Vexillological Oddities

        

This is the last flag post for a while, promise........

22 FLAGS SCARIER THAN THE ONE ISIS FLIES.

I wouldn't call most of the flags on this list "scary"....although some are quite odd.  A couple are vaguely creepy.  I think some are beautiful....

Up top's a sample from the Kingdom of Benin:  A naked guy decapitating another naked guy, hey hey!  It doesn't matter that the actual provenance or use of this flag is not entirely certain, it's a great flag.  The name of the file is actually "unidentified West African Flag."

Wiki: 

"The 'flag of the Kingdom of Benin' is an unidentified West African flag that was brought to Britain after the Benin Expedition of 1897 against the Kingdom of Benin.  Debate exists over the origin of the flag, including which West African people created it."

See me wave....

The National Maritime Museum (UK) says the flag is "probably" Itsekri in origin.  By comparison, the flag pictured below is contemporary and used to represent the Itsekri people.  Perhaps the swords, and the red and white color scheme, led experts to attribute a Beninois origin to our "mystery flag?"  

The Itsekri are related to the Yoruba and both groups are concentrated in present-day Nigeria, which borders present-day Benin.  The historical Kingdom of Benin was actually within what is now Nigeria and was not the precursor of the modern state that bears its name, which was, until 1975, known as Dahomey.

What the flag refers to, historically or allegorically, I don't know.  Maybe a Cain and Abel-type situation?  Or Romulus and Remus.  Some kind of fratricide....a civil or tribal conflict perhaps? 

All the museum has is this:

....A red wool bunting flag with a linen hoist, machine sewn (italics added) with a rope halyard attached. The design is applied in white fabric with painted details....said to have been brought back by Admiral F. W. Kennedy from the 1897 Benin expedition. 'Kennedy' is inscribed on a paper label attached to the rope.

The Itsekri people acted as middle men between the Edo people....in the interior and the Europeans on the coast - the Edo would not cross or travel on waterways.

The Benin expedition was launched in reprisal against an attack on a British mission in the service of Niger Coast Protectorate by forces of the Oba of Benin....The towns of Guato and Sapobar were attacked by detached forces while the main part of the expedition marched on Benin. The town was captured and accidentally burnt....The famous Benin bronzes were removed as reparations stolen by the British.

National Geographic reports that the Kingdom flourished between 1200 and 1800 CE, and that human sacrifice was practiced there to honor its kings.  Could the flag reflect the practice of ritual beheading?  Could be; one visitor in 1838 was especially "disgusted by the sight of turkey-buzzards feeding on the carcasses of the beheaded."  Referring to sacrificed victims.  (see The Slave Trade, Depopulation and Human Sacrifice in Benin History, James D. Graham in Cahiers d'Études africaines (1965).

Maybe the flag was a gift to Kennedy for his role in "decapitating" the Kingdom of Benin?  Regime change and all that.  The Kings of Benin did have their excesses.

(Note that historians say reports of human sacrifice in Benin were exaggerated and that the actual practice was limited in scope; some evidence suggests those "sacrificed" were in fact condemned criminals.  No finger-wagging now.  Executions in 13th-century London were more brutal than what is suspected to have occurred in Benin -- 75,000 executions during the 38-year reign of Henry VIII alone....)  

In the US we can inject, shoot, hang, asphyxiate or burn our condemned prisoners alive.  Freedom of choice.  Just for perspective.  And if you think an injection is humane, bear in mind that "Lethal injection causes severe pain and severe respiratory distress with associated sensations of drowning, asphyxiation, panic, and terror in the overwhelming majority of cