Vision and Method

I am developing a project exploring the philosophical and mystical possibilities of the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin, the latest demonstration of these rites having taken place in the October 2016 coronation of Oba Ewuare II. Philosophy, in this context, refers to ideas about the meaning of existence clarifying the processes through which these conceptions have been constructed while mysticism is centred in the quest for direct encounter with ultimate reality. This initiative aspires to contribute to understanding about the meaning of human being, in particular, and of being as a whole, in its cosmic framework, by exploring an aspect of experience, the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin, as a demonstration of the effort to organize history in a manner that enhances a sense of the significance of existence, as this value is actualized in particular contexts. I intend to present visual and verbal accounts of each point on the Oba's coronation journey, the actions undertaken at each point and pictures projecting these actions, explaining the symbolism of these activities, as well as reflect on the implications of these actions for human experience in general beyond their specific roles in the symbolism of the coronation. I am working towards developing the far reaching symbolic implications of the coronation into a conception of a map of human life, a totality of human development, in which the figure of the Oba is transposed in terms of the medieval European conception of Everyman, better understood as EveryHuman, the Oba standing for any and all human beings on the terrestrial journey, a journey demonstrating both an explicit and a symbolic dimension, culminating, not in the linear progression of human biology but in the possibilities of a cognitive and spiritual crowning, a crowning interpreted, in this context, in mystical terms, adapted from the perspective presented by Iro Eweka in 'Olokun Symbols', of the Oba as understood as an interface between the spiritual and the human, the divine and the material, distilling those ideas from their historical context in a way empowering to human beings in general who are thus invited to identify with this great celebration of the human transmutation of history into timeless meaning enacted within time as represented by the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin.

Oba of Benin coronation mandala, adapting the design of a Buddhist artistic form, the mandala, in projecting activities actualized by the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin, summing up the sublime values associated with the role of the Oba. The central image is Joseph Eboreime's map of the route traversed by Oba Erediauwa I in his 1979 coronation, from Eboreime's "Coronation as Drama: The Installation of a Benin Monarch as a Study in the Continuity of Kingship: The Transformation and the Manufacture of Ethnic Identity", a depiction of the spatial progression actualized by the coronation rites, unifying physical space and its associated social space through the person of the Crown Prince, and, eventually, the monarch, moving in symbolic action through that space. On top of the map is Enotie Paul Ogbebor's painting Aisagbonrioba "You Don't Become a King on Earth, You Have to be Ordained", an evocation of the understanding of the Oba's office as a point of transmission between the divine and the human, this transmission suggested by the supplicating hands bathed in a triangle of light. At the bottom is an image depicting the graceful power of the eben, a Benin ceremonial sword, in the British Museum.

Inspiration This goal is inspired by the amazing wealth of symbolic interpretations of history within the context of brilliantly colorful spectacle represented by the coronation ceremonies, exemplified for me by Victor Ekhator's picture of the Edigin N'Use waiting for the Crown Prince so they may both play the akhue game through which the Prince will choose the name he will henceforth be known by after his coronation as Oba, the picture's combination of dynamism and stillness, ancientness and presentness, sparking my imagination, initiating my interest in the coronation rites. These solemn as well as celebratory activities constitute one of the richest visual and symbolic spectacles in the world, and by extension, in history. Their perfomative variety is unified by a hermeneutic thread, a conception of time, space and the human being converging to create and transmit meaning.These dramatisations are built on a motif of perennial resonance across time and space, a theme that integrates the totality of human experience in terms of a framework that is simple yet profound, capable of infinite expansion in its focus on an essence of humanity's terrestrial existence, the image of the journey. This symbolic peregrination consists in the Oba traversing Benin from one point to another, a good part of the journey undertaken on foot, stopping at various locations of particular historical and sacred significance to engage in rituals, dances, game playing, and other activities unique to each location, some religious, some secular, but all subsumed within the understanding of the identity of Oba as consummated within a matrix of meaning through which pulsates the life force enabled by his predecessors who have gone before him in a centuries long progression, their presence projected from beyond time and space into the newest assumption of the ancient and sacred office. The entire sequence may be described as a ritual in which the Crown Prince is initiated into the historical, social and spiritual nexus embodied by the character and roles of the Oba of Benin, a ritual process shaped by a complex and far reaching symbolic architecture energised by action meant to invoke the unity of matter and spirit, of ruler and community. The elucidation of this underlying interpretive logic is vital for an adequate appreciation of the burst of color and vitality realized by the coronation's dynamics. Exploring their significance for humanity in general opens up understanding of their demonstration of the profoundest human values. The mystical orientation in terms of which I interpret the entire process facilitates the distillation of the crowning of the Oba into a template that can be adapted by others, transposing the political/sacred framework of the Obaship into a philosophical and spiritual context which people may apply to themselves.

I am also inspired by the conjunction I perceive between the hermeneutic initiative, the conception of how to construct meaning, represented by the coronation ceremonies, and the perceptions I have gained from walking long distances in Benin and her surrounding communities, experiencing the city's distinctive blend of ancient and modern urbanscape, in visual and contemplative dialogue with her sacred spaces, her human-made, and particularly, her natural shrines, which concretise the integration of spirit and matter, of erinmwin, the world of spirit, as understood in Benin cosmology and agbon, the physical world, through the location of dense groves within busy urban spaces, groves at times acting as historical markers, memorials of events associated with them, such as the grove on Oro street linked with Idia, the Queen Mother in the time of the 16th century Oba Esigie, a grove described by a man I spoke to who lives near the location, as to have remained standing at that spot since that time.

The unfolding of Benin hermeneutic genius represented by the coronation ceremonies guides me to the integration of my diverse efforts in giving voice to my growing awareness of the possibilities of the relationship between space and meaning represented by the Benin urbanscape.The project aspires to unify my exploration of spatial values in relation to Benin, visible at my blog Great Benin, and my investigation, evident at another blog, Olokun, of the symbolism of Olokun, the most prominent deity in Benin cosmology, the spirit of the world's waters, the dramatization of the pervasive character of aquatic form in shaping existence, summing up Norma Rosen's characterization of the deity in " Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship", a discussion by Rosen that emphasizes the use of Olokun symbolism in delineating physical and spiritual space and time within an overarching metaphysical framework. In being centred on styles of engaging with history, this project is also correlative with my earlier essay "Memory and Amnesia: An Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Exploration", "exploring presentations on remembering and forgetting from various spatio-temporal frames, conjoining these with art from different cultural contexts and periods, and distilling insights in relation to the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge as a strategy for investigating the intersection of past, present and future", quoting the summary at that essay.

This magnificent picture by Akintunde Akinyele, the most powerful I have seen so far, in image quality and content, in the image outpouring from the coronation, attended by two chiefs and watched by an excited and deeply attentive crowd, crossing what may be described as the symbolic Bridge of Transformation, may be seen as summing up the explicit and implicit symbolism of the coronation ceremonies.

In "Pageantry and Politics Mix as Nigeria's Benin City Crowns New Ruler " Akinyele and other contributors in Reuters, Oct 21,2016, describe the picture as showing "Newly crowned Oba of Benin Kingdom...guided through a symbolic bridge by the palace chiefs during his coronation in Benin city, Nigeria, October 20, 2016".

The bridge crossing could be perceived as encapsulating the coronation, a journey from one one zone of Benin to another, a journey reconstructing conceptions of historical events, conceptions representing the restructuring of experience within an interpretive framework in a manner resonant with the construction of the bridge in this picture built for the purpose of the coronation. The river the bridge represents consists in a "shallow side (River Oteghele) and a deeper, far side (River Omi)", as described in Joseph Nevadomsky's " "The Benin Kingdom: Rituals of Kinship and their Social Meanings 1" which Oba Ewedo in the 13th century crossed over with the aid of a ferryman, here represented in the picture by the chief with the golden paddle, in the Oba's migration from his old palace to a new one in order to consolidate his power in freedom from the Uzama in the vicinity of the old palace, an account pointing to the various challenges in the development of the Obaship re-enacted in the coronation rites. The crossing of the bridge from what could be the shallow to the deep side may also suggest the progression across depths of engagement within a symbolic matrix in which the bridge crossing, the coronation journey, the historical and interpretive progression of Benin history and the relationship of these to individual and collective existential and cognitive journeys undergone by people anywhere may be subsumed in an ascending degree of expansion and integration, akin to moving from the shallow to the deep points in a river.

Method

The hermeneutic method I am employing in this project consists in developing levels of interpretation correlative with the Benin concept of "erhia", "meaning", as described by Daryl Peavy in "The Benin Monarchy : Olokun and Iha Ominigbon" , with particular reference to the Benin divination system known as Ominigbon, which demonstrates erhia khere or plain meaning, expressed in concise, literal explanation, and erhia dinmwin or deep meaning, which penetrates into the the depth of the subject in question, through analogies drawn from folklore, interpretive strata consummated in the oracular prescriptions about how the client should relate to particular divinities in order to address the challenge that led the client to seek the oracle's guidance. Peavy analyses the gnomic language of Ominigbon as metaphorical expressions evoking Benin history in the context of Benin cosmology. I aspire to do something similar, but in relation to a more expansive frame of reference actualized by reflecting on images of the coronation ceremonies in terms of the historical and sacred activities they demonstrate, exploring the rationale suggested by these actions as strategies of constructing meaning within social space, and discussing the possibilities of understanding relationships between these Benin centred activities and human experience in general, climaxing with an engagement with the coronation ceremonies in terms of a movement towards an encounter between the human being and ultimate reality symbolized by the crowing of the Oba, thereby adapting the understanding of the Oba as existing within the nexus constituted by Osanobua, the ultimate creator, and Olokun, the spirit of the world's waters, the most prominent manifestation of Osanobua in Benin cosmology. The explicit and associative power of images is central in this effort on account of the remarkable variety and quality of pictures that have emerged from the 2016 coronation, a visual feast inspiring this initiative. The project aspires to mobilize as broad a range as possible of Benin arts, cosmology and history in constructing the associative scope of each of the photographs reflected upon, and moving beyond this configuring of Benin discourse to engage with forms outside the Benin context in terms of a tightly woven web of associations, springing from the platforms represented by specific images and image sequences to integrate the universe understood in terms of the frames of reference inspired by the associative force of these visual forms.The project would thus actualize, in an epistemic sense, the Benin expression "Edo ore isi agbon", "Edo is the centre of the universe", an expression I first encountered in Tony Erha's "A Trafalgar Square in Benin City", NEXT,July 23, 2010, the profound stimulus of which I first responded to in "Edo Ore Isi Agbon: Edo is the Centre of the Universe: Journeys Across Space and Time", recognising the saying's invitation to an expansive interpretative range reached through pursuing as far as possible the implications of the web of far reaching significations actualized by Benin, as suggested by another Benin expression, which I learnt through a personal communication from Joseph Nevadomsky, "Agha se edo, edo rree", "When one arrives in Edo [Benin], Edo is distant", the mind expanding influence of this observation inspiring my reflections in “Agha Sẹ Ẹdo,Ẹdo Rree”, "When One Arrives in Benin, Benin is Distant : Spatial, Temporal and Cognitive Dislocation and Conjunction Through the Lens of Benin Epistemology and Social Theory: Part 1 : Basic Framework", published, among other platforms, on the Edo centred site Otedo.com, along with the rich discussion it inspired on Edo language and philosophies. Beyond discussing the hermeneutics of the coronation in its visual and ideational force, its significance as a cognitive template that has value beyond its spatial, temporal and cultural context, I am working on describing it as a form of living that can be adapted to individual or even group use. I thus demonstrate its distillable value, as something that can be employed in a modified form by others, hence my interpretation of the coronation ceremonies in terms of a mystical progression, a template for understanding spatial motion between meaning charged locations evident in various contexts but usable as a contemplative or even ambulatory style of exploring ultimate meaning.

The simultaneous actualization of physical and cosmographic space in Benin thought, as depicted by Nosa Ekpenede Idubor. "The nine gates" he states, " represent the nine entrances to Ancient Benin and while the half circle on both ends and between the gates represents the shape of the Benin wall. The circle in the middle of each door or gate represents the Palace which is the heart and soul of Edo spirituality.The lines represent the roads that lead to the palace".

The Oba-to-Be, the Crown Prince, begins the coronation itinerary from his residence as the Edaiken of Uselu, Uselu being a section of Benin profound in historical and spiritual significance symbolism as demonstrated by the presence on Oro street in Uselu of a fenced and densely vegetated grove which no one may enter without the permission of the Oba, a natural space surrounded by the various complexes of urban development, but coruscating with an uncanny energy, an esoteric core eloquent in its blazing presence at frequencies beyond the perception of most people, but the existence of which is keenly sensed by a person, like myself, who takes time to contemplate through direct encounter the unusual atmosphere, the fields of energy, energy marked by its power to affect the human mind, that characterizes Benin's culture of natural shrines, various forms of which, each with their own distinctive atmospheric signatures, are also evident in the various communities around Benin, such as Ogbovwioko, if I am spelling the name correctly.

This grove was described to me as the place where an Oba hid his mother, Idia, I expect, when he ascended to the throne in order to protect her from the fate of death that awaited the queen mother when her son became Oba, perhaps to avoid her influencing him in the independent execution of his royal duties. Having successfully protected her life, laying a foundation that enabled the Oba break the practice of putting the queen mother to death on his assumption of office, the queen mother, in recognition of the protection Idi was given in that centuries gone transformative historical experience by the people of Uselu moves to Uselu to take up residence when her son becomes Oba.

