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Clothing

The

Iblitica dentity
Costume

in

the

and

Benin

Scarification
Kingdom

* EKHAGUOSA
AISIEN
JOSEPHNEVADOMSKY

62

african
arts winter
1995

You feel you areno longerclothingyourself;you aredressing

a nationalmonument.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

n November 14, 1986, an amusing but significant event occurred in the courtyard of the
Oba's palace in Benin City, Nigeria. The palace hosted a fashion show.
Before an appreciative audience of chiefs,
spectators, reporters, and television crews,
a parade of male court attendants humorously mimicked Western fashion
models. Pirouetting as if on a runway,
they showed off a two-piece garment
newly sanctioned by the king for daily
and ceremonial wear. The bottom half of
the apparel retained the billowy fullness
of the ankle-length eyoen, the skirt-like
wrapper worn by titleholders, but as the
palace attendants neatly demonstrated by
lifting up their skirts, it had an additional
advantage: built-in shorts, complete with
pockets and fly. This eliminated the potential for embarrassment the traditional
wrapper brought its wearer on his way to
the palace by bicycle or motorcycle.
Far more striking (and ultimately revealing), the top part of the garment
(Figs. 1, 2)-a simple blouse in round and
V-neck stylesl-displayed
appliqu6 designs identical to the iwu (tattoos) that
once graced the torsos of all male and
female Bini (Edo) citizens (Fig. 3). Thread
had replaced the knife to produce not just
the Bini equivalent of haute couture but
also a symbol of ethnic identity. As the
Iyase of Benin and the master of ceremonies, Chief the Honorable Justice S. O.
Ighodaro, made clear, the attire was a signifier: "The palace has decreed," he said
in a prepared statement, "that [the costume] should be worn at play, and at
work, for formal and informal occasions,
and especially on those occasions when
your ethnic identity as a citizen of the
Edo Kingdom needs to be emphasized."
Playfully if self-consciously, the palace
had taken a defunct mark of citizenship

and recontextualized it in an innovative

and painless fashion. The disappearance
of cultural meanings formerly conveyed
by the traditional body tattoos was now
offset by the emergence of reconfigured
meanings conveyed in cloth. The palace
had not so much reinvented tradition
(Hobsbawn & Ranger 1983) as re-created

it. The Bini would again have marks of

identity that, like the iwu, distinguish
them as native sons and daughters. Proud
citizens of an empire a century ago, they
are smaller fry in today's nation-state, continually beset by the territorial infringements and political gains of neighboring
groups that the Bini once enslaved. The

Oppositepage, left:1. Palaceattendantsmodel

round and V-neckstyles of the ewu-iwu,the
shirt with appliqueversions of traditionaltattoo designs, created by EkhaguosaAisien in
1986. BeninCity,Nigeria,November1986.
x

Opposite page, right:2. The ewu-iwuof the

king's bodyguards,distinguishedby a spearpoint blade on the left. Benin City,November
1986.

o
I

Right:3. A palacechief withclearlydefinedtattoos (iwu).TheBinipracticeof tattooingdiedout

aboutfiftyyearsago, andtodayiwucan be seen
onlyon oldermenandwomen.BeninCity,1987.
africanarts*winter1995

63

new attire, emblematically emphasizing

group membership and particularism,
makes a semiotic statement about status
hierarchy (superordination/subordination) and cultural oppositions (civilized/barbaric) like those which defined
the relations between Bini citizens and
aliens in the heyday of the empire.
But while the principles embodied by
the traditional tattoos were implicit and
unconscious, the patterns on the garment
are explicitly pedagogical. The inspira-

tion for the dress is consciously motivated by a desire to bolster the king's secular power by acting upon the ancient
symbols that in the past reflected it. The
apparel is meant not only as an expression of the corporate body, fashioned into
a heightened ethnicity, but also as a catalyst for positive public sentiment for the
palace. Like a flag or military uniform,
the dress stimulates allegiance and coalesces the kind of political consciousness
the palace and its supporters believe is
necessary to maintain their political clout
and ensure a continuing alignment of
regional power in their favor.
Nigeria's history of political instability
since independence-in thirty-two years
there have been eight military coups and
only nine years of civilian rule-has in
some ways helped sustain allegiance to
traditional rulers. As in Uganda, where
the government's restoration of four traditionally powerful kingdoms (Ganda,
Toro, Bunyoro, and Ankole) served as a
show of reconciliation in a nation suffering from years of ethnic strife and brutal
dictatorship, or in South Africa, where the
leaders of the revanchist Inkatha Freedom Party sought to reinvent an independent Zulu kingdom, sacral authority in Nigeria is far more than a spectacular anachronism. It is an anchor in
turbulent waters. Soon after he became the Sultan of Sokoto in 1991,
Ibrahim Dasuki said: "Nigeria today is
trying to blend military and civilian
government. But the ordinary man
still looks to traditional institutions as
his last resort" (The Los Angeles Times,
May 14,1992:H6). Indeed, until General
Sani Abacha dissolved all democratic
institutions in November 1993, there had
been talk of adding a House of Chiefs to
the proposed bicameral legislature. It had
become increasingly clear that Nigerian
traditional rulers represented the main
social reality for many people, providing
meaning amidst clashing and ineffectual
ideologies, and promising security in a
fragile polity.
The Cultural Construction
of Clothing
Discussions of clothing often occur in the
context of taste or aesthetics. Clothing is
thought of as propelled by an internal
logic ("style cycles"), artistic concerns
("color and form"), or production ("market mechanisms") (Langdon 1979).
Hilda Kuper's articles on Swazi costume, cosmology, and identity (1973a, b)
signaled a shift from clothing as mere
fashion to clothing as political communi4. Figureof a court officialwhose face displays the "cat's whiskers" scarification.
Benin kingdom,Nigeria,18th/19thcentury.
MuBrass, 57.1cm(22.5").The Metropolitan
seum of Art,New York,Giftof Mr.and Mrs.
KlausG. Perls, 1991.

