Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

51
European visitor remarked that the Binis were not afraid of death at all
(Nyendael 1705: 447). Indeed, for them death did not exist neither in the
materialistic and atheistic sense – as the definite and final end of life, nor in the
Christian one – as transition to completely different afterlife and separation
from all what was dear in earthly life. For the Binis, there was no afterworld
and afterlife in this sense: death meant continuation of life in, in the nutshell,
the same world, among the same people and spirits and with the prospect of
rebirth in the aspect of an offspring to the human-being life which yet was
regarded as the best (Talbot 1926: II, 268).
All this sounded axiomatically for the Binis because in their world
outlook the universe embraced the domains of people, on the one hand, and
ancestors’ spirits and deities, on the other, as mutually necessary and
interpenetrable. The picture of the universe turned out socio-, i.e.,
Beninocentric. It departed from ideas about the place of their own country and
society in it based on the premise that Benin was the universe’s vitally
important focal point, its center because it was held that just there precisely the
Binis’ deities and ancestors had created the universe, the Earth, and the life
(see, e.g., Ebohon 1972: 5; Eweka, E. B. 1992: 2–4; Isaacs, D, and E. Isaacs
1994: 7–9; Ugowe 1997: 1). And the whole universe concentrated in one point.
That point was eguae – the sovereign’s palace, the biggest building (or more
precisely, architectural complex) in Benin City situated in her very center (see
Roese et al. 2001). The erection of the palace on the present, central, spot was
initiated by Oba Ewedo in the mid-13 th century and symbolized the supreme
rulers’ eventual gaining independence of the Uzama in whose district of the
city the first royal palace had been built (Melzian 1937: 43; Egharevba 1952:
23; 1956: 39; 1960: 10, 92; 1965: 19; Akenzua, E. 1965: 248; Beier 1966: 57;
McClelland 1971: 11; Connah 1972: 35; 1975: 89–97; Obayemi 1976: 248;
Roese 1984: 204; 1988: 68; Sargent 1986: 408; Eweka, E. B. 1989: IV; 1992:
28; Omoregie, O. S. B. 1992–1994: VI; Nevadomsky 1993: 72; Bondarenko
2001: 171–172).
In popular mass consciousness, sacrality of the Oba and the city as, in
the final analysis, the center of the universe were interrelated directly (see, e.g.
Sidahome 1964: 192–194). It is highly remarkable that in the society in which
each and every animated and inanimate object was declared belonging to the
sovereign, the only what was regarded as common property was his palace.
From the time of Oba Ewuare, i.e., from the mid-15 th century (Ben-Amos 1980:
20), as the focal point of the whole universe’s focal point (Benin City), the
palace was seen as the hub of the whole cosmos in which communication
between the living and the spirits, deities was to be performed most actively
and effectively. Just for integrating the two parts of the society as it was seen
by the Binis –visible and invisible but yet not at all less real and even more
important, the main inhabitant of the palace, the Oba, existed in the Binis’
minds first and foremost. Without this task’s successful fulfilling by the Oba