I was also informed that that grove served as a centre of spiritual power and zone of arming for war by the queen mother Idiawhen she preased to fight on behalf of her son. uyilaw usuale in describes idia as one of the women known for ther caovity as aweors in Benin history. how representative of the understanding of the significance of uselu is this story/ i am yet to investigate that but the story suggests the nexus between time and space in Benin sopitail symbolism and its use of physical markers of conceptions of how particular oreces shape history as well as the need to encsuiate these understandings in terms of locations which people relate with through actions such as the story of the queen moter moving to uselu on the ovas acseiuon, like the oba moves from uselu toi use and then into the heart of ebing fir his coronation, traversing space a sway of traversing centuries of history represented by the locations at which he stops to egae in ritual actions.

​The 'three walls and moats dug at different times', sorrounding Benin, as visualised by Nosa Ekpenede Idubor , adapted here in suggesting the character of Benin as an imaginative matrix, a space inspiring transformations of reality through imagination, theatre, symbolic action and interaction between various forms and states of being, the empty space enclosed by the blood red vitality of the rings evocative of the perennial recreative potential of imagination and all activity that expands the boundaries of cognition, a dramatization of the understanding represented by the African expression that it is always morning yet on creation day, as Chinua Achebe titles a book in which he explores that idea. Calligraphic forms suggesting arcane beauty.

The climax of the coronation pilgrimage, according to Abieyuwa Edigin in "Benin Crown Prince to Announce Coronation Name Thursday", a Nigeria Newspapers report of October 19, 2016, the Crown Pribce's journey to Use to engage with the Edigin N'Use, the clan head of the Edigin family, in playing the Akhue game through which the Crown Prince will assume a new name, the name he will bear as Oba, by which he and his children will henceforth be known, reflecting, par excellence, the concretisation of these ceremonies in some of the most fundamental and yet far reaching understanding of how humanity makes meaning out of what would have been the otherwise instinct driven progression of pure survival that is the most basic level of human existence, naming being core to human identity as affirming both individuality and the relationship between the individual and the social, symbolizing the emergence of one's humanity out of a biological substratum, and, in this instance, encapsulating the values represented by the ancient yet continually re-energised identity that is the Obaship. At the heart of the Use name defining game is the perception of naming as core to identity, particularly human identity as affirming both individuality and the relationship between the individual and the social, symbolizing the emergence of one's humanity out of a biological substratum. These values of naming achieve greater depth when, as in the historical account that grounds the Use naming rite, the name is not given to one but is uttered by oneself as a demonstration of one's arrival at a climatic point of self awareness, a point demonstrated by the story of the first Oba of Benin, Eweka 1, who, described as dumb from birth, is depicted as uttering his first word 'Owomika!" "my hand has struck it!", in triumph as he gained victory in the game by striking with his own seed the last remaining seed his fellow players had not been able to strike, a game introduced by his father Oranmiyan, in order to guide the prince into activating his capacity to speak, a sense of paternal transmission enshrined in the male exclusiveness of the Obaship. Within this very brief summation a wealth of ideas is already evident, ideas that radiate in many directions across various cultures and temporal zones, from conceptions of names as embodying the essence of an entity to names as social conventions integrating associations encapsulating a person's history as it is filtered through its perception by that person and others to ideas of sounds as cosmic matrices, cosmic permutations, the originating forces of the cosmos. The Crown Prince moves from Uselu to Use and then into the heart of Benin for his coronation, traversing space as a way of traversing centuries of history represented by the locations at which he stops to engage in various ritual actions and other performances.

I intend to present pictures and verbal descriptions of the actions undertaken at each point on the Oba's coronation journey as well as the explicit and implicit symbolism of these actions, reflecting on their implications for human experience in general beyond their specific roles in the coronation. I am working towards developing the expansive symbolism of the coronation into a map of human life, an understanding of the totality of human development. Within this context, the figure of the Oba is re-imagined in terms of the medieval European conception of Everyman, the Oba standing for any and all human beings on the terrestrial journey, a journey demonstrating both an immediate and an extrapolative symbolic dimension. In this interpretive framework, the journey culminates, not in the crowning of the Oba and his subsequent ritual actions as demonstrated at the coronation, nor in the linear progression of human biology as actualised in the depiction of the Oba's coronation odyssey as evoking the progression of human life, but in the possibilities emerging from the conjunction of the idea of life as journey and the journeys of expansion of awareness that may be undertaken within the larger framework of the movement of life from birth to transition. This journey within a journey is described in this context as a cognitive and spiritual progression culminating in a mystical crowning, a motion in which the symbolism of the Oba's coronation itinerary is understood in terms of a correlative range of values. These values are grounded in the perception of the unfolding of the coronation as a transposition of history in terms of the present. They may be further appreciated in terms of the conjunction of the immediacy represented by time, space, matter and mind with the subtlety of spirit. These understandings may be further expanded into a perception of the coronation as a map of possibility within which a person may travel vicariously with the Oba, reaching beyond the immediate grasp of the symbolic contexts that constitute the coronation journey to interpreting these contexts as cosmological matrices, means of relating the entire journey with the totality of existence within the framework of ultimate reality, as the traveler moves forward in the aspiration to a direct encounter with the ultimate. This mystical interpretation is adapted from Iro Eweka's description in "Olokun Symbols" of the Oba as understood in Benin Olokun thought as an interface between the spiritual and the human, the divine and the terrestrial.

Versions of lukasa, demonstrating the form's styles of creating spatial relations using beads, geometric and figurative structures, the individual identities of the various shapes and the relationships between them representing mythic and historical accounts, political relations, landscape features, flora and fauna and their configurations within a cosmographic frame in which the symbols on the lukasa, loci of memory, as Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts describe them in "Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History", act as cues to the performance of the ideas associated with them.

Like the landmarks, the pilgrimage stations, in Aisien's words, of the Benin chieftancy and Benin Oba 's coronation peregrination, these structural configurators operate as memory facilitators, mechanisms catalyzing the convergence of history, myth, spirituality and politics as perceptions of these intersections are re-enacted in the present.

Is it possible to develop the Oba of Benin's coronation ceremony into such a distillation of spatial and symbolic relations, perhaps ultimately enabling a fusion of images and ideas within the mind, the kindling of the triple fire, in the words of the Hindu Upanishads, opening a window into the source of reality in a zone in which the temporal is absorbed in the infinite, and the particulars of being assimilated into the ground of existence?

Image sources: Top: From Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts "Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History" (26). Bottom left : from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum through Wikipedia on lukasa. Bottom right : From Pinterest through "On the Water: Forced Crossings". All accessed 3rd Jan.2017.

Eweka's essay inspired my earlier effort at correlating human individuality and the cosmological through the lens of Benin Olokun cosmography in "Iro Eweka : The Human Face, the Human Mind and the Possibility of a Mysticism Inspired by Benin Olokun Symbolism". The conjunction of the Oba and Olokun enables a a broad range of interpretive possibilities, particularly in relation to the coronation progression as a hermeneutic enterprise, an effort by the creators of this ceremonial cycle to mobilize a large range of ideas about Benin history. The space the Oba traverses in his journey may be understood as physical space, as historical space, as space symbolizing the possibilities of human development, as cosmic space and ultimately as a hermeneutic space, a constellation of interpretive possibilities invoking particular possibilities out of the sea of possibilities enabled by Benin history, this sea of possible interpretations being evocative of the primal generative role in terms of life on earth of the aquatic realm understood as Olokun's domain, a correlation between religious thinking and scientific thinking on the origins of terrestrial life developed by John Mason in Black Gods: Orisa Studies in the New World,Olokun being one of the deities shared by the Yoruba whose religion is Mason's focus and the Benin as part of their cultural and historical intertwining, although Olokun is male in Benin thought and female in Yoruba thought, to the best of my knowledge. The conjunction of the immediate and the cosmological, of spatial location with ultimate possibility represented by the project this essay is centred on is also demonstrated in my adaptation, in the film Meditation on Christopher Okigbo's Labyrinths, of a similar effort by the poet Christopher Okigbo, who, in his poetic cycle Labyrinths, depicted Idoto, the spirit of the river of his village Ojoto, in Nigeria's Igboland, as " the water spirit that nurtures all creation". The project described in this essay represents the second aspect of my work on Benin, relating to space, as demonstrated at my blog Great Benin, inspired by the inspiration of walking long distances in Benin and her surrounding communities, experiencing Benin's distinctive blend of ancient and modern urbanscape, and the other aspect being my exploration of Benin Olokun symbolism, further evident at another blog, Olokun. The Eweka/Okigbo/Idoto/Olokun inspirations are also unified by the idea of the aquatic element of the earth, in its nurturing character and pervasive presence, as demonstrating divine presence, Olokun being understood as the spirit of the world's aquatic forms. This pervasive nurturing personality is associated with the Oba of Benin in Benin thought, as described by Iro Eweka in "Olokun Symbols" "... in Edo tradition Olokun and Osalobua [ the creator and sustainer of the cosmos ] are virtually co-terminus...the Oba is [ seen as] the human embodiment of Olokun [ ideas reinforced by ] the Olokun symbol "Owen Iba Ede Ku" meaning 'the Sun never misses the day' [ which may also evoke'] the Oba, Olokun and Osalobua, covering the world with radiant light". Inspired by these ideas, I reinterpret the Oba's coronation progression by distilling the conceptions associated with it from their cultural context in a way empowering to human beings in general who are thus invited to identify with this great celebration of the transmutation of history into timeless meaning enacted within time. Beyond discussing the hermeneutics of the coronation in its visual and ideational force, its significance as a cognitive template that has value beyond its spatial, temporal and cultural context, I would thereby describe it as a form of living that can be adapted to individual or even group use. I would thus demonstrate its distillable value, as something that can be employed in a modified form by others, hence my interpretation of the coronation ceremonies in terms of a mystical progression, a template for understanding spatial motion between meaning charged locations adaptable as a contemplative or even ambulatory style of exploring ultimate meaning, the latter actualized through the understanding of the act of walking and the locations traversed as demonstrating philosophical significance. I aspire to interpret the coronation progression as an integration of geography, history, art and the sacred within a cosmographic frame, a visual and ideational depiction of the metaphysical structure and dynamism of the cosmos, a conception of its source and ultimate orientation that is uniquely Benin but which speaks to the deepest human needs. Such an interpretive structure would combine the visual beauty and abstract resonance of a Luba lukasa memory board and the combination of simplicity and capacity for infinite symbolic elaboration of a Yoruba Orisa cosmology origin opon ifa, these examples suggesting the orientation of this project in contributing to the development of the contemporary and timeless significance of classical African hermeneutic systems, theories and practices of interpretation grounded in African cultures.

The Nine Stations of the Journey of the Home Leopard

by Nosa Ekpenede Idubor

"The leopard is the symbol of the Great Benin Monarchy, one of the King’s praise names being Ekpen N'Owa or the Home Leopard , and I have used the footprints of the leopard in illustrating all the nine stations the heir apparent to the throne must visit before being crowned Oba of Benin, from Eguae Edaiken, his palace as Crown Prince at Uselu, at the bottom of the image, to his choosing of the name he will bear as Oba, at Use, in the middle, to his crowning at Urho-Okpota, the Gate of Okpota, near the top and his symbolic battle with Ogiamien at Ekiopagha at the top, a battle representing the Oba of Benin gaining total control over the territory represented by Benin.

In ancient times Great Benin had nine entrance gates and, to date, a heir to the throne goes through nine stations to get crowned.The number nine, in Edo thought, represents something that is pregnant or that is about to reveal something new to the world.

The stations move from the bottom to the top, beginning with Eguae Edaiken where the journey of the heir apparent starts. On a fixed date he is escorted from there by the people of Uselu on his way back to Benin, where he stops at an historic palm tree called Udin Ama-Mieson-Aimiuwa which translates to "work before pleasure". He will climb the tree symbolically, a ceremony that goes back to the time of Oba Ewuare N'Ogidigan, Oba Ewuare the Awesome, whose life as heir apparent to the throne was characterized by long suffering which included periods when he had to climb palm trees on this spot to cut the fruits for a living. At Iya Akpan the Uselu nobles take leave of the Edaiken, the Crown Prince, while Oredo nobles would then escort him into the city. He spends three days at Eko Ohae or Bachelor's Camp.He proceeds from EKo Ohae to Usama which is the venue of the coronation, where he will stay for seven days, From there he visits Use where he chooses a name before the end of his seven day stay at Usama and he then returns to Usama where he is crowned Oba of Benin. He does not know beforehand which name he will be crowned with. He stops at Isekhere to perform the ceremonial crossing of a bridge. A reminder of the day Oba Ewedo erected a bridge to enable him cross a river on Isekhere territory.He proceeds to Urho-Okpota, the Gate of Okpota, which dates to the 15th century.Okpota was a great traditional doctor who prepared charms that brought prosperity to the Benin kingdom.From Urho-Okpota he then heads to the Palace . He engages in a mock battle with Ogiamien at Ekiopagha, a reminder of the 13th century battle between Oba Ewedo and Ogiamien". Image by Nosa Ekpenede Idubor . Text quoted by Idubor from handouts given to guests at the Coronation of Oba Erediauwa in 1979. Slightly modified and with the addition of Idubor's explanation of the symbolism of the number nine in Benin thought. Image and text from Idubor's his Facebook account post of 15/10/2015. Accessed 21/11/2016.

