PALACE sculps OF ABOMEY History Told in succession Walls Francesca Pique and Leslie H Rainer.

PALACE sculps OF ABOMEY History Told in succession Walls

Francesca Pique and Leslie H Rainer, with contributions through Jerome C. Alladaye, Rachida de Souza-Ayari, and Suzanne Preston Blier

Conservation and Cultural Heritage series 3 The Getty Conservation Institute and the J Paul Getty Museum, 1999 116 pp 18 b/w & 136 color illustrations, 4 maps. $2495 paper.

In the early seventeenth hundred Fon peoples (of the contemporary Republic of Benin) established a society that would be commanded by a dynasty of directors who created and expanded the Dahomey kingdom, building an extraordinary composed of several elements of palaces in the capital, Abomey, that became the heart of the kingdom's civic, social, and religious life. The mire walls of the palace were embellished with multicolored bas-reliefs that told many of Dahomey's famous fictions and stories of military subjection while celebrating the reign and accomplishments of individual kings. In a civilization historically without written language, these artworks have sustained a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of the kingdom's past glory. Nondichao Bachalou, the official historian of the royal families of Abomey, states: "The bas-reliefs are our no other than remaining `written' history. They are history told upon walls" (p.3).

Palace statuary of Abomey recounts the history of the kingdom between the walls of an in-depth exploration of its royal palace edifices and these narrative sculptural views The magnificent visual imagery (color photographs of the palace formation bas-reliefs, applique arts, and rare nineteenth-century historical photographs and illustrations) is guided by means of a succinct and engaging paragraph and explicit captions for each illustration. In addition, the volume details the collaborative efforts of the Benin Ministry of civilization and Communication and the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) to jam the bas-reliefs.

The convolution is divided into nine sections, including an introduction, followed through suggested readings and acknowledgments. The introduction lays on the outside the general history and functions of Abomey's palace conformations and bas-reliefs as "cultural memory" of Fon folkss which by the late 1800 set forthed ten successive generations of Abomey kings. However, a casualty of time, nature, and humankind, the entire palace combine was included among the endangered sites onward UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1985 just forty years after the Historic Museum of Abomey, housed in these royal blends was established as the first national museum in west Africa. In 1988 the palace of King Glele a nineteenth-century super-king, had to be rebuilt because of structural damage. Before this royal residence was demolished, however, its fifty-six bas-reliefs were wound out of the walls and stored through every part of the palace. Enter the Getty Conservation Institute.

Following an initial assessment in 1991 the GCI undertook an intensive collaborative danger with the Republic of Benin's Ministry of agriculture and Communication that lasted from 1993 to late 1997 The institute was to document the condition of the carves investigate the sources of their retrogression, and stop further deterioration. In tandem with this ambitious intend the GCI set up conservation training and a maintenance and monitoring program for members of Benin's Department of Cultural Heritage to make secure the long-term benefits of their shared conservation efforts. While local artists were hired to replicate the original bas-reliefs for the recently made known palace facade being reconstructed from the Beninese government, the GCI's team of conservators and scientists focussed forward repairing the original works. The great succes of the cast is today evident in the Historical Museum: a wager of fifty conserved bas-reliefs are now integrated into the museum's exhibition spaces, allowing visitors to witness the continued glory of Dahomey's royal dynasty.

Accompanied through a useful timeline, the nearest section of the book, "The Kingdom of Dahomey," instants a deftly condensed history of the kingdom's famous "expansionist tradition" (p9) within brief discussions of individual sovereigns renowned for their accomplishments in this regard: King Houegbaja (reigned ca. 1645-85) who baseed the kingdom in the seventeenth century; King Agaja (r ca. 1708-32) who subjugated the critical port town of Ouidah; King Guezo (r 1818-58) who held the monopoly in succession the Ouidah slave trade; Guezo's son King Glele (r 1858-89) who resisted European intervention in the highly lucrative slaving market. We are given details of Dahomey's last independent governor King Behanzin (r. 1889-94), who is distinguished as a great resistance fighter who attempted to safeguard his kingdom from French colonizers. Near the conclusion of his reign, King Behanzin ordered his throngs to burn the royal palaces rather than diocese them fall into French hands. Before he and his family went into French-imposed exile (illustrated in succession a 1905 French postcard forward p.20), the king gave an address to his soldiers that to this day is taught to Beninese schoolchildren as common of the most important speeches in Fon history (reproduc forward p.19). In 1897 the French appointed Behanzin's half-brother, Agoli-Agbo I, to stand as king (though stripped of his power) in the French-controll colony of Dahomey, simply to depose and exile him shortly thereafter, and formally abolish Abomey's royal dynasty. Today's king, a descendant of Agoli-Agbo, is a delegate representative of the royal lineage who carries gone out fundamental ceremonial duties (pp.8-23).