Queen Idia

Idia was born in the late 15th century in Ugieghudu, in the Isi district of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria. Her birth date is unknown, and accounts place her life around the turn of the sixteenth century. In Edo she is known as Idia n'Iye Esigie, meaning Idia, the mother of Esigie.

She became one of the wives of Oba Ozolua, whose reign was marked by territorial expansion and repeated military campaigns. Her son Esigie was one of the heirs to the throne, and when Ozolua died a bitter succession dispute broke out between Esigie and his brother Arhuaran, a conflict that became a civil war.

Benin's traditions assign Idia a military, political and ritual role in securing her son's victory. She is remembered as a warrior, a strategist and a healer, and she is said to have had mystical and medicinal powers. One tradition remembers her as the only woman who went to war, and credits her support in military campaigns with the expansion of the kingdom.

When Esigie became Oba, in the early sixteenth century, he created the title of Iyoba, queen mother, for Idia. She became its first holder, and he gave her a palace at Uselu, outside Benin City, with her own chiefs, servants, lands and court, and powers comparable to those of the kingdom's senior chiefs. From then on the Iyoba was a titled figure of her own, and the Queen Mother's court became a lasting institution of Benin.

Idia was honoured in art. Carvers of the royal ivory guild, the Igbesanmwan, made ivory pendant masks in her likeness, among them the famous pair now in the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their headdresses are decorated with tiny heads of Portuguese figures, a reminder of Benin's contact with Europe. In 1977 an ivory mask of her face became the emblem of FESTAC '77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos.