For at least three centuries, the Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African superpower comparable to Sparta. European visitors spoke of its female warriors: She-soldiers. Medusas. Spinster warriors.
The term that stuck in modern Benin: Amazons.
“Whatever may have been the prowess of the Amazons among the ancients, this is a novelty in modern history,” wrote Archibald Dalzel, a British administrator in the region, in 1793.
A French official later referred to Dahomey as “surely the only country in the world that offers an unprecedented spectacle of an organisation of female soldiers”, according to American journalist Stanley Alpern. The French publisher Larousse declared the women “the only historically known Amazons”.
In the mid-19th century, Dahomey boasted thousands of female troops as it sought to outcompete rival states. When clashes broke out, the victors were known to force their enemies into labour or sell them into the slave trade.
The Amazons began training in their girlhood: swinging knives, loading Flintlock muskets and climbing thorny barricades. They drank imported brandy and sang war songs.
The tradition ended when France invaded. In the face of defeat, wrote a French general, “the women displayed a very great bravery,”.
Almost 2,000 Amazons died in the slaughter, historians estimate, and the 50 survivors faded into a transformed nation. Little trace of them remains in Abomey, the kingdom’s former capital.
A pair of craftsmen at the reconstructed palace of King Glele – each of Dahomey’s 12 kings built their own palace – sew banners of Amazons with rifles, fight with men and hold severed heads.
A rusty sign in town informs the public that a Catholic church now occupies the grounds of a former Amazon camp. The paint comes off the living room of a female warrior in a neighbouring village.
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