by Nigel Spivey
Over centuries, the adornments accrued and commissioned by each successive oba of Benin accumulated into an enviable store. One palace courtyard seen by a European visitor in the eighteenth century was estimated to contain some 3000 elephant tusks. What eventually happened, as the Dark Continent of Africa began to be penetrated by European colonists, is perhaps predictable. In 1897, a small detachment of British troops on a ‘diplomatic mission’ in West Africa was ambushed – allegedly by Edo warriors from the kingdom of Benin.The British promptly mobilized a larger force, which descended upon the royal capital of Benin City.The oba’s palaces were burnt to the ground, but not, however, before thousands of items of regalia had been seized.The Edo territory was annexed and made part of the British colonial state of Nigeria.
An empire had swallowed a kingdom.The British soldiers who sacked Benin City had sworn an oath of loyalty to their monarch, Queen Victoria (1819–1901). She had already taken the title Empress of India; large parts of Africa were already annexed in her name. And by tradition, colonial expansion was marked at home by the arrival of treasures.The marbles of the Parthenon and whole parts of Assyrian palaces were – thanks largely to assistance from the Royal Navy – installed in the British Museum, as if a great showcase of imperial might. From the British Protectorate territory of Egypt an almost symbolic exchange of goods occurred. Huge packing cases were delivered to the museum’s gates: they had been sent out to Egypt and the Sudan filled with ammunition and military hardware; they came back containing statues, mummies and all sorts of treasures from Pharaonic times.
In certain situations of tribal conflict, we are told, the chief of a victorious tribe would eat his opposing number. Supposedly civilized conquest does something similar – only by symbolic means.Transfer of power is signalled by the ingestion of symbols of power. What was precious to the enemy becomes the victor’s spoils. If Queen Victoria was not conscious of this symbolic process, then she might have looked more closely at the collection of art within her own regal premises. At Hampton Court, a previous British monarch – Charles I (1600–49) – had purchased a series of paintings by an Italian Renaissance master that imaginatively re-created an ancient Roman triumph (Fig. 68). The Roman army has been abroad; now it comes home and makes a procession of its success.The city of Rome has absorbed another foreign state or kingdom: the city will be duly embellished with the ostentatious and often exotic trophies newly acquired.
67 A Benin royal head with winged cap from the 19th century.
68 Booty in Procession: Panel IV of The Triumph of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna,1485–6.
The truth underlying this process is that systems of power essentially rely upon symbols of power. ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ goes one adage, meaning that words and persuasion can be more effective in gaining power than sheer brute force. History is packed with proof that ‘winning the peace’ is more difficult, yet more conclusive, than simply prevailing in battle.The British in Benin were aware of this. They possessed outright military superiority, which of course underpinned their political manoeuvres in the region. But destroying the oba in person was unlikely to bring about colonial stability. So the action taken at Benin City was symbolic.To seize the oba’s bronzes was to remove those adornments that proclaimed his power.To this day his title exists and is filled, but that is all.
This chapter, then, is about the symbolic expression of power – beginning with the devices used to state individual claims to pre-eminence and authority, and ending with the development of techniques of mass persuasion. If there is any truth in Thomas Jefferson’s democratic declaration of 1776 that ‘all men are created equal’, then what follows may be read as an analysis of the social chemistry whereby that truth evaporates.
STATING SUPERIORITY
‘Art at court’ is one way of classifying this symbolism of authority, and it is tempting to identify some universal characteristics of court commissions.We might observe, for example, what appears to be a basic inclination of all human potentates: the penchant for borrowing motifs from the animal world. Supremacy becomes a paramount eagle with outstretched wings; fearlessness, a roaring lion. Heraldry, the system of symbolic devices designed for the world’s nobility and royal dynasties, relies very firmly upon such associations, even in countries where neither eagles nor lions exist. So monarchical strutting can look rather like the displays of distinctive gaudiness in other species, especially birds, as shown by one Polynesian chief encountered by European missionaries in the nineteenth century (Fig. 69).The same behavioural logic underpins both this ‘primitive’ dressing-up and the masques at ‘sophisticated’ courts, such as that of Louis XIV of France (1643–1715), who was preened by his advisers to act as le Roi Soleil (the Sun King).When Louis appeared to courtiers in the guise of Apollo, the ancient Greek god of enlightenment, it was in a flame-fringed costume topped with feathers, making an effect as visually shrill as any mating peacock (Fig. 70).
It seems like pantomime. And anthropologists have formulated a concept, the ‘theatre state’, to explain the place of parades and pomp, furs and feathers in autocratic government.The concept was first used to explain the pattern of public ceremonies in nineteenth-century Bali, a relatively small and insignificant kingdom, but that does not detract from the sincerity of histrionic power shows within its bounds. For Clifford Geertz, who made this Balinese case study, it was a ‘state in which the kings and princes were the impresarios, the priests the directors, and the peasants the supporting cast, stage crew and audience’.
History tells of many autocrats ejected and overthrown; history also vouches for the fact that threats to a monarch’s power usually come from his or her own confidantes or privy counsellors, not from the people. It would be facile to assume, then, that all royal ceremonials were staged to dissuade the masses from revolt. And when we gaze upon the art and accoutrements that bolstered a royal claim to rule, we may want to keep in mind the angry response of Shakespeare’s King Lear, when challenged on his necessity for a retinue: ‘O reason not the need!’ Followers, panoplies, carriages, trailing robes – who can say what is surplus to requirement in matters of regalia? ‘Pomp and circumstance’ is how the show goes on.
But when did all it begin?
THE ARRIVAL OF THE ‘BIG MAN’
Although under 1.8 metres (6 feet), he was tall for the time, and, apart from a damaged knee, in robust physical health. He was about 40 years old, which in those days was a grand old age, and he had travelled some distance to reach Amesbury, the place where he was eventually buried, not far from the most impressive monument of British prehistory – Stonehenge. Isotopic scrutiny of his bodily remains suggests that he originated from central Europe, somewhere close to the Alps.
The man’s name will never be known because in Europe c. 2300 BC, which is the date of his burial, no one could read or write.They could, however, recognize symbols of power when they saw them, and this sturdy, venerable foreigner came loaded with just such potent symbols. In his hair he wore curled pieces of beaten gold, small but gleaming; about his person he had not only a bow and a quiver full of flint-tipped arrows, but also a number of knives with copper blades.These knives, like the hair-clasps, were not large, but their metal made them very special possessions.
69 (left) Te Po, a chief of Rarotonga, after a painting by John Williams Jnr, c.1837.
70 (above) Louis XIV as Apollo, 1654.
We can imagine how this individual once appeared. Discovered in the spring of 2002, he has soon gained a reputation as the hypothetical ‘King of Stonehenge’.The title is almost irresistible. So far as we know, he was the first person in Britain to parade gold jewellery, and his grave seems to be the earliest of a series of ‘Big Man’ burials in this region of the southwest known as Wessex. Beakers of pottery and metal, axes and daggers, bracelets, pendants and other adornments of well-worked gold – these mark the status of presumed overlords.That they had large numbers of subjects under their rule is inferred simply from the size of the eart
h mounds and standing stones erected in the area. An assessment of the labour required to build Stonehenge (Fig. 71) – usually dated to between 2400 and 2200 BC – estimates some 50 million man-hours of effort. It is hard to believe that in command of such a grandiose project there was not some supreme individual equivalent to a king.
Ancient Egypt provides a model for supposing such a hierarchy (see page). And where the burial of a pharaoh has been found intact, the association of gold with power can seem almost overwhelmingly close. But distinctive ornament and hoards of precious metal are not the only signs of social stratification. Consider the operations of power that affect us on a daily basis – the tax bills, the traffic wardens, the signs that say ‘Keep off the Grass’.When did such mundane systems of order and bureaucracy take root?
Along with other aspects of what archaeologists define as civilization, the origins of administrative systems are to be found in Anatolia and Mesopotamia.The transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to settlements and agriculture, which happened in these areas during the early Neolithic period (10,000–7000 BC), naturally entailed controlling the food supply – keeping animals fenced in, harvesting grain for storage.The recourse to pottery, and eventually (c. 3400 BC) sturdy vessels shaped on a wheel, greatly facilitated the grain-storing possibilities: but still the stored food had to be monitored. At one hilltop site in southern Turkey,Arslantepe, the remains of a palace structure of the fourth millennium BC have been uncovered, revealing a number of storerooms, where large lidded jars were stacked.These containers were sealed with clay in such a way that the lid could be opened only by breaking the seal.The same anti-pilfering measure was applied to baskets, sacks and doors. And to guarantee the authenticity of the seals, engraved clay stamps were impressed upon them, thus labelling the wares within.
By c. 3000 BC, these clay seals gave way to pieces of stone or some other durable medium, cylindrical in shape and carved with a design in relief, which could be rolled into moist clay, leaving a particular motif. So goods that had been brought into a particular centre for deposit and redistribution were ‘signed and sealed’.What began as a system for maintaining equal access to resources by all the members of a settled community became a system of economic control by some people over others. An elite was formed, composed not only of supreme individuals, but intermediary staff who were the prehistoric forerunners of the types we know as bureaucrats.
This much may be inferred from the local iconography of the royal seal in Mesopotamia. Used exclusively by a particular Mesopotamian potentate and his or her staff, the cylinder seal could be worn like a jewel or carried like a key in the corridors of power. Epitomizing royal status, it depicted the king slaying a lion, or the queen at a banquet (Fig. 72).
The so-called cylinder seals are small and numerous signs of a larger process of defining royal status. From southern (Sumerian) Mesopotamia there survives an item of regalia that might serve as an ideal possession for all monarchs ever after.This comes in the form of a sounding-box, once part of a musical instrument, inlaid with shells and precious stones, and presenting registers of what might be termed the princely lifestyle, whether in times of peace or war (Fig. 73). In the friezes of battle there are files of men to command, eager horses and the latest gleaming equipment (the appearance of chariots here is a novelty, as far as we know). All that remains to complete the picture is an enemy, either prostrated in homage or else laid to rest.The imagery of regal valour assists in justifying the privileges and prerogatives of kingship, which include the very possession of this object.The box makes music for the king’s ears; it is constructed out of precious materials, which are part of the king’s treasure store; and it was put together by skilled craftsmen working by royal appointment.
The relic was excavated from a tomb in the royal cemetery of the city of Ur. Archaeological evidence suggests that whenever a monarch died here, a number of attendants were slain and buried alongside, as if to accompany their superior into the world to come.This phenomenon, as we shall see, is not unique to ancient Mesopotamia (see page). One determining factor, however, was the divinity claimed by the steward of earthly power, as we gather from the words of a hymn chanted at the coronation of a Sumerian king called Rim-Sin in 1822 BC.
71 A view of Stonehenge, as it looks today.
72 (top) Queen Puabi Feasting – an impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal from Ur, c.2600 BC.
73 (above) Detail of the Sumerian sounding-box from Ur, from the 3rd millennium BC.
‘You have been chosen rightly for the shepherdship of Sumer and Akkad …
May the god fix the holy crown on your head.
May he install you grandly on the throne of life,
May he fill your hands with the sceptre of justice,
May he bind to your body the mace which controls the people
May he make you grasp the mace which multiplies the people
May he open for you the shining udder of heaven, and rain down for you the rains of heaven.’
Compounding this paternalistic authority was the regent’s control over the administration of justice.The first recorded systems of state legislation come from the Middle East; the best known, though not the earliest, is the Law Code of the Babylonian King Hammurabi (who reigned probably from 1792 to 1750 BC). In its detail this sets out a system of justice that is essentially about retaliation, but its express purpose was ‘to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong may not oppress the weak’. Hammurabi’s closing statement repeats that intention: ‘My words are precious, my wisdom is unrivalled … Let any oppressed man, who has a cause, come before my image as king of righteousness!’