64

cation ("Both power and relationships are

revealed in dress, uniforms and costume,
as well as other social goods"; 1973b:349),
while the work of Roland Barthes (1983
[1967]) interpreted clothing as a system of
signs. Bernard Cohn's (1989) depiction of
British efforts in India to exploit the symbolic import of how one dressed dovetails
the political and semiotic implications of
clothing. As the colonizers moved toward
"orientalizing" their subjects (e.g., "turbanizing" the Sikhs), Indians began to
dress as Englishmen. Susan Bean (1989)
tells us that Gandhi himself experimented
with various forms of dress, gradually
giving up the image of the English gentleman as he comprehended the semiotics of
homespun cotton and spinning wheels,
transforming them into symbols of Indian
nationalism. Dress as a cultural phenomenon has been analyzed as texts (Ricoeur
1970), systems of interconnected symbols
(Geertz 1973), reflexive practice (Bourdieu
1977), intentional messages (Fabian 1979),
analogs for social reproduction (Borgatti
1983),and changing discriminations(Barnes
& Eicher 1992). Hegel long ago presaged
such interpretations by pointing out that
clothing signals the passage from sentience to meaning (1944:147).
The meanings of the new palace dress
are the subject of this article. Like Durkheim's collective representations (1965
[1912]), in which perceptions of society are
reflected in the material things that symbolize them, traditional iwu expressed
the social fabric. As part of the "sacred
skin" (Turner 1980), they communicated
social identity. The appliqu6 garment, on
the other hand, is more patently a political fabric. To paraphrase Barthes (1983
[1967]:9-10), sociologically the iwu dress
is a manifestation of history, but semiotically it is an imaginary garment. Our concern is more with the second half of this
equation, that is, with the process by
which the blouse becomes encoded with
new intellective significance.
What the works by Kuper, Bourdieu,
Borgatti, and others have in common is
that they move away from the passive
side of Duikheim's sociology, in which
material things such as clothing have
ideas about society inscribed upon them,
to the analysis of how inscriptions occur.
Such projects represent efforts to understand the processes of appropriation and
transformation: embodying more than
embodiment. This paper, too, considers
the material culture of the garment less
as a constructed reality than as a reality being constructed. But it goes further
by emphasizing the transubstantiation
achieved by the deliberate redefinition
of a bodily habit rather than the evolutionary mutation from social skin to
political garment.
Since the shirt (ewu iwu) inscribes (and
condenses) historical assertions of society-hierarchy, authority, ethnicity, and
gender, but also art, ritual, and mediafricanarts* winter1995

cine-our task requires that we first investigate iwu as a repository of collective representations, that is, as a cultural artifact.
Then we consider iwu as a fabrication, a
political icon in the making, to show how
the garment, stitched together from a historical consciousness, carries a load of new
information, and so transforms from fashion statement into vestimentary code.
Scarification and Tattooing
in the Benin Kingdom
Although social scarring has the widest
distribution in Africa (Rubin 1988:1), to
signal ethnic identity and role relations
the Bini tattooed their skin. Scarification
(deliberate incisions that leave deep scars)
and cicatrization (the intentional formation of keloids) serve medicinal rather
than strictly social purposes. Although the
faces of four of the horseman statuettes
and the figural type known as the "messenger" in the Benin corpus of brass castings display a "cat's whiskers" motif, it is
unlikely that this represents a Bini scarification pattern (Nevadomsky 1993:214-15)
(Fig. 4). Also, the double vertical forehead
slits on ivory belt masks (Fig. 5), commemorative trophy heads, and Ododua masks
are not scars at all but an artistic representation of character. Known as "cane
of eye," the slits signify determination,
seriousness of purpose, and, as a friend
informed Joseph Nevadomsky, "men [or
women; e.g., the Idia queen mother heads]
of substance" (Nevadomsky 1986:43).
Today many Bini recall the frowning brow
of the late Oba Akenzua II as an endearing
part of his persona.
Another marking, a tattoo that runs
from the tip of nose to the forehead, is featured on hip pendants (Fig. 6) as a
cross-hatched pattern (Duchateau 1994:
pl. 75) or copper inlay (Lerer 1993: pl. 1),
but it is not altogether clear if this represents a tattoo, a scar, or a medicinal smear.
A smear of animal blood on the forehead
fortifies and rejuvenates; a smear of chalk
denotes harmony and happiness. At a
burial, mourners (known collectively as
ibi-orinmwin,"charcoal-mourners") rub a
line of lamp-black on their foreheads
(Fig. 7) to scare away the spirit of the
deceased who tries to drag his relatives
with him into the other world: Arhon gbe
ibi erinmwin wia tere ("The mourners
wear charcoal to repel the spirit"). However, some riverain groups south of
Benin once had a forehead tattoo, and
P.A. Talbot claimed the Bini had a "similar cicatrice but not so large nor so much
raised" (1926:400, figs. 105-6). Duarte
Pereira, the Portuguese trader who visited Benin City after Ewuare's reign (ca.
A.D. 1440-1472), referred to these marks
when he wrote, "The people of Benin
and its neighborhood are branded with a
line above the eyebrows; it is their distinctive mark and no other Africans have
it" (1505, vol. 2:125-26).
africanarts*winter1995

