Kings of the sky

A history kept by its own people

Benin did not write its history down in books until modern times. It was kept by people: chiefs, royal chroniclers and families, who told it to the next generation. Ogiso Ere is even said to have created a group of royal chroniclers, the Ughoron.¹ In the 20th century Benin historians wrote these histories down, and the Digital Benin project has gathered them together. This chapter follows them.

From the Ogiso to the Obas

1. About 40 BC
   The first Ogiso

   Igodo, head of the elders of his village, rises to lead a wider land. People say of him that he is “like the king in the sky”, Ogie ne ọ rre Iso, which becomes the title Ogiso.¹

2. AD 16 to 66
   A palace and a court

   Ogiso Ere moves the royal seat, sets up guilds of iron workers, woodworkers and weavers, and brings in the swords of authority, the ada and the eben.¹

3. About 1059 to 1100
   The last Ogiso

   Owodo, the thirty-first Ogiso, fails his people after a famine and orders the death of his own son, Ekaladerhan. The people banish him.¹

4. About 1100 to 1170
   No king

   The people appoint Evian, a brave man from the Ihogbe family, to run the land. When he tries to make the rule his own, the elders refuse him.¹

5. About 1170
   A new line

   Benin elders ask Oduduwa, at Uhe (Ife), for a ruler. His son Oranmiyan comes and becomes the first Oba, but decides only a child born and raised in Benin can rule it.¹

6. About 1200
   Oba Eweka I

   Oranmiyan’s son by a Benin princess is crowned Eweka I. He makes the titles of the senior chiefs, the Uzama, hereditary.¹

Dates for the Ogiso come from counting back through the reigns in the oral histories. Some Ogiso are remembered as living to over a hundred, so treat the early dates as Benin’s own reckoning, not as measurements.¹

Benin about 1300

By the time of Oba Oguola, about 1280 to 1295, the new dynasty was settled. Oguola had trenches dug around the city to keep enemies out, and won a battle against a powerful rival, Akpanigiakon of Udo, around 1285.¹ In his reign a guild of brass casters was set up, according to Benin’s historian Jacob Egharevba, “for the preservation of records”: its work would remember the kings and their deeds.¹ The guilds were, and are, a great part of the city’s life.²

About 150 years later, Oba Ewuare I, a warrior king, turned the kingdom into an empire. He had moats dug around the palace and city, divided the city into the palace and the town, and organised the guilds of brass casters and builders.¹