This from the UK Guardian newspaper:


BENIN EMPIRE

''With its mathematical layout and earthworks longer than the Great Wall of China, Benin City was one of the best planned cities in the world when London was a place of ‘thievery and murder’. ....




The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops”.

Situated on a plain, Benin City was enclosed by massive walls in the south and deep ditches in the north. Beyond the city walls, numerous further walls were erected that separated the surroundings of the capital into around 500 distinct villages.

Pearce writes that these walls “extended for some 16,000 km in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They covered 6,500 sq km and were all dug by the Edo people … They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet”.

Benin City was also one of the first cities to have a semblance of street lighting. Huge metal lamps, many feet high, were built and placed around the city, especially near the king’s palace. Fuelled by palm oil, their burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from the palace.



When the Portuguese first “discovered” the city in 1485, they were stunned to find this vast kingdom made of hundreds of interlocked cities and villages in the middle of the African jungle. They called it the “Great City of Benin”, at a time when there were hardly any other places in Africa the Europeans acknowledged as a city. Indeed, they classified Benin City as one of the most beautiful and best planned cities in the world.

In 1691, the Portuguese ship captain Lourenco Pinto observed: “Great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon; all the streets run straight and as far as the eye can see. The houses are large, especially that of the king, which is richly decorated and has fine columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft is unknown and the people live in such security that they have no doors to their houses.”

In contrast, London at the same time is described by Bruce Holsinger, professor of English at the University of Virginia, as being a city of “thievery, prostitution, murder, bribery and a thriving black market made the medieval city ripe for exploitation by those with a skill for the quick blade or picking a pocket”.

African fractals

Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as fractal design. The mathematician Ron Eglash, author of African Fractals – which examines the patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa – notes that the city and its surrounding villages were purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with similar shapes repeated in the rooms of each house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village in mathematically predictable patterns.

As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganised and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.”


At the centre of the city stood the king’s court, from which extended 30 very straight, broad streets, each about 120-ft wide. These main streets, which ran at right angles to each other, had underground drainage made of a sunken impluvium with an outlet to carry away storm water. Many narrower side and intersecting streets extended off them. In the middle of the streets were turf on which animals fed.



“Houses are built alongside the streets in good order, the one close to the other,” writes the 17th-century Dutch visitor Olfert Dapper. “Adorned with gables and steps … they are usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected.”

Dapper adds that wealthy residents kept these walls “as shiny and smooth by washing and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with chalk, and they are like mirrors. The upper storeys are made of the same sort of clay. Moreover, every house is provided with a well for the supply of fresh water”.

The early foreign explorers’ descriptions of Benin City portrayed it as a place free of crime and hunger, with large streets and houses kept clean; a city filled with courteous, honest people, and run by a centralised and highly sophisticated bureaucracy.

What impressed the first visiting Europeans most was the wealth, artistic beauty and magnificence of the city.

The city was split into 11 divisions, each a smaller replication of the king’s court, comprising a sprawling series of compounds containing accommodation, workshops and public buildings – interconnected by innumerable doors and passageways, all richly decorated with the art that made Benin famous. The city was literally covered in it.

The exterior walls of the courts and compounds were decorated with horizontal ridge designs (agben) and clay carvings portraying animals, warriors and other symbols of power – the carvings would create contrasting patterns in the strong sunlight. Natural objects (pebbles or pieces of mica) were also pressed into the wet clay, while in the palaces, pillars were covered with bronze plaques illustrating the victories and deeds of former kings and nobles.

At the height of its greatness in the 12th century – well before the start of the European Renaissance – the kings and nobles of Benin City patronised craftsmen and lavished them with gifts and wealth, in return for their depiction of the kings’ and dignitaries’ great exploits in intricate bronze sculptures.

“These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique,” wrote Professor Felix von Luschan, formerly of the Berlin Ethnological Museum. “Benvenuto Celini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him. Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/18/story-of-cities-5-benin-city-edo-nigeria-mighty-medieval-capital-lost-without-trace

How can the Portuguese discover a place that’s already existing with a great civility? Who now discovered Portugal.? Blacks please open your brains and free yourselves from mental slavery.

Ratedgang:
How can the Portuguese discover a place that’s already existing with a great civility? Who now discovered Portugal.? Blacks please open your brains and free yourselves from mental slavery.

If they didn't discovered it .. how would it be on the map ....

Ratedgang:
How can the Portuguese discover a place that’s already existing with a great civility? Who now discovered Portugal.? Blacks please open your brains and free yourselves from mental slavery.

I don't get your point.

The Portuguese did not claim to 'discover' anything related to this thread.

They simply reported on what they saw.

This is amazing.
Maybe the ancient Benin was more organized and developed than the present Benin - a disadvantage of one Nigeria and colonization.

OlayemiAshraf:


If they didn't discovered it .. how would it be on the map ....

And how would we know the history ? The so called empire with no writing system. Europeans wrote our history.
Indians, chinese, Japanese, arabs , Europeans wrote their history . Africans were hunting when other tribes were trying to develop.

capitalzero:


And how would we know the history ? The so called empire with no writing system. Europeans wrote our history.
Indians, chinese, Japanese, arabs , Europeans wrote their history . Africans were hunting when other tribes were trying to develop.

Ignorant nonsense.

Africans INVENTED writing.

Today, there exist over 700,000 manuscripts by black Africans detailing the continent's history and vast knowledge in every field imaginable, from mathematics to astronomy.

They are called the Timbuktu manuscripts, and are dated from the 9th century.

We DON'T KNOW that the Benin kingdom ''had no writing system''.

We know they had a ''highly sophisticated bureaucracy'', which had various departments dealing with various countries and trade issues.

We know they exchanged ambassadors with Portugal as early as 1491.

It is INCONCEIVABLE that they had no writing knowledge to store trade agreements and other documents.

There would have been literacy at leadership and administrative levels without a shadow of doubt.

There were NUMEROUS forms of written communication and calculation among Africans, and Benin city was burned down and looted by the British in 1897, so we have no idea what they stole and what sits in their museums, hidden away.

Rosskiiku:


Ignorant little air head. Africans INVENTED writing.

Today, there exist over 700,000 manuscripts by black Africans detailing the continent's history and vast knowledge in every field imaginable, from mathematics to astronomy.

They are called the Timbuktu manuscripts.

We DON'T KNOW that the Benin kingdom ''had no writing system''.

We know they had a ''highly sophisticated bureaucracy'', which had various departments dealing with various countries and trade issues.

We know they exchanged ambassadors with Portugal as early as 1491.

There were NUMEROUS forms of written communication and calculation among Africans, and Benin city was burned down and looted by thee British in 1897, so we have no idea what they stole and what sits in their museums, hidden away.

You are actually very stupid. Even before Christ, China, India, Japan, Europe and Arab had written books. Anyone in Benin empire?
None!
Which languages were used to write timbuktu manuscripts? Probably arab.
All nations and tribes experienced wars and were able to preserve their written history. Stop blame Europeans for your misery.

capitalzero:


You are actually very stupid. Even before Christ, China, India, Japan, Europe and Arab had written books. Anyone in Benin empire?
None!
All nations and tribes experienced wars and were able to preserve their written history. Stop blame Europeans for your misery.

EGYPT which was a black African civilization, had more books written than all those countries you named combined, because EGYPT, a black African civilization, existed, and dominated the world for THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

Without black Africans and ancient Egypt, those countries you mentioned, whom we civilized and taught even speech, wouldn't exist today.

But you are free to suck their nuts like the self-hating, brainwashed slave and bodyguard for white people you've been raised to become.

Papyrus of Maiherpri, Egypt - 4,000 BC


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiherpri

The Ancient Great Benin Empire

The Benin Kingdom was a flourishing ancient city situated in modern day Nigeria. During pre colonial era, Benin was one of the many highly developed cultures in Africa. This kingdom got its start up around 900 CE when Edo people settled in the tropical rainforest of West Africa.
The walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom was the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era, and was featured in the Genius Book Of Word Record. Benin City was also one of the first cities to have a semblance of street lighting. Huge metal lamps, many feet high, were built and placed around the city, especially near the king’s palace. Fuelled by palm oil, their burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from the palace. When the Portuguese first visited the city in 1485, they were stunned to find this vast kingdom made of hundreds of interlocked cities and villages, calling it "Great city of Benin".

Hello. on this page there is a beautifully Illustrated image of the Kings court. The image that shows the snake and the eagle.
Does anyone know the title of the book? or artist. Also where can i get it?
willing to buy or pay for a copy.

Thanks.

capitalzero:

You are actually very stupid. Even before Christ, China, India, Japan, Europe and Arab had written books. Anyone in Benin empire?
None!
Which languages were used to write timbuktu manuscripts? Probably arab.
All nations and tribes experienced wars and were able to preserve their written history.

This is incorrect.
By the way not all early civilizations had written scripts.
When the first civilizations in egypt,sumer,nubia started by the way they did not even had writing and when they did it came later.
For nubia it came way later and caral–supe civilization that was a early civilization in south america never had writing.
Caral–Supe civilization developed around the same time as egypt and nubia 3500 b.c.

