they were enslaved under horrific conditions and they were a warrior people prone to military action. I don't think that complaint is substantive proof of a Benin military presence. I think that's a royal complaining about unruly and rebellious foreigners likely sold to him by the Portuguese. Egharevba is prone to these traditional exaggerations; Ewuare conquered "201 towns"; there were 31 Ogisos before the Oba dynasty from Ife (although his original work cited only one mythological Ogiso, Igodo, if I remember correctly--I'd have to check an article on his many versions of "A Short History of Benin" . He struggles with the same issues any native-born scholar does; how to separate your pride in heritage from the truth of history. If we accept all these royalist charters and legends as true without critically parsing them, we're doing ourselves a disservice and making it that much harder for future researchers to separate myths and legends from the true historical timeline.

To explain a little further, the history of societies like Ife/Ufe, Idah, Benin/Udo, etc. are as separate from their governments and elites as the history of Nigeria is separate from the claims of Governor Glover, Balewa, Azikiwe, Obasanjo or Goodluck Jonathan, in my view. Obviously political elites and their decisions have a tremendous impact, but we can't take their official versions of history, diplomacy, warfare and policy as fact. They're likely embellished, exaggerated, massaged or outright fabricated due to political pressures and needs, either ancient or current.

Here's another link to read when you have time (and if you haven't already seen it): http://www.academia.edu/1972119/Ancient_Benin_Where_did_the_First_Monarchs_Come_from

Phsyics--I'm reading through your other post but I won't be able to respond in detail until a little later this evening. You make strong points and I'll explain my skepticism about a) and b) and Egharevba's claims about Ewuare as well.

ShyM-X: the Oba of Lagos is definitely of Benin descent and there is a well-established history of Benin political and military presence/influence. There is quite a fair amount of dispute as to what the 'conquest' consisted of though. The Oba's palace was on Lagos Island and there is no evidence of a mainland presence to my knowledge. The Oba is not traditionally (or currently) believed to "own" land in Lagos, in contrast to the Idejo titleholding families, which I think is quite telling.

The Idejo titleholders, mythological descendants of an "Olofin" (meaning "owner of the law/rules/palace" , claim to be the autochthonous (there's that word again!) residents and recognize themselves as the highest authorities in their areas. Although the colonial authorities supported the Oba's claim on Lagos (Island?) and role in government, even they had to petition the Idejo families--ancestors of modern names like Elegushi and Oniru etc.--for permission and opportunity to settle. If you speak Yoruba, you'll guess that those titles refer to farming lineages--"egushi"/melonseed owners, "iru"/locust bean farmers etc. They likely represent the lineages that settled in that area and grew these crops before a period of political centralization led by a dynasty from Benin. This idea gains even more traction when you look at the name of the Lagos palace--iga iganduran. In Yoruba, it means 'great house (palace?) on the pepper farm", which fits in with the surrounding area. It seems "Eko" was exactly what the traditional interpretation claims--"oko", or a farm with few full-time residents. This is also how its described by the earliest Portuguese records of a Benin garrison found on the island with few people living there. How this fits into the purported Edo interpretation of 'Eko' as war camp may be coincidental, or could be another lens through which to see this. Just my take but I'll go into more detail later.

PhysicsQED: Agreed.

And thanks for those comments on Nri and Igala. That's an interesting perspective on Nri and Igbo Ukwu, but I'm not sure how the founder of Nri being of Igala origin would necessitate that the Nri kingdom came much later than currently claimed. It seems like a pretty big assumption to make. It seems as if you're saying that this founder had to have come from the politically centralized Igala kingdom at a later date, rather than just coming from the general uncentralized Igala populace at a much earlier time.

I see what you mean. The one constant we know of is that Igbo-Ukwu finds are dated to circa 900 AD-1100 AD. Since we have no corresponding early evidence for cultures in Nri or Igala, I find it less likely that these places can claim parentage. It's true that Eri etc. could have sprung from an early/unknown Igala source and then also made the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes but we've got no evidence to suggest that beyond fanciful kinglists for Nri. We do know that there's been more recent Igala incursion into the Nri area by the Oloja Oboni/Ogboni group, and that type of interaction is more likely to be the origin of the current dynasty.

I never got the sense that there was any historic kingdom or politically centralized state associated with those Awka smiths (although a 15th century sword and some other metal items were unearthed there). Such a kingdom or state would probably be necessary to sponsor the making of the art and to engage in the long distance trade required for some of the materials found at Igbo-Ukwu. So perhaps there was some now forgotten kingdom (not Nri) that covered the Awka and Igbo Ukwu area that people in the area can no longer recall.

The fact that Awka (I think I prefer Oka) is not part of a centralized polity is exactly why I think they're the more likely producers and why I think it would be an interesting project for an enterprising scholar to pursue. Apart from their demonstrated expertise and old traditions of metalworking and claims of autochthonous origin (i.e, they don't have traditions of migration/origin elsewhere), Oka also exhibits the most widespread mode of Igbo political organization, which is decentralized. Earlier writers have concentrated their explanation of the producers on kingdoms, empires etc. in order to match their ideas about societies that produce complex artwork. This has happened elsewhere in Nigeria and Africa to the detriment of later observers. Why does craftsmanship, artistic production or even long-distance trade require centralized polities? Why would African societies--centralized or decentralized--duplicate European-style models of monarchy? Do we have any idea why they assume the Igbo-Ukwu grave is for a king, rather than a wealthy merchant, outstanding artist etc?

[Speculation disclaimer here]I think African societies have more political variety and creativity than they got credit for in the past. Here's an example from Nigeria that's closer to home for me. Ibadan in the 19th century evolved a military republic, which was a pretty revolutionary political change. They got rid of a monarchic tradition and came up with a title system that relied on popular nomination, promotion, and social prestige, rather than birthright, to get to the head position. They also grew into the largest polity of the era. Abeokuta made some similarly revolutionary moves. During the close of the colonial era though, the British promoted their negotiations and treaties with the Alaafin of Oyo based on his prior claims of political supremacy over the area and slowly sidelined the functional republican/federalist systems of Ibadan and Abeokuta for a focus on royalist modes of organization similar to what they were most familiar with. Oyo at the time was a fairly unimportant player in the political system but the Alaafin were invited to sign the treaties etc. to reflect the "proper" prestige of Queen Victoria and the then-current notion of what a government was supposed to look like. Ibadan, Abeokuta etc. had dislodged their older monarchic forms, which hadn't been very effective during the tumult and wars of the period, but were basically retrofitted into an invented hierarchy for the convenience of colonial administration. Yet a few decades later, when the British themselves had evolved a parliamentary government that minimized royal power, they were credited for bringing democracy, republican structures etc to Nigeria and the rest of the Commonwealth! This article ("
Aborted Modernization in West Africa? The Case of Abeokuta" ) offers some ideas along these lines: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/180370?searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DAbeokuta%26acc%3Doff%26wc%3Don%26fc%3Doff&Search=yes&searchText=Abeokuta&uid=3739832&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101954705413

If you look at Benin's many internal battles between the Oba's lineage and the Uzama or various dukedoms/ogies/enogies etc in that light--as waning and waxing between attempts to centralize authority and arguments to evolve or maintain republican traditions, it opens up a new and richer way of understanding these societies. Add in the considerably complex organization of markets and trade, which in many cases funded royal courts but were controlled by professionals and guilds, and you have a much more complicated picture of precolonial societies than we commonly think about. In Yoruba societies, I think we see these tensions at play in the major "kingdoms", from the Ijebu Osugbo/Ogboni societies and their role in regulating the Awujale to Oyo and the Oyo Mesi, or even the Oba of Lagos is relation to the Idejo titleholders/landowners. I could go on but you get the point. Jan Vansina's "How Societies Are Born" is about West-Central Africa but it really helped me to understand and appreciate these issues. Sorry to reference so many works but I enjoy the discussion and I think you'd like/appreciate some of these ideas. I'm not saying these people agree with my characterization, though; this is all my speculation drawn from the stuff I've read.

ShyM-X:
Great and highly educative thread...

Terracotta, you need to post more often, bro... I'm already a big fan...

Anyway, I don't need to tell PhysicsQED how much I admire his posts...

Thanks. I want to but I've got my issues with this place. I always try to read a good PhysicsQED post though.