The sovereign embodies justice; wisdom resides in the sovereign’s own palace. When the Hebrew Book of Proverbs (9.1) speaks of wisdom occupying a house of seven pillars, it evokes the palatial context of a monarchy that claims to adjudicate not only in matters of high-level state policy, but also in the most petty disputes of the lowliest subjects – redress for a pilfered lamb, and so on. A good idea of how such a palace would have been laid out and decorated comes from the site of Mari, on the middle Euphrates, which was conquered by Hammurabi in 1760 BC and thereafter ruled by his delegate, Zimri-Lim. Zimri-Lim ruled from a complex of some 300 rooms, several of which have been identified as ‘audience rooms’, where the king would sit in judgement. An archive containing more than 20,000 inscribed tablets provided official guidance on customs and case histories. But if supplicants were in any doubt over the king’s right to dispense justice, paintings and sculptures within the reception rooms of the palace illustrated his investiture, sanctioned by divine powers. It was a rapport between heaven and earth, maintained by the king through rites and sacrifices; and lest anyone be forgetful of that, those rites and sacrifices were also represented (Fig. 74).
THE ART OF MANAGING AN EMPIRE
The annals of ancient Mesopotamia and the Near East offer a grimly repetitive chronicle of collision and dispute between separate kingdoms.The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, whose sculpted tales of victory we have already encountered (see page), was typically lyrical in boasting how comprehensively he had destroyed Susa, the city of his enemies the Elamites. ‘In a month of days I levelled the whole of Elam. I deprived its fields of the sounds of human voices, the tread of cattle and sheep, the refrain of joyous animals.’ In turn, the Assyrian royal city of Nineveh was sacked in 612 BC by the Babylonians. Babylon, now an assortment of ruins by the Euphrates to the south of Baghdad, was then enjoying a renaissance, with one ruler, Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BC), making raids abroad and embellishing the city with great decorated gateways. (The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, esteemed as one the Seven Wonders of the World by Classical tradition, seemingly belonged to one of Nebuchadnezzar’s palaces.) It was Nebuchadnezzar who sacked the temple at Jerusalem, and took Hebrew captives as forced labour for his building projects. But the cycle of royal fortunes soon moved on. A new power appeared in the region. It came in the person of Cyrus, king of Persia, hail
ed by the Hebrews as ‘God’s anointed’, the liberator who saved them from their ‘Babylonian captivity’. Cyrus (559–529 BC) did not destroy Babylon, nor massacre its inhabitants. He wanted the city as it was – a possession for the long term.
The Persians were essentially a nomadic people of the Iranian plateau.They were migratory, living in tents; yet as these nomads gained in power and number (inscribed tablets of the ninth century BC mention two separate groups at large, the Medes and the Persians, considered by their enemies to be the same force), they acquired for themselves a territory that stretched from the Indus to the Balkans. It would be the most extensive tract of ethnic domination so far established anywhere: effectively, the world’s first empire.
The stabilization of the Persians can be dated to around 700 BC, under the leadership of Achaemenes, who gave rise to the Achaemenid dynasty. By the end of the reign of Cyrus, Achaemenid conquests encompassed an area from the Persian Gulf to the Aegean Sea.The question was: how would the successors of Cyrus manage to keep control of this vast territory?
74 A fragment of a wall painting from the palace at Mari (Tell Hariri, Syria), from the 18th century BC, showing a bull in a sacrificial procession.
Cyrus himself left few clues. It is only from non-Persian sources – Greek, Hebrew and Babylonian – that we learn of his relative benevolence as a conqueror, ensuring, for example, the return of deported peoples from Babylon. As a matter of general policy, the Achaemenids preferred to entrust regional rule to satraps (local governors), who in turn were answerable to the Persian ‘Great King’. But where was the Great King to be found? Deep in the Shiraz desert that was, as far as any place could be, the homeland of the nomadic Persians, Cyrus bequeathed some indications of the Achaemenid determination to build a monumental centre of empire. A residential palace was laid out at Pasargadae, and close by Cyrus commissioned his own imposing final place of rest. Raised in white marble, with stepped base and gabled roof, the tomb of Cyrus is now, however, all that commands attention from posterity.The monumental centre would arise elsewhere, when one of the successors of Cyrus set about constructively resolving the problem of how a huge empire might be maintained.