Inca Empire

The Incas were not known to develop a written form of language; however, they visually recorded narratives through paintings on vases and cups (qirus). These paintings are usually accompanied by geometric patterns known as toqapu, which are also found in textiles. Researchers have speculated that toqapu patterns could have served as a form of written communication (e.g. heraldry, or glyphs), however this remains unclear. The Incas also kept records by using quipus.

Edo literature

Edo literature includes both written and oral works in the Edo language by the Edo people of Nigeria. It has its origins in precolonial times and has evolved over time. The literature is a reflection of Edo culture and it includes various periods, genres, and authors. It is rooted in traditional expressions such as brass-casting, wood carving, and pictorial writing. The written form became more prominent during the colonial era with the adoption of the Roman script. Folk songs are a part of Edo literature and are a part of Edo cultural heritage. These songs serve as repositories of historical narratives, moral teachings, and cultural expressions.

It looks like the benin empire had writing but it was not as widespread as the yoruba civilization for example. It looks like they had Nsibidi but it's use was not as widespread.

Writing systems of Africa
The writing systems of Africa refer to the current and historical practice of writing systems on the African continent, both indigenous and those introduced.

Today, the Latin script is commonly encountered across Africa, especially in the Western, Central and Southern Africa regions. Arabic script is mainly used in North Africa and Ge'ez script is widely used in the Horn of Africa. Regionally and in some localities, other scripts may be of significant importance.
Indigenous writing systems

Ancient African orthographies

Ancient Egyptian

Ancient Meroitic
The Meroitic language and its writing system was used in Meroë and the wider Kingdom of Kush (in modern day Sudan) during the Meroitic period. It was used from 300 BCE to 400 CE.

Tifinagh
The Tifinagh alphabet is still actively used to varying degrees in trade and modernized forms for writing of Berber languages (Tamazight, Tamashek, etc.) of the Maghreb, Sahara, and Sahel regions (Savage 2008).

Ge'ez
The Geʽez script is an abugida that was created in Horn of Africa in the 8th-9th century BC for writing the Geʽez language. The script is used today in Ethiopia and Eritrea for Amharic, Tigrinya, and several other languages. It is sometimes called Ethiopic, and is known in Eritrea and Ethiopia as the fidel or abugida.

Nsibidi
Nsibidi (also known as "nsibiri","nchibiddi", and "nchibiddy" is a system of symbols indigenous to what is now southeastern Nigeria that is apparently an ideographic script, though there have been suggestions that it includes logographic elements. The symbols are at least several centuries old: early forms appeared on excavated pottery as well as what are most likely ceramic stools and headrests from the Calabar region, with a range of dates from 400 (and possibly earlier, 2000 BC) to 1400 CE.

Adinkra
Adinkra is a set of symbols developed by the Akan, used to represent concepts and aphorisms. Oral tradition attributes the origin of adinkra to Gyaman in modern-day Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.According to Kwame Anthony Appiah, they were one of the means for "supporting the transmission of a complex and nuanced body of practice and belief".


Lusona
Lusona is a system of ideograms that functioned as mnemonic devices to record proverbs, fables, games, riddles and animals, and to transmit knowledge. They originate in what is now eastern Angola, northwestern Zambia and adjacent areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.


West Africa
Bamum (Bamun; also Shumom), a system of pictographic writing invented beginning in the late 19th century by Sultan Ibrahim Njoya for writing the Bamun language in what is now Cameroon. It quickly developed into a syllabary. It is rarely used today, but a fair amount of material written in this script still exists.

The Vai syllabary invented by Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ for the Vai language in what is now Liberia during the early 19th century. It is still used today.

North Africa
Tifinagh (Tuareg Berber language: ⵜⴼⵏⵗ; Neo-Tifinagh: ⵜⵉⴼⵉⵏⴰⵖ; Berber Latin alphabet: Tifinaɣ; Berber pronunciation: [tifinaɣ]) is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuareg Berbers of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, northeastern Mali, northern Niger and northern Burkina Faso for use writing the Tuareg Berber language. Neo-Tifinagh is an alphabet developed by Berber Academy to adopt Tuareg Tifinagh for use with Kabyle; it has been since modified for use across North Africa.



Introduced and adapted writing systems

Most written scripts, including Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, were based on previous written scripts and the origin of the history of the alphabet is ultimately Egyptian Hieroglyphs, through Proto-Sinaitic or Old Canaanite. Many other indigenous African scripts were similarly developed from previous scripts.

Phoenician/Punic
Additionally, the Proto-Sinaitic Wadi el-Hol inscriptions indicate the presence of an extremely early form of the script in central Egypt (near the modern city of Qena) in the early 2nd millennium BC.

Greek
The Greek alphabet was adapted in Egypt to the Coptic alphabet (with the addition of 7 letters derived from ancient Demotic) in order to write the language (which is today only a liturgical language of the Coptic Church). An uncial variant of the Coptic alphabet was used from the 8th to the 15th century for writing Old Nubian, an ancient variety of the Nubian language.

Arabic
The Arabic script was introduced into Africa by the spread of Islam and by trade. Apart from its obvious use for the Arabic language, it has been adapted for a number of other languages over the centuries. The Arabic script is still used in some of these cases, but not in others.
It was often necessary to modify the script to accommodate sounds not represented in the script as used for the Arabic language. The adapted form of the script is also called Ajami, especially in the Sahel, and sometimes by specific names for individual languages, such as Wolofal, Sorabe, and Wadaad's writing. Despite the existence of a widely known and well-established script in Ethiopia and Eritrea there are a few cases where Muslims in Ethiopia and Eritrea have used the Arabic script, instead, for reasons of religious identity.
Latin

Hebrew

Braille

Source wikipedia

Note- there are other writing systems in west africa.

Ajami script
Ajami (Arabic: عجمي‎, ʿajamī) or Ajamiyya (Arabic: عجمية‎, ʿajamiyyah), which comes from the Arabic root for 'foreign' or 'stranger', is an Arabic-derived script used for writing African languages, particularly those of Songhai, Mandé, Hausa and Swahili, although many other African languages are written using the script, including Mooré, Pulaar, Wolof, and Yoruba. It is an adaptation of the Arabic script to write sounds not found in Standard Arabic. Rather than adding new letters, modifications usually consist of additional dots or lines added to pre-existing letters.

The script was first used between the 10th and the 16th centuries.It was likely originally created with the intent of promoting Islam in West Africa. The first languages written in the script were likely old Taseelhit or medieval Amazigh, Kanuri, or Songhay. Later, Fulfulde, Hausa, Wolof, and Yoruba would use the script.By the 17th century, the script was being used to publish religious texts and poetry.Guinean Fulani poetry was written in Ajami from the middle of the 18th century.

During the pre-colonial period, Qur'anic schools taught Muslim children Arabic and, by extension, Ajami.
After Western colonization, a Latin orthography for Hausa was adopted and the Ajami script declined in popularity. Some anti-colonial groups and movements continued to use Ajami. An Islamic revival in the 19th century led to a wave of Ajami written works.
Ajami remains in widespread use among Islamic circles but exists in digraphia among the broader populace. Ajami is used ceremonially and for specific purposes, such as for local herbal preparations in the Jula language.

Source wikipedia



Sorabe alphabet
Sorabe or Sora-be (سُرَبِ, Malagasy pronunciation: [suˈrabe]) is an alphabet based on Arabic, formerly used to transcribe the Malagasy language (belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian language family) and the Antemoro Malagasy dialect, dating from the 15th century.
History
Researchers are still hypothesizing about the origins of the Sorabe alphabet. "Sorabe" means literally "large writings" from Arabic "sura" (writing) and Malagasy "be" (large). This denomination might point to the existence of a previous writing system with smaller characters of Sanskrit origin used in South East Asia as it is evidenced in some Malagasy words.
Traditionally, researchers have speculated that this writing system was introduced through commercial contacts of the Malagasy with Arab Muslims. However, more recent studies claim that this writing scheme might have been introduced by Javanese Muslims.There are striking similarities between "Sorabe" and the "Pegon script", which is the Javanese variant of the Arabic script.
A couple of hundred old manuscripts written in the Sorabe alphabet have survived to this day, though the oldest manuscript may have been written no earlier than the 17th century. Those "Sorabe" are bound in leather and the texts are named after the colour of the skin. Most of the texts contain magical formulas, but there are also some historical texts concerning the origin of some of the southeastern tribes of the island of Madagascar. These origins are traced to Mecca or the Prophet Mohammed even though the practice of Islam is nowhere seen in the texts.[citation needed]
Sorabe eventually spread across the island beginning in the 17th century and, at the end of the 18th century, the Merina king Andrianampoinimerina called for Antemoro scribes to teach the children of his court to read and write. This was how the future king Radama I learned to read and write in Sorabe from his childhood.
Nowadays Malagasy is written using a Latin alphabet, introduced in 1823.
Source wikipedia

Wadaad's writing
Wadaad's writing, also known as wadaad's Arabic (Somali: Far Wadaad, lit. 'clergyman's handwriting'), is the traditional Somali adaptation of written Arabic as well as the Arabic script as historically used to transcribe the Somali language. Originally, it referred to an ungrammatical Arabic featuring some words in Somali, with the proportion of Somali vocabulary terms varying depending on the context. Alongside standard Arabic, wadaad's writing was used by Somali religious men (wadaado) to record xeer (customary law) petitions and to write qasidas. It was also used by merchants for business and letter writing.Over the years, various Somali scholars improved and altered the use of the Arabic script for conveying Somali. This culminated in the 1930s with the work of Mahammad 'Abdi Makaahiil, standardizing vowel diacritics and orthographic conventions, and in 1950s with the controversial proposal of Musa Haji Ismail Galal which substantially modified letter values and introduced new letters for vowels.
History
The Arabic script was introduced to Somalia in the 13th century by Sheikh Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn (colloquially referred to as Aw Barkhadle or the "Blessed Father",a man described as "the most outstanding saint in Somalia." Of Somali descent, he sought to advance the teaching of the Qur'an.Al-Kawneyn devised a Somali nomenclature for the Arabic vowels, which enabled his pupils to read and write in Arabic. Sheikh Abi-Bakr Al Alawi, a Harari historian, states in his book that Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn was of native and local Dir (clan) extraction.
Though various Somali wadaads and scholars had used the Arabic script to write in Somali for centuries, it would not be until the 19th century when the Qadiriyyah saint Sheikh Uways al-Barawi of the Digil and Mirifle clan would improve the application of the Arabic script to represent Somali. He applied it to the Maay dialect of southern Somalia, which at the time was the closest to standardizing Somali with the Arabic script. Al-Barawi modeled his alphabet after the Arabic transcription adopted by the Amrani of Barawa (Brava) to write their Swahili dialect, Bravanese.
Source wikipedia

Timbuktu Manuscripts
Timbuktu Manuscripts, or Tombouctou Manuscripts, is a blanket term for the large number of historically significant manuscripts that have been preserved for centuries in private households in Timbuktu, a city in northern Mali. The collections include manuscripts about art, medicine, philosophy, and science, as well as copies of the Quran. Timbuktu manuscripts are the most well known set of West African manuscripts.

The manuscripts are written in Arabic and several African languages, in the Ajami script; this includes, but is not limited to, Fula, Songhay, Tamasheq, Bambara, and Soninke. The dates of the manuscripts range between the late 13th and the early 20th centuries (i.e., from the Islamisation of the Mali Empire until the decline of traditional education in French Sudan). Their subject matter ranges from scholarly works to short letters.

After the decline of the Mali Empire, the manuscripts were kept in the homes of Timbuktu locals, before research and digitisation efforts began in the 20th and 21st century.

The manuscripts, and other cultural heritage in Mali, were imperilled during the Mali War. 4,203 of Timbuktu's manuscripts were burned or stolen following between 2012 and 2013. Some 350,000 manuscripts were transported to safety, and 300,000 of them were still in Bamako in 2022.
Source wikipedia

Here is some more talk.

The Street lights of Benin city.
https://egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/thread/3575/street-lights-benin-city

African Writing
https://historum.com/t/african-writing.114962/

Did Sub-Saharan Africa ever have Indigenous writing?
https://historum.com/t/did-sub-saharan-africa-ever-have-indigenous-writing.192241/

Oh check this out.
Facial Reconstruction of Amenhotep III
https://egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/thread/3521/facial-reconstruction-amenhotep-iii?page=1
https://egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/thread/3521/facial-reconstruction-amenhotep-iii?page=2

Rosskiiku:


It was a thousand times more organized than today's Benin city.

Didn't you read where they said the people lived in such security that they never bothered to build doors at their front entrance?

Study the first picture. You see any front doors?

The idea of entering another person's house to steal or rob was simply unheard of.

It was unimaginable.

And I'm sure it was the same throughout the entire region we know today as Nigeria.

Real talk.

Rosskiiku:


EGYPT which was a black African civilization, had more books written than all those countries you named combined, because EGYPT, a black African civilization, existed, and dominated the world for THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

Without black Africans and ancient Egypt, those countries you mentioned, whom we civilized and taught even speech, wouldn't exist today.

But you are free to suck their nuts like the self-hating, brainwashed slave and bodyguard for white people you've been raised to become.

Papyrus of Maiherpri, Egypt - 4,000 BC


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiherpri

AI Confirms Egypt's WHITEWASHED history:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZTZ6KOPB9w?si=01J2-1ev9SVj0SEK

Interesting trove of historical lore in here...