5. Beltmaskwithdoubleslits on the forehead.

Benin kingdom, Nigeria,16th century. Ivory,
23.8cm(9.5").TheMetropolitan
Museumof Art,
The MichaelC. RockefellerMemorialCollection,Giftof NelsonA. Rockefeller,1972.

on the chest or back, and parallel lines on

thighs and calves are signs of powerful
medicines like owegbe. There are also
minute medicinal keloids about the diameter of the lead in a mechanical pencil.
Usually seen as a series of three tiny
marks on various parts of the body (e.g.,
cheeks, between the breasts, in the small
of the back, on the shoulders), the keloids,
which are quite common, contain protective medicines. Although he mistakenly
calls them tattoos, Burton refers to such
cuts on the face: "The general mark was a
tattoo of three parallel cuts about one-half
inch long, and placed close together upon
both cheeks about halfway between the
eye and the corer of the mouth" (in
Talbot 1926, vol. 2:399).

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITANMUSEUM OF ARI

There are, too, the supraorbital keloids, three or four in number, prominent
on brass heads (Dark 1960: pls. 63, 67, 70)
(Fig. 8; also Figs. 4, 6, 10, 11). The Bini,
having no lexical term for these keloids,
instead refer to them as igho-eho ("three
cowries [money]") and igho-ene ("four
cowries"). Unfortunately their significance is not very clear. Paula Ben-Amos
(1980:81) believes that women had four
keloids over each eyebrow and men
three, according to a presumed Bini usage
of characterizing the odd number as masculine, the even number as feminine. But
brass artifacts show the violation of this
gender distinction. Those who can still
remember them claim they were a matter
of personal taste. Mrs. Agbonlaho Aigbaghonghon recalled that both her parents had three keloids over each eyebrow,
"for appearance" (pers. com., 1987), while
several others noted that the scars proved
one came from a good family (i.e., freeborn). Perhaps as BarbaraBlackmun suggests (1982:17), the keloids were more
aesthetic than functional.
The "beauty berries" mentioned by Sir
Richard Burton, who visited Benin City
late in the nineteenth century, are also
puzzling. He describes them as "buttons
of raised flesh that much resemble exanthemata" (1863; cited in Talbot 1926, vol.
2:399). An example of unciphered berry-like scarifications is a cast plaque pictured in Kate Ezra's book on the Perls collection (1992: pl. 36). The central figure on
the plaque displays abdominal and
upper-arm designs. Some figures also
have abdominal scars that intersect. Such
crosslike scars, sets of three parallel scars

Iwu Origins and Purpose

Iwu, depicted on many brass and ivory
figural works (Figs. 9-11), are of considerable antiquity. The practice survived
until the 1940s. They can still be seen on
very old people but are disappearing as
the senior generation dies out. Dierick
Ruyters, the Dutch chronicler who sojourned in Benin City early in the seventeenth century, gave us our first description: "[The Bini] cut their body from the
armpits to about the groin, or in the middle, with three long cuts on both sides,
each one finger broad, and consider this a
great virtue conducive to their salvation"
(1602, in Talbot 1926, vol. 2:399). The merchant David Nyandael later commented
on the gender variation of the tattoos:
"The females are more adorned with
these ornaments than the males, and each
at the pleasure of their parents. You may
easily guess that this mangling of the
bodies of these tender creatures may be
very painful; but since it is the fashion
here and is thought very ornamental, it is
practiced by everybody" (1705, in Talbot,
p. 399). In 1889 the Englishman C. Punch
described the operation: "All girls had to
undergo it. The child was laid down and
held by the mother, and the expert proceeded to scrape the skin at the place
required, with a sharp glass, very lightly,
as one erases a blot of ink on a book. I
was not told that anything was rubbed
into the skin...but the child's suffering
was acute" (in Talbot, p. 399). A quarter
century earlier, Sir Richard Burton had
described the tattoos as "three broad
stripes of scar, like the effects of burning,
down the front of the body from the chest
to the lower stomach," and also mentioned the forehead iwu: "vertical lines of
similar marks above the eyebrows" (in
Talbot, p. 399).
65

i-

OW

'

)!

--: es,..

PHOTOS: FIG 6. CARRIE O'CONNELL:FIG 7. JOSEPH NEVADOMSKY

Left: 6. Hip ornament. Benin kingdom, Nigeria.

Brass with copper inlay, 17cm (6.75"). Private
collection.
The marking that runs from the forehead to the
end of the nose may represent a tattoo, a scar,
or a medicinal smear (see Fig. 7).
Right: 7. A daughter of Oba Akenzua II at the
burial rites for her father. The smear of charcoal on her forehead and the shuttle (abokpo)
in her hand ward off the spirit of the deceased.
Benin City, November/December 1978.

While these commentaries testify to the

antiquity and continuity of iwu, they are
silent about its origins. Here one has to rely
on oral histories. In one version collected
by Ekhaguosa Aisien from Unionmwan
Orokhorho (pers. com., 1985), a traditional
surgeon, the tattoos originated during the
reign of Oba Ehengbuda in the late sixteenth century. Ehengbuda married the
daughter of the Yorubaruler of Akure, but
she refused to consummate the marriage
because he did not have "Akure tribal
marks." The enraged Ehengbuda abused
his wife, word of which reached the
Alakure. When Ehengbuda visited Akure,
his father-in-law attacked him with a cutlass, and Ehengbuda's body thereafter
bore the scars of this assault. So as not to
embarrass their king, his subjects imitated
them. Jacob Egharevba, however, offered a
different account (1968:15):iwu originated
with Oba Ewuare (ca. 1440). Ewuare, distraught over the death of two of his sons

66

on the same day, punished his subjects,

who then fled the city in panic. To stem
this exodus and ensure that deserting subjects could be easily identified, Ewuare
ordered everyone tattooed.