A lukasa is "a sophisticated memory device", according to Wikipedia, an example of Luba art from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, used to "delineate the cardinal points of a socially and ideologically significant space", employed, not to "symbolize thought so much as stimulate it", as described by Mary Nooter Roberts in "Luba Art and Divination" , through which colors and spatial configurations of abstract objects are used in evoking the Luba cosmos in terms of the interrelationship of time, space and the dynamism of human and non-human actors within these coordinates. Along similar lines, the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin need to be understood as a historiographic framework, a style of engaging with history, whether understood in literal terms, as a direct correspondence between historical action and historical record, or as Nevadomsky argues, as exemplifying the distillation of actual events in symbolic terms or as imaginative inventions described as enactments of historical occurrences, as Oberime argues may be the case in aspects of Benin oral history memorialized in the coronation or combinations of such strategies. The lukasa example further suggests the possibility of taking further the focusing of history in terms of contemporary occurrences represented by the Oba's coronation pilgrimage by distilling this conglomeration of dynamic humanity, distinctive in the profound excitement and ordered cacophony of the experience, into abstract symbols, through which this cultural performance may be transformed into a platform for further reflection. Like mathematical symbolism as described by Tim Gowers' of the essence of mathematics in the capacity for abstraction in Mathematics : A Very Short Introduction, and as mathematical symbols have been used in various cosmologies, from the Jewish Kaballah to Benin cosmology, these symbols may facilitate the mind's climbing into increasingly greater degrees of abstraction and inclusiveness of reference as it rises from a grounding in concrete reality into a network unifying the coronation progression but going beyond it to encapsulate the Benin cosmos, or the cosmos as seen from a platform grounded in Benin conceptions of the place of the historical within the cosmological. Nosa Ekpenede Idubor's graphic art facilitates this process of recollective abstraction by depicting the Oba's coronation progression in terms of the footprints of the Oba in his characterization as Ekpen N'Owa, the Home Leopard, as these footprints move from station to station till they reach the crowning. Adapting Mary and Allen Roberts' discussion, in "Audacities of Memory", of the visual forms that make up a lukasa in terms of strategies of recollection evident in European history, one may approach Idubor's visualization of the pilgrimage stations, borrowing Ekhaguosa Aisien's term in The Benin-City Pilgrimage Stations, for the locations visited by Benin chiefs in their own investiture ceremonies, as depicting matrices of memory, spatial locations at which past and present converge through the enacting of historical narratives dramatizing conceptions of Benin history at the sites the royal leopard is depicted as traversing.

Idubor's visualizations facilitate the contemplation of the ceremonies as actualizing the past in the present in a manner meant to shape the future, as may be summed up through the intersection of Joseph Nevadomdsky's "The Benin Kingdom: Rituals of Kinship and their Social Meanings 1", with Daniel E. Inneh, "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 1: Becoming a Crown Prince", "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 2: The Big Things" and "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 3: The Coronation of the Oba" and Joseph Eboreime's "Coronation as Drama: The Installation of a Benin Monarch as a Study in the Continuity of Kinship: The Transformation and the Manufacture of Ethnic Identity" and "The Installation of a Benin Monarch: Rite De Passage in the Expression of Ethnic Identity in Nigeria" on the construction of social consciousness through the coronation ceremonies, Tina van der Vlies, drawing on Michael Rothberg's concept of multidirectional memory from his Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Cultural Memory in the Present) in her "Multidirectional War Narratives in History Textbooks" on how school textbook "narratives [may] combine different histories, places and times [thus generating ] new meanings [ facilitating understanding of ] new, unknown situations by putting them in familiar frames of references[ [ thereby developing interpretive multidirectionality making ] sense of the past [by generating] continuity and meaning [through] interpretations of the present and the future", Angulu Onwuejeogwu's Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action on the culturally cognate Igbo Afa divination in as framing the past, the known, in terms of the unknown in order to address questions about the future arising in the present, the conflation of historical context and imaginative transmutation in the related Yoruba origin Ifa divination and the imaginative reworking of Benin history in the culturally congruent Benin Iha Ominigbon divination as argued by Daryl Peavy in "The Benin Monarchy: Olokun and Iha Ominigbọn".

Like the Ominigbon diviner reads the spatial configurations of the divination instruments in terms of narrative drawn from Benin social contexts utilized to speak for the present and the future, hermeneutic strategies resonating, in different ways with memory mobilizations across cultures, Idubur's visualizations of the Crown Prince's coronation peregrinations can be used as templates for evoking, not only the specific historical incidents and ritual actions undertaken at the locations Idubur's images distill, but the total range of associative possibilities the intersection of space and action, of past and present, of history and historiography, of spatiotemporal coordinates in relation to cosmology mediated through consciousness, and further possibilities of these, actualized through the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin.

Idubor's visualization of the Oba's coronation itinerary in terms of the footprints of the monarch in his characterization as the Home Leopard is correlative with Nigerian Cross River Ekpe esoteric order Nsibidi iconography, its visual symbolism evoking the footprints of a leopard, the totem animal of the order, through a quaternary structured set of triangles, meeting in their apexes at the centre of the structure where they all converge. This abstract evocation of the graceful presence of the powerful jungle creature is complemented by depictions of the animal in terms closer to its physical reality, all these examples evident in the Ukara cloth art which is a central expression of Nsibidi. These abstract and figurative evocations belong to a continuum of identification with the leopard as reflecting what may be described as the character of Ekpe as inspired by encounter with spirits of the forest, forms of sentience different from those conventionally accessible to humanity, and open to being focused within ritual structures created by those who identify with such forces, this being one way of describing Elliott Leib and Renee Romano's account in "Reign of the Leopard: Ngbe Ritual", of "Ekpe, as the society is called by the Efik, Ngbe, as it is called by the Ejagham" ( 48, 52, 54 ):

"The leopard is by far the most pervasive of all Ngbe symbols. As icon, it is an image of both the animal itself and the collective spirit of the Ngbe membership, living and dead. The leopard represents natural force, which lies beyond the confines and cognizance of society, and at the same time, tradition and authority, the force of law, and the continuity of the social order. The cultural control of nature is concretized through the secret iconography and ritual performance of Ngbe. The ekat, the secret recesses of the Ngbe lodge, reproduces the natural domain of the leopard in the forest within the confines of the lodge. Secrets learned during initiations in [ wild vegetative natural spaces] have their material and ideographic representations concealed in the ekat. It is there that the leopard spirit is kept in captivity with a 'chain around (his) neck to lock him while sleeping.' Only the iyamba can unloose the chain. The leopard spirit emerges from the ekat, where he has been ritually prepared, passing underneath the starch-resist, blue-and white- dyed ukara cloth to the sounds of the Ngbe voice. Numerous nsibidi signs on the cloth depict what is to be found in the secret chamber, among them the pictographic symbols learned during initiations. The member who can decipher the meaning of a sign also knows the material object it represents. The most common of these signs is the paw print of the leopard, composed of alternating blue and white triangles. Also found are hieroglyphs of other Ngbe [ wild ] animals, most commonly the tortoise, crocodile, [ wild ] cow, lizard, and snake. In the leopard dance, the symbolic imagery of the Ngbe secrets is embodied in a dynamic rite of social control. In a bold spectacle of music, song, and dance, the leopard spirit demonstrates its natural prowess. Fierce, cunning, and agile, his movements exude danger and inspire awe. The ultimate power of the leopard spirit is unknown; its very presence is a mystery".

​ ​Elegance and associative force come together in this Olokun cosmogram, a visual depiction of the cosmos, a collage made from Norma Rosen's redrawing of Benin Olokun chalk art in "The Initiation of a Priestess: Performance and Imagery in Olokun Ritual" with Joseph Nevadomsky, from where comes the central image depicting the initiatory progression of the person being inducted into Olokun mysteries, and from Rosen's "Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship", from which are drawn the two igha-ede, circles shaped by radiating lines, used, among other purposes, in indicating the division and convergence of material and spiritual space and time, in relation to infinity. The Oba's coronation progression may be visualized in terms of this image, the concentric circles bisected by vertical lines at the top and bottom of the symbol connoting a point of departure at the bottom and a point of consummation at the top, representing the Crown Prince's movement from his palace at Uselu to his crowning as Oba and his movement into his palace in Benin. The motion evoked by the vertical lines rising from and into the concentric circles, in tandem with the spatio-temporal coordinates projected by the Olokun symbols, also indicate, in this context, the correlation between the royal progression and the human quest for ultimate meaning actualized through an engagement with the parameters of one's experiences at a point in time and space.The concentric circles at the bottom stand for one's spatio-temporal location and its psychological and social framework and the circles at the top for the ultimate reality one strives to orient oneself towards. The intersecting lines at the mid-point of the vertically ascending lines suggest climatic points in the progress of this orientation, a progression also suggested by the ladder on the right. The circular forms flanking the tableau and configured by intersecting lines indicate the convergence of contrastive but complementary aspects of being in constituting existence, with the human being positioned at the centre of the metaphysical matrix represented by the circles or as looking upon it from outside, a perception of the cosmos as an integral part of it or an effort to perceive it from a standpoint outside it, possibly impossible in practice, but an imaginatively plausible stance, Hindu yantras and Buddhist mandalas, as demonstrated by Madhu Khanna's Yantra : The Tantric Symbol of of Cosmic Unity, being, to the best of my knowledge, the most highly developed of such aspirations through geometric symbolism. Looking at the books in his library, which, in the spirit of one of those books, the Italian writer Dante Alighieri's Commedia, tried to encapsulate the cosmos, he came to realize that the efforts they represented simply constituted another addition to the cosmos, the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges writes on a character in one of his stories in Labyrinths, as the writer explores his abiding theme of the human hunger to grasp ultimate reality and the challenges that compulsion involves. The undulating lines that frame this visual dynamism represent waves of water, suggesting Olokun's aquatic domain, used here, in addition, in connoting the flow of ise, vital force, as understood in Benin cosmology, in enabling change within stability in the construction of the cosmos. Ise, described by Daryl Peavy in "Ase or Vital Force of Transformation and Empowerment" and "The Benin Monarchy : Olokun and Iha Ominigbon" (112,118-9 ), is a concept correlative with similar ideas presented by John Mbiti in African Religions and Philosophy as unifying various African cosmologies, an idea correlatable with Mbiti's depiction of the perception of the rhythm of rainfall as suggesting cosmic dynamism in those world views. Peavy points out in his essay that similar conceptions are also evident beyond African systems, as Edward Goldsmith also observes, a classic example of this being the use of the imagery of water in connoting related ideas in Chinese thought, as discussed in Sarah Allan's The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue. A foundational definition of vital force, an idea which seems to have been been made prominent in studies of African cosmology by Placide Tempels in his Bantu Philosophy, the controversial character of his analysis, evident, among many other responses, in B. Matolino's "Tempel's Philosophical Racialism", comes from the English Oxford Living Dictionaries, defining the concept in terms that draw upon Western thought but which may also be understood as summing up an aspect of the African perspective, "(in some theories, particularly that of [French philosopher Henri ] Bergson) a hypothetical force, independent of physical and chemical forces, regarded as being the causative factor in the evolution and development of living organisms". This creative potential is further associated in African thought with consciousness and with the ability of the human being to direct their own embodiment of this force in the creation of change, the discussion of the Yoruba equivalent ase in Henry John Drewal et al's Yoruba : Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought and of the Igbo variant ike by Chinua Achebe in "The Igbo World and its Art", being two other highly suggestive expositions of this rich idea in African metaphysics.

The triadic structure defined by the undulating lines, the concentric circles, and the vertical and intersecting lines, adapts Barbara Winston Blackmun in "Icons and Emblems in Ivory: An Altar Tusk from the Palace of Old Benin" (156-7) of the triadic principle, particularly in connection with the Oba, as central to Benin thought, and Iroko Eweka's demonstration of the Oba/Olokun/Osanobua correlation in Olokun graphic art in "Olokun Symbols", in suggesting the association of the Oba, Olokun and Osanobua in Edo thought as well as the possibility of interpreting the Oba in terms of EveryHuman as representing the relationship between the human being and the aquatic constitution of the earth and the human body, an aquatic presence understood as a divine identity, Olokun, and with the ultimate reality that enables existence, Osanobua.

A magnificent evocation of the confluence of the numinous and the organization of society in terms of a natural entity, the leopard, that resonates with the constellation of associations in terms of which the Benin monarchy is constructed. In addition, those examples of ukara depicting the abstract and figurative representations of the leopard in visual dialogue with other Nsibidi motifs, both abstract and figurative, suggest the centrality of the leopard motif in the navigation of the forest of symbols, adapting that expression from Charles Baudelaire's poem Correspondences and Victor Turner's appropriation of his anthropological text of the same name, that constitutes the Ekpe/Ngbe cosmos. This symbol space, being constituted, to a significant degree, in terms of depictions of animal, plant and celestial forms as well as abstractions suggesting the distillation, in terms of cognitive transmutations, of the sense perceptions represented by these natural forms, suggests the emphasis on human interaction with nature that is at the heart of the Ekpe/Mgbe cosmos and its correlations the culture of nature veneration in Benin, nature being recognized as a partner in humanity's efforts to relate with spiritual reality, even as a guide to engaging with the ultimate, as indicated to me in conversation by the Isekhure , the chief priest of Benin, and as evident in the various shrines in Benin consisting of groves, such as the grove shrine in Oro street, the large grove on a hill at Ikpoba slope and the sacredness recognized of the location in the forest at Ekenwan Road within which the Ogba river first breaks ground after a long underground journey, a space described as the dwelling of the goddess of the river.

Within the Ekpe/Ngbe contexts, the leopard becomes evocative of humanity's identification with forces of nature in which nature may be understood, to adapt an interpretation from my "Forest as Cosmos : Abiola Irele on Classical Yoruba Philosophy of Nature" of Abiola Irele's description of Yoruba hunter's poetry, Ijala, in "Tradition and the Yoruba Writer : Fagunwa, Tutuola and Soyinka" of forest as cosmos, of the ecological complexity and biological vitality of the forest as a microcosm of the cosmos in its integration of various forms of being, a perspective suggested by other African cosmologies such as that of the Beng as depicted by Alma Gottlieb's "Loggers vs Spirits in the Beng Forest,Coite d'Ivoire:Competing Models" in Michael Sheridan and Celia Nyameru's African Sacred Groves : Ecological Dynamics and Social Change and as suggested of a perspective from Ghanaian Akan philosophies by Ayi Kwei Armak's personal communication of his having adapted from Akan philosophies the interpretations of navigation within nature as paradigmatic for navigating human social experience in his philosophical novel, The Healers, these being aspects of the correlations I make between various ways of navigating space understood as a cosmological construct in "Hermeneutics of Space : Soyinka, Irele, Armah".

Along similar lines, the Oba's coronation ceremonies, within which the sacred and the secular intersect as he moves across an urbanscape configured as as a dialogue between sacred and secular space as represented by the variety of natural and human made shrines existing in close proximity with the expressions of the busy life of a modern metropolis, interacting with these different instantiations of spatial identity in terms distinctive to each, may be perceived in terms of the Oba, the Home Leopard integrating both human and non-human values of nature navigating an urbanscape exemplifying the convergence of spirit and matter, of erhinwein and agbon, that is the Benin cosmos.

​Chinyere Okafor's visualization of the conceptual space within which classical African theatre is actualized, from her "Behind the Inscrutable Wonder: The Dramaturgy of the Mask Performance in Traditional African Society", a framework that also elucidates the web of relations galvanized by the coronation ceremonies as the Oba re-enacts historical incidents, such as Oba Ewedo's 14th century bridge crossing, Oba Ewuare's climbing of palm trees to pluck fruits for a living in his struggles before becoming Oba, Oba Eweka I, in the 12th century, as heir to the throne, playing the akhue game, victory in which catalyzed his ability to speak , the exclamation he made on that occasion being subsequently modified to constitute his coronation name, theatrical activities conducted in full view of spectators, thereby demonstrating Okafor's description of the core of drama as consisting of "three basic elements: performers engaged in mimetic action, spectators, and place of representation (which can be either indoors or outdoors)". Okafor uses concentric circles in suggesting the co-inherence of ontological categories subsumed within a universe in which matter and spirit intersect, a metaphysical framework dramatised by the centrality of sacred action, centred in prayers at shrines, as part of the coronation ceremonies.

The conjunction of the Oba and Olokun enables a a broad range of interpretive possibilities, particularly in relation to the coronation progression as a hermeneutic enterprise, an effort by the creators of this ceremonial cycle to mobilize a large range of ideas about Benin history. The space the Oba traverses in his journey may be understood as physical space, as historical space, as space symbolizing the possibilities of human development, as cosmic space and ultimately as a hermeneutic space, a constellation of interpretive possibilities invoking particular possibilities out of the sea of possibilities enabled by Benin history, this sea of possible interpretations being evocative of the primal generative role in terms of life on earth of the aquatic realm understood as Olokun's domain, a correlation between religious thinking and scientific thinking on the origins of terrestrial life developed by John Mason in Black Gods: Orisa Studies in the New World,Olokun being one of the deities shared by the Yoruba whose religion is Mason's focus and the Benin as part of their cultural and historical intertwining, although Olokun is male in Benin thought and female in Yoruba thought, to the best of my knowledge.

Within this context, the interpretive construction of physical space as a hermeneutic matrix actuated by the coronation ceremonies may be correlated with Ekpenede Idubor's visualization of Ighitan-Odin, a configuration from the Benin divinatory system Oguega, also known as Iha Ominigbon,of which Idubor describes, in a personal communication, his use of a blue background as symbolizing the ocean in in order to represent the Edo understanding of life as being like an ocean which Oguega is consulted as an aid to navigating. Organisation and Public Presentation of the Project

The project will be organized using a website, Benin Cartographic Mysticism : Exploring Space, Body and Mind through Benin-City, which will present the unfolding of the coronation in images and verbal texts, elaborating on the various ideas involved.The website is very much in preparation but is open to public view so people can watch it grow into a definitive identity as text and images are added over time. The pictures on the site at present are those provided as a guide by Wix, the company that created the free website structure I am adapting. A visual and ideational template in interpreting the coronation process, similar to my use of particular works of art as conceptual platforms in exploring remembering and forgetting in "Memory and Amnesia", is provided by the art of Nosa Ekpenede Idubor which distills the coronation rites in relation to an abstract visualization of the structure of Benin-City, an image I build upon in developing the theoretical framework for this project in the essay "Cartographic Mysticism in the Context of Benin Spatial Symbolism" in which cartographic mysticism is described as "the use of relationships between spatial locations as a means of mapping the cosmos in order to gain intimate experience of its essential nature". Another essay, "The Edigin N'Use, the Oba of Benin and the Akhue Game : A Symbolic Enactment of Benin History", is in preparation, directly inspired by Victor Ekhator's arresting picture of the Edigin N'Use in wait for the Crown Prince to arrive at the Edigin's palace for the Akhue game. Another essay in development is "Crossing the Bridge of Challenge", engaging with Akintunde Akinyele's photograph of the newly crowned Oba symbolically enacting Oba Ewedo's (1255 AD) crossing of a river in the lsekherhe territory using an improvised bridge in order to move to a new palace that would enable him shield himself from the conflicts generated by living in the same location as the Uzama, the councilors of state, the river crossing in a context involving transformative risk that may engage sacred action being also an archetypal motif evoking the navigation of cosmographic space, a motif diversely replicated in African ( and other mythologies), as described by Joseph Nevadomsky in "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 3: The Coronation of the Oba" (53-4 ) and "The Benin Kingdom: Rituals of Kingship and their Social Meanings 1" ( 72-3). The project website is very much in preparation but is open to public view so people can watch it unfold into a definitive identity as text and images are added over time. The images on the site at present are those provided as a guide by Wix, the company that created the free website template I am adapting.

​Terrestrial progression within cosmographic coordinates actualized by the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin, visualized through the superimposition of Benin Olokun chalk symbols, as recreated by Norma Rosen in "Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship", top and bottom and by Iro Eweka in "Olokun Symbols", middle, on Nosa Ekpenede Idubor's depiction of the coronation progression in terms of the motion from Uselu to Ekopagha of the Home Leopard, the Oba of Benin. Spatio-temporal coordinates are traversed by the coronation pilgrimage at the intersection of matter and spirit, of time and eternity,of the divine and the human, the igha-ede recreated by Rosen evoking these conjunctions of diverse but complemerary modes of being as the symbol used by Eweka conjoins these synergies in terms of an evocation of solar illumination representing the invigoration of being by the human/divine matrix symbolised by the coronation ceremonies.

Sources for Images and Explanations of the Coronation Ceremonies

I know of five groups of sources for images, explanations and interpretations of the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin. These are pictures, films, art, conventionally published texts and the oral accounts of informed people. The richest visual sources for the 2016 coronation known to me are the pictures on individuals' Facebook accounts, films on YouTube and Facebook and images in online news reports and the websites of photo agencies such as Getty Images. The most informative collection of pictures I have encountered so far are at the Facebook account of Victor Ekhator, their value consisting in his organizing and labeling the photographs in terms of the sequence and dates of the coronation rites, in the quality of the pictures and his explanations of the significance of some of the images. Complementing Ekhator's matching of sequence, images and explanation are the Facebook pictures of Benin chief Ambrose Osuan, particularly the often high quality photographs with explanations, depicting his strategic roles in the 2016 coronation of Oba Ewuare II and the 1979 coronation of the Oba's father Erediauwa I. Edo centred Facebook pages, such as Edo House, also display rich image collections of the 2016 and 1979 coronations. Continued searching on Facebook and access to more individual accounts of people, mainly those whose immediate ancestry is Benin and who were at the coronation, will yield more pictures and information. Most news reports on the coronation provide general information and some detail, and between them, contribute significantly to building the pictorial image of the ceremonies. The YouTube videos of the grand activities project vividly the excitement and pageantry of the celebrations. Bringing together what I discover, I display my online sources at Studying Great Benin, a Facebook page I set up for the project. I use the Facebook group Research for saving links to potential ideas or information sources outside Benin studies, but which could be relevant for my work on Benin and for other projects. The most detailed and analytically encompassing verbal accounts known to me of the sequence, symbolism and further interpretive possibilities of the coronation ceremonies come from the scholarly articles of Joseph Nevadomsky and Joseph Eboreime. The most comprehensive of these are Nevadomsky's detailed examination of the 1979 coronation of Oba Erediauwa I, beginning from the ascension of the Crown Prince to his role as Edaiken of Uselu, the sending off of the departed Oba, his father, and the eventual crowning of the Edaiken of Uselu, the Crown Prince, as Oba Erediauwa I, represented by the essay with Daniel E. Inneh, "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 1: Becoming a Crown Prince" ( African Arts, Vol. 17, No. 1, Nov., 1983, pp. 47-54+87), followed by "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 2: The Big Things" (African Arts, Vol. 17, No. 2, Feb., 1984, pp. 41-47+90-91 ) and "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 3: The Coronation of the Oba" (African Arts, Vol. 17, No. 3, May, 1984, pp. 48-57+91-92 ). Nevadomsky's rich and exciting "The Benin Kingdom: Rituals of Kinship and their Social Meanings 1" (African Study Monographs, 1993, 14(2): 65-77) sums up and reinterprets those earlier essays, contextualizing the Edaiken ascension rites, the Oba's departure rituals and the coronation ceremonies, relating this sequence centred in the processes of transition involving the Obaship with other ceremonies performed by the chiefs and the Oba, discussing the meanings of these symbolic actions in terms of their understanding within the Benin hermeneutic matrix, how they are interpreted by the participants themselves, the Oba and the chiefs, and relates them to theories from the relevant globally dominant disciplinary constructions and to scholarship on Benin. Nevadomsky thus deftly telescopes a massive range of reference in this discussion, abbreviating significantly in order to project the breadth of the picture being painted.

Nevadomsky's explorations are complemented by Joseph Eboreime's essays also built on the 1979 coronation of Oba Erediauwa I, "Coronation as Drama: The Installation of a Benin Monarch as a Study in the Continuity of Kingship: The Transformation and the Manufacture of Ethnic Identity" (The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology,Vol. 10, No. 2, 1985, pp. 41-53) and "The Installation of a Benin Monarch: Rite De Passage in the Expression of Ethnic Identity in Nigeria" ( ICOMOS International Council of Monuments and Sites Archive), depicting the coronation ceremonies as processes, grounded in rituals invoking ancestral and non-human spirits into companionship with humans, demonstrating the deliberate creation and transformation of social meaning, changing in response to internal and external social pressures, processes directed at consolidating the power of the monarchy as a point of focus for the Benin Kingdom when it existed and for Edo people who are native to Benin, for non-Edos within Benin and for other ethnicities in contemporary Edo state, an imperative of particular significance on account of the attenuation of the political authority of the Oba created by the colonial experience, the coronation being a spectacle enjoyed, and, to some degree, participated in, by all who care to do so, an understanding of the amplification of royal power and the sustaining of social cohesion through the coronation rites also discussed by Nevadomsky.

New Possibilities Afforded by the 2016 Coronation

Not only is each stage in the coronation sequences Nevadomsky and Eboreime discuss rich enough to yield an essay or even a book, the outpouring of information and images on the recently concluded coronation ceremonies makes it clear that this strategic zone of Benin social existence has opened up in a manner unprecedented, enabling access to knowledge from within the cognoscenti of Benin court ritual but also disseminating that knowledge freely to the public, facilitating the presentation of the coronation in a manner that enables a very significant extension of the level of detail provided by Nevadomsky and Eboreime while drawing upon their scope of reference and their interpretations. The image feast emerging from this year's coronation, courtesy of the explosion of access to photographic devices in Nigeria, from the mobile phone and computer tablet to cameras, in use by general citizens and professionals, and the ready availability of publishing platforms for the display of these images, of which such social media as Facebook are central, suggests that an unprecedented opportunity has arrived to collect and organize visual and verbal information of this great event.

Olokun symbol of earth, by Nosa Ekpenede Idubor

Project Funding

The project is funded by Jhalobia Recreation Park and Gardens, Murtala Muhammed Airport Road, Lagos Nigeria, a pioneering landscaping and garden company whose work in landscape architecture is correlative with this project in terms of Jhalobia's commitment to transformation of space in visual and symbolic terms and whose work in shaping architectural interiors through plants and fabrics is resonant with the interior structures through which sacred meaning is concretised in Benin culture.

All further funding, assisting the buying of time to spend on the project, as well as of services and materials, would be welcome and publicly acknowledged. Any information or images relevant to the project would also be welcome, by any medium, email

( toyin.adepoju@gmail.com), Facebook, surface mail or by phone to +447704257164 and credit for the information and images provided given to those who made them available.