Both narratives point to an essential

purpose of iwu: to mark citizenship and
birthright.Visible and indelible, the tattoos
acknowledged one's right as ovien-oba,
"slave of the king." For every freeborn citizen of Benin, "I am a slave of the king"
remains a declaration of ethnic pride. The
ancient Roman boast that one was a citizen
of Rome is quite similar.
Although Nyandael and Burton stated
that tattooing took place during infancy
and youth, the information we have is
that it occurred when "a young man came

Left:8. Head of a queen mother,with supraorbital keloids. Benin kingdom, Nigeria,

18th/19thcentury. Brass, iron; 52cm (20.5").
The MetropolitanMuseumof Art, Collection
of KatherinePerls.
Oppositepage, clockwisefromtop left:
9. Engravedbox, with figure displaying iwu.
Benin kingdom,Nigeria,16th-19thcenturies.
Ivory, length 14cm (5.5"). The Metropolitan
Museumof Art,Giftof Mr.and Mrs.Klaus G.
Perls, 1991.
10. Ifa divinationtapperwith tattooed figure.
Owo, Nigeria, 17th-19th centuries. Ivory,
wood/coconut shell; 29.2cm (11.5").Collection of Mr.and Mrs.KlausG. Perls.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITANMUSEUM OF ART

11. Bowl with caryatidfigure displaying tattoos. Owo, Nigeria.Ivory,16.5cm (6.5").The

MetropolitanMuseumof Art, Gift of Mr.and
Mrs.KlausG. Perls, 1991.
africanarts* winter1995

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITANMUSEUM OF ART

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITANMUSEUM OF ART

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITANMUSEUM OF ART

african
arts*winter
1995

67

of age" and "during spinsterhood" for

young women, that is, between puberty
and marriage. Although the tattoos were
marks of ethnic affiliation, they also expressed a social commitment to marriage.
Indeed, marriage made them mandatory-no man would marry a woman without them (see Punch's comment). The
community called a mother's children
omo iwu ("children of the tattoo") when
necessary to distinguish them from more
distant blood relations such as a grandchild. The tattoos were thus transformative, signaling a change in jural status
(unmarried/ married, youth/adult).
There was little fuss about the operation, however. The whole procedure was
perfunctory and matter-of-fact: a woman
needed them to marry and so did a man.
Because the pain was intense the experience was of course a memorable one, but
the surgery was seldom highlighted by
either special rituals or the collective participation of the age group or community.
Mrs. Aigbaghonghon (Fig. 12), for instance,
got her facial tattoos at age thirteen, just
after her first menses. Five years later she
received her torso tattoos, prior to marriage. Her parents arranged for the surgery, but her husband-to-be gave her an
"incision feast" (emiwu) to commemorate
it. Years later she had the tattoos redone
because they were not dark enough. In
another case, Edokopolo Omomo and his
twin sister, Iyoha, got tattooed at the
same time (Fig. 13). Mrs. Ekiosa Aguebor,
daughter of Chief Aguebor, the Osuma of
Benin, had her iwu done by the female surgeon Edugie Orokhorhor in 1925, during

the reign of Oba Eweka II (1914-1932).

Photographs prove that Eweka II himself
had iwu, as did Akenzua II (1933-1978)
and his half-brothers.
Until the 1930s no male citizen without tattoos could exercise his prerogative
of membership in the palace societies. As
Talbot informs us, "No one save 'marked'
Bini, Europeans, and people from Ufe
(Ife) from which city the royal family had
originally come, was allowed to enter the
palace" (1926, vol. 2:737). The absence of
tattoos was a serious civic handicap, as
repugnant as the absence of circumcision
and clitoridectomy. An unmarked body is
Egbe ne o ma la okuen ("The body that has
not bled okuen").Okuenis a sort of clotted
blood in the body, removed by iwu surgery. Just as menstrual blood is polluting,
okuen, too, defiles. An adult without iwu,
that is, a person who still had this clotted
"bad fluid" in his system, was not considered a Bini citizen. Put another way, the
absence of iwu was itself a sign denoting
someone as igbon,or alien, but more derisively, as uncouth and savage. Bini elitism-a feeling that remains close to the
surface even today-translates into disdain and contempt for most outsiders,
some of whom were subject peoples and
victims of human sacrifice. In Benin Laws
and Customs, Egharevba states, "It is repugnant for a Bini woman to marry an
outsider" (1947:19). The absence of iwu
immediately identified such outsiders.2
In the art historical literature iwu are
described as "flame-shaped" (Bedaux &
Smits 1992:77) or "claw-like" (Blackmun
1991). Barbara Blackmun, for example,

suggests that iwu represent the claw

marks of a leopard: "Like the leopard
clawing its victim, Ewuare decreed forced
scarification..." (1991:33),but this is an external, art historical rather than indigenous interpretation. The Bini refer to iwu
as "blades" and clearly perceive them as
knifelike rather than clawlike. In fact, the
tattoos are wide, like the flat side of a
sword or cutlass. Scars, by contrast, are
without any appreciable width.
As part of the cultural geography of
the body, iwu mapped out ethnic terrain
and transformed the self, inscribed male
and female personhood, denoted stratification by pedigree, and delineated selected occupational roles. The information
that could be read off the tattoos reaffirmed separations of ethnicity, social
gender, and, rank between king and commoners, princes and princesses, and the
king's elite bodyguard. Iwu marked out
and authorized appropriate behavior and
etiquette. What Jean Borgatti says about
regalia establishing "an individual's role
by communicating in visual and symbolic terms the general parameters of expected behavior" (1983:10) applies to iwu.
Male body tattoos consisted of seven
blades, a symbolic number (Fig. 14). The
king and his sons had only six, however.
Women had sixteen, but the king's daugh-

Left: 12. Mrs. Agbonlaho Aigbaghonghon

shows off herfacialtattoos. Inthe past, these
were a prerequisiteto marriage.Benin City,
January1987.
Right:13. Twinslyohaand EdokopoloOmomo
display the body tattoos that used to signify
Biniidentity.BeninCity,January1987.

PHOTi

68

africanarts winter1995

Below:14. The seven iwu blades wornby Bini

men.

head") (Fig. 18) or a single blade (urhebo,

"medicine paste") named after the ground
charcoal mixture smeared on the forehead
to prevent premature death. Hugging both
sides of the nose and ending well above
the flaring of the nostrils were two small
-blades called ovbi-ihue ("child of the
nose") or ivbiye-ihue("sisters of the nose"),
and two longer cheek blades, agbaguda
n'irho ("blades of the cheeks"). Finally,
ovbi-agbamwen("child of jaw") consisted of
a small, dimple-like chin blade.

Right:15. The iwu of the king's bodyguards,

with the distinctivespear-pointblade.

The Iwu Surgeon

ters had fifteen. Also, princesses did not

have facial tattoos. The king's bodyguard,
the Isienmwenro, had a clearly delineated
spear point added to the blade under the
left breast (Fig. 15).
The names for the blades are descriptive; it is the total configuration that is
important rather than specific names. The
midline blade (or blades in the case of
women) extended from the throat to the
navel and is known as adeseko("midline
blade") or adesewe ("middle of chest").
The small navel-to-pubis blade is aberhe
("branchof the pubis"). Ovbi-iwu("child of
tattoo," i.e., little tattoo) ran from under the
left breast to the pubis but was absent on
members of the royal family. The anterior
side blades, from the clavicle down the
side of the abdomen to the upper thigh, are
simply iwu ugbefen ("rib tattoos"). Two
posterior blades for both men and women,
called ariokpabecause they resemble the
arching tail of a cockerel, began at the back
of the upper arm, curved upward to the
edge of the shoulders, then swept down to
the buttocks (Fig. 16).
Women had twice as many blades as
men, except for the navel-to-pubis blade
that had metamorphosed from a single
male blade to a fan-like female pattern of
five tattoos stemming from the navel, the
center of life (Fig. 17). Women who acquired their iwu by royal command had
seven of these blades. The praise name
for the seven, Ne Oba se ore iwu3 ("The

person whom the king ordered to be

tattooed"), indicated that these were
non-Edo women incorporated into the
harem as wives, or young servant girls
already in the harem to whom the king
had taken a fancy. All underwent iwu surgery before being allowed the privilege of
the monarch's bed.
In his dictionary of Bini, Hans Melzian
defines agbaguda as "women's cheek
marks" (1937:4),but actually the word refers to the entire set of eight facial tattoos.
Agbagudaderives its name from the small,
identically shaped knife used for cleaning
cooked yam. Women apparently had a
choice of either three vertical forehead
blades (agbagudan'ehae,"blades of the fore-

Although any competent person could

tattoo, usually an osiwu ("one who sculpts
tattoos") was called in to do it. The profession is still a hereditary one and is not
gender specific. Osiwu also specialize in
autopsies and circumcisions. Autopsies
are performed when there is a need to
determine the physical cause of death
and remove it from the corpse lest it recur
in a subsequent reincarnation with the
same fatal consequences. Circumcisions
require a surgeon's instruments and protective medicines.
An osiwu carries around a kit packed
with professional paraphernalia, like the
Western doctor's medical bag (Fig. 19).
This includes a surgical scalpel (abee,
"pen-knife") for tattoos and male circumcisions, a triangular-shaped blade for
clitoridectomy (used only on females because Bini notions about pollution and
sexuality preclude its application elsewhere), and egbae, medicinal iron or
brass bangles worn by the physician to
control hemorrhaging. Although medicines vary, the kit belonging to Unionmwan Orokhorho, the surgeon mentioned
above, contains leaves used in the sharing
by elders of sacrificed meat, since success
always attends the deliberations of the

^-

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ff
^

y
S'il
^
^

IS

I; Aff
J

I^
?

CU
I~~~~~~~
I~~~~~~~

z~~~~~~~

^'^~~~f,
z
m

16. Ariokpaiwu for Bini men and women.

africanarts winter1995

^--Ai~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
69

Top:17. Thefullcomplementof iwublades for

Biniwomen.
Bottom:18. Portraitof Mrs.EkiosaAgueborwith
facialtattoosand body iwu.

elders (Edioni kokua!Edioni ko ikone i ma!:

"Elders never meet without an outcome!
Elders do not hold an unsuccessful meeting!"); some quantity of spider webs
(because Akpakpai de vbi ido: "The spider
does not fall from its web"); and pieces of
a pangolin (because Obo gha mu ekhui o
kiri: "When a hand touches it, the pangolin folds up tightly"). Surgeon Orokhorho stores these in ukokogho,a small
pear-shaped gourd, and applies them
when necessary (pers. com., 1987).
The medical kit also holds herbal analgesics and the shell of a large river snail.
Water poured from the snail is the equivalent of ice. Okunrobo Isibor, a surgeon
from Ogbe village, explains that "snail
water" is always cold: "Even if a snail is
in the sun, the part of the ground it walks
on is cool" (pers. com., 1988). These medicines and instruments, along with bells
for summoning spirits, are kept in a
wicker basket. The whole is wrapped in a
large mat and carried by the surgeon's
apprentice on house calls.
Tattooing is a more complicated procedure than lancing boils or circumcisions.
The incisions-long, fine cuts-have to
heal properly for the tattoos to look attractive. Dyes made from asun leaves
(Randiacoriacea)produce a black stain on
dark skins, a blue-black color on lighter
skins. Lamp-black (ibi-uhukpa,"charcoalof
lamp") produces a gray-black dye. As the
wounds heal, the patient applies a cosmetic medicament to suppress the formation
of keloids (a strong tendency on African
skins), regarded as unattractive. The medication consists of warm palm oil, cookingpot soot, and the burnt root of the elu tree
(unidentified botanically). To help darken
the tattoos, the patient pats this mixture on
the incisions with an applicator made from
a large seed or sand wrapped in cloth. A
really successful operation showed silky
and finely incised blue-black blades.4

70

Iwu in Contemporary Times

The practice of body tattooing died out
nearly fifty years ago. Many factors contributed to its decline. The British Punitive
Expedition of 1897 had a devastating effect
on Bini culture and led to the introduction
of all sorts of new legislation and institutions. With the exile of Oba Ovanrramwen
to Calabar immediately after the conquest,
colonial rule was the new reality.However,
many events, incidental as well as cataclysmic, are part of the story of iwu and its
reemergence as a clothing motif.
After the British took over, what remained of the palace decayed, and with
it court customs, including iwu. The conafricanarts winter1995

19. OkunroboIsibor,a professionalosiwu,displays his surgicaltools and other equipment.

BeninCity,1987.
20. The Uzama(Iheredity
chiefs) of Beninat the
Igue festival.They are dressed in the colorful
cAssock-likeattire(theezi-okherhe)adoptedby
chiefs in the 1930s. BeninCity,December1983.

solidation of British rule, manifested by

the presence of a colonial administration
and by the establishment in 1901 of the
Government School in Benin City, further
attenuated the tattoo tradition. But in
1914 Britain cautiously restored the monarchy under the colonial policy of Indirect
Rule that had been so successful in the
Northern Protectorate of Nigeria. Oba
Eweka II rebuilt the palace on a much
reduced scale. A semblance of court life
returned. Some of the young men who
had grown into adulthood during the
interregnum took up the option for membership in one of the palace societies.
Chief Ajayi Igunbor, now the Unionyen of Benin, graduated from the Government School in 1918 and became a professional tailor. He recalls how, in 1929,
having belatedly announced his intention
to become (by birth- and family right) a
member of Iwebo society, Oba Eweka II
asked him: "Where are your iwu?" Chief
Igunbor had them done immediately and
was initiated into the palace even before
the wounds had healed. Others, like Court
Clerk Rawson, the son of Chief Obakhavbaye and a former member of the
africanarts*winter1995

Colonial Constabulary in Calabar,pressed

modern medical practice into the service
of the iwu tradition. He walked into the
Native Hospital (now Central Hospital),
founded some years before in 1908, and
there, under the "miracle" anesthetic of
chloroform, painlessly acquired his iwu.
However, by the mid-1930s the demands of life in Benin City made this

mode of body marking progressively

untenable for the ordinary Bini citizen as
he went about his normal nonpalace
duties. The adoption of alternative fashions in dress, including the Yoruba agbada
and sokoto(themselves adaptations of the
desert dress of the Arabs) and the English
attire of shirt, trousers, jacket, and tie for
men, precluded the need or desire for iwu.
71

Below:21: ChiefAjayiIgunbor,the Unionyen

of Benin, wearing the ezi-okherhe,the cassock-likegarmenthe designed in 1934. Benin
City,March1986.
Right:22. The Oba of Benin at post-coronation Igue. The iwu design can be seen on the
armrest.Benin City,June 1978.

PHOTO: JOSEPH NEVADOMSKY

Oba Akenzua II brought further sartorial changes after he ascended the throne
in 1933. An alumnus of King's College,
Lagos, he, like many of the graduates of
this elite institution, sought to bring tradition in line with the values he had
assimilated as a student. Akenzua II felt
strongly the need for a nontraditional
outfit for himself and his chiefs (and
for the omada, or swordbearers, whose
nakedness shocked visiting colonial dignitaries). He preferred an anglicized costume, of a type that would cover the
entire body rather than, as with the traditional wrapper, just the bottom half of it.
The palace gave several tailors yards of
cloth and challenged them to create a garment acceptable to the palace. Most produced apparel patterned after the Yoruba
attire of the day, but Ajayi Igunbor, who
sewed for Roman Catholic priests and
had converted to Catholicism, stitched
together a modified cassock (Fig. 21). Its
priestly look appealed to Oba Akenzua.
The garment was sanctioned by Resident
Williams, the Chief Colonial Officer in
Benin City, and subsequently adopted,
becoming the public attire for chiefs (Fig.
20). Because the flared bottom of the
two-tiered outfit recalls the base of an oil
palm tree with its exposed fan of roots, it
72

was humorously dubbed ezi-okherhe("the

full base of the young palm tree");the top
of the garment looks like the palm trunk
with its clusters of nuts. The overall effect
of this cassock suggests statuesqueness, of
an appreciable yet uniform width, from
the neck down to the toes. Covered over,
iwu became vestigial in function, and soon
the tattoos were no longer required for
palace membership. The iwu design appeared only on the king's armrest at the
annual Igue ceremonies (Fig. 22) and on
shrine statuary (Fig. 23).
And there the matter rested for decades. When Solomon Akenzua became
the Oba of Benin in 1979, taking the name
Erediauwa ("Ere has come to set things
right"), he initiated projects aimed at
awakening his people's interest in their
heritage and revitalized traditions that
had fallen into desuetude. He renovated
and reactivated public shrines that had
been left unattended during the latter part
of Akenzua II's reign, revived lapsed court
rituals, revised the standard Mission orthography, and established an award for
distinguished publications on Benin history and culture. Through public lectures,
pronouncements, admonitions, and a constant attention to real or presumed infringements of hereditary rights, titles,
and land use, Erediauwa fostered popular
enlightenment on traditional practices.
In this context of renewed interest
there was the feeling that, as the Iyase
remarked in his statement at the palace
fashion show, "the Edo needed their
own 'native' though modernized wear, a
dress that would be indigenous to the
EDO KINGDOM...." He approvingly
described the way the Itsekiris, Urhobos,
and Ijaws (neighboring groups in the
Niger delta) had married the English
shirt and headgear (bowler, panama,
and top hat) to the African wrapper and
beads to produce "an attire that was at

once pleasing, utilitarian, particularist,

and original...in tune with the ethos of
the particular group adopting them"
(palace press release, 1986)
When it was first mooted that the iwu
design would look appealing on a tunic
that could serve as part of a distinctive
Bini dress, the palace enthusiastically
endorsed the idea. Partly this was because, as the Iyase pointed out, there
"was no 'newness' about the idea, no suspicion of 'contrivance' or artificialityabout
it. Wearing the Ewu iwu the modern Bini
man would look exactly as his ancestor
did 350 or more years ago, if one discounted the fabric of the tunic" (palace
press release, 1986). But the idea also fitted well with the resurgence of interest
in tradition. As Ekhaguosa Aisien, the
co-author of this paper and the originator
of the new tunic design (Fig. 24), stated in
his own address at the palace launching
of the costume, there "now existed an
environment in Benin wherein the appreciation of things traditional would survive....We now more readily question [a
foreign idea] and we are now more willing to test its veracity by the yardstick of
its native counterpart."
These comments draw our attention
back to the relationship between power,
identity, and the semiotics of costume.
Here is a costume invented at the center
and transmitted outward with a specified expressed intention, namely, the
solidification of ethnic identity. Contemporary in style, it consciously cultivates
the anachronism of the tattoos. Its message is more than that of a diffuse ethnicity or a lingering, sentimental attachment
to archaic social roles, however; it is a conscious, visible, and highly articulated display of loyalty to the king and to kingship
as a seminal political value. The purpose
is to encompass in clothing a material representation of sovereignty, that is, to give
the apparel iconic status. Ethnic identity,
narrated through a new costume, feeds
into political support for the palace.
Where the position of kings nowadays
rests more on primordial sentiments and
a quasi-official influence than on actual
power,5 the garment converts feelings of
"Edo-ness" into something more concrete; it makes the invisible palpable and
tangible. In this respect the design bears
comparison with another summarizing
symbol, the crossed ada and eben, state
swords of kingship and rank, respectively. When, in the late eighties, the Oba
decreed that the crossed swords motif
must no longer be used for such things as
ornaments for iron gates, club emblems,
school uniforms, and stationery logos, the
injunction fell on deaf ears. The crossed
swords emblem is existential, a visual
composition of unity and place. Bini residents ignored the order for much the
same reason that Americans would refuse
to honor a law limiting use of the American flag to Washington, D.C.6
africanarts winter1995

23. Shrineto the deityOlokun,displayinga fig1992.

ure with iwu.Uhunmwindunmwun,

The use of legitimating and consciousness-raising icons extends to cement statuary placed around the town.
These include images of Queen Idia
(who helped her son defeat the Ata of
Idah in the sixteenth century), a chief in
full regalia, and Bini bowmen who killed
several members of the British Punitive
Expedition in 1897. Concrete arches may
soon span the original nine entrances
("gates") to the city. The Bini now have
their own state (Edo State) carved out of
the former Bendel State (Benin Delta),
roughly coterminous with the boundaries of the former kingdom. Since loyalties to the palace have had to contend
with numerous other allegiances, including occasional antitraditionalist and antimonarchist ones, the garment and other
icons serve to enhance particularist sentiments by tying the Bini into a larger imagined tradition of greatness. But rather
than essentializing the past, these icons
inform the present, creating an ontological text for political action.
The garment, then, goes beyond a simple revitalization of the tattoos. What distinguishes the iwu of the past from the
ewu iwu of the present-aside from the
obvious fact that one is a tattoo, the other
africanarts- winter1995

an article of clothing-is that the former is

an expression of an individual's multiple
social identities, the latter a deliberate and
artful assertion of ethnicity. The tattoos
passively reflect the social and moral

PHOTO: JOSEPH NEVADOMSKY

order, the human body providing the

base upon which the collective representations and conventions of the society
have been inscribed, and through that
inscription, unconsciously perpetuated.
The garment, by contrast, self-consciously
manages the social order, acting on it
rather than being acted upon. Not just a
metaphor of the ideal model for unchanging social categories, it represents
an effort to rework political space. While
iwu are part of a cultural configuration
that includes gender roles, status, hierarchy, medicine, and concepts of pollution
and blood, the ewu iwu is more manipulatively a public recognition of political
affiliation and loyalty. Since Bini women
are less politically engaged than men, one
would not expect them to be particularly
involved in this fashion. Indeed, although
there is a female version of the ewu iwu, it
has been slow in catching on.7 The adoption of the ewu iwu thus has a more restricted aim: to foster a greater social
awareness of Bini political ethnicity at the
local and national levels and to situate
some of this recognition within the tradiD
tional institution of kingship.
Notes,page100
24. EkhaguosaAisienwearingthe ewu-iwuhe
created in 1986. Benin City,March1991.
73

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2:19-40.
Willett, F. 1971. African Art: An Introduction. New York:
Praeger.
Williams, D. 1974. Iconand Image:A Study of Sacredand Secular
Formsof AfricanClassicalArt. London: Allen Lane.
Williams, D. 1964. "The Iconology of the Yoruba Edan
Ogboni," Africa34, 2:139-65.
Witte, H. 1988. Earth and Ancestors: Ogboni Iconography.
Amsterdam: Gallery Balolu.
Witte, H. 1984. Ifa and Eshu:Iconographyof Orderand Disorder.
Holland: Kunsthandel Luttik, Soest.

Art.
Bean, Susan. 1989. "Gandhi and Khadi, the Fabric of Indian
Independence," in Cloth and Human Experience, eds.
Annette B. Weiner and Janet Schneider, pp. 356-79.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Bedaux, Rogier and Jan Smits. 1992. "A Seventeenth-Century
Ivory Figure in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in
Leiden," AfricanArts 25,1:76-77.
Ben-Amos, Paula. 1980. The Art of Benin. London: Thames &
Hudson.
Blackmun, Barbara. 1991. "The Face of the Leopard: Its
Significance in Benin Court Art," Allen Memorial Art
Museum Bulletin44, 2:24-35.
Blackmun, Barbara.1982. Review of TheArt of Beninby Paula
Ben-Amos, AfricanArts 15, 3:15-18.
Borgatti, Jean. 1983. Clothas Metaphor.Los Angeles: Museum
of Cultural History, UCLA.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burton, Sir Richard. 1863. "My Wanderings in West Africa: A
Visit to the Renowned Cities of Wari and Benin," Fraser's
Magazine 67 (Feb., Mar., Apr.):135-57, 273-89, 407-22.
Cohn, Bernard S. 1989. "Cloth, Clothes and Colonialism:
India in the Nineteenth Century," in Cloth and Human
Experience,eds. Annette B. Weiner and Janet Schneider, pp.
304-355. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Dark, Philip. 1960. Benin Art. London: Batchworth Press.
Duchateau, Armand. 1994. Benin:RoyalArt of Africa.Houston:
The Museum of Fine Arts.
Durkheim, Emile. 1965. The ElementaryFormsof ReligiousLife.
Glencoe, IL: Free Press. 1st ed. 1912.
Egharevba, Jacob. 1968. A Short History of Benin. Ibadan:
Ibadan University Press.
Egharevba, Jacob. 1947. Benin Laws and Customs. Lagos:
Service Press.
Ezra, Kate. 1992. Royal Art of Benin: The Perls Collection.New
York:Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Fabian, Johannes. 1979. "Rule and Process: Thoughts on
Ethnography as Communication," Philosophyof the Social
Sciences9:1-26.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. TheInterpretationof Cultures.New York:
Basic Books.
Hegel, G. 1944. Esthethique.Paris: Aubier.

I S

[This article was accepted for publication in July 1993.]

1. Fashion has hardened into preference for the round-necked
variant.
2. Under the influence of Benin, however, neighboring peoples such as the Esan to the immediate north and the Ika Igbo
to the east adopted the iwu patterns. The people of Usen, who
straddle the Bini-Yorubaborder, also emulated this style, but
left out the gender-defining mark. Frequent contacts between
Benin and Owo, and Benin's influence on the latter, show up
in the scarifications on small ivory statuettes from Owo (Fagg
& Bassani 1988: fig. 264; Bedaux & Smits 1991:76-77; Ezra
1992:285).The figures display the typical five long abdominal
marks; whether they mean the same thing is uncertain.
Osugbo (Ogboni) torso markings on some male and female
terracotta figures from Ijebu (Yoruba) are also like iwu, but
the relationship, if any, remains cloudy.
3. There is only one living example of Nobasoriwu.
4. A fine set of tattoos on a woman would elicit E ne o si erinmwin ("that which causes a person to beg"; that is, it arouses
a man to ask for sex with the woman).
5. As a negative instance, Nixon's attempt to create an emperor's guard out of White House police met with derision and
had to be abandoned.
6. Traditional rulers know the limits of their authority in secular matters, as subtle as that line of demarcation may be.
None would overtly contradict important government policy.
7. Some women's organizations have, since 1986, become
involved in the iwu idea, and during their anniversary outings, members wear the ewu-iowu.Also, some female newscasters wear their iwu regularly on television when reading
the news in Edo.

African Arts, Ltd., Tucson, AZ 92

I N

Hamill Gallery of African Art, Boston, MA 95

Harmattan, Washington, DC 94

Affrica, Washington, DC 13
Africa and Beyond, La Jolla, CA 11
Africa Place, So. Strafford, VT 93

100

R T

Aboriginals, Art of the First Person,

Sanibel Island, FL 94

NEVADOMSKY:Notes, from page 73

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Indigo, Minneapolis, MN 20
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L. Kahan Gallery, New York, NY 15

Alexander Gallery, St. Louis, MO 4

Joan Barist Primitive Art, Short Hills, NJ 12

Richard Meyer African Art, New York, NY 7

Charles D. Miller III, St. James, NY 10

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Ornament, San Marcos, CA inside back cover

20

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Contemporary African Art, New York, NY 95

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Davis Gallery, New Orleans, LA 10
Ethnix, New York, NY 20
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Farid Tawa, New York, NY 95
Tribal Reality, New York, NY 19
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL 19
Kathy Vanderpas * Steven Vanderaadt,
Rotterdam, Netherlands 19
T.G.B. Wheelock, T.G.B.W. Inc., New York, NY 9
Yanzum Village Art Gallery, Atlanta, GA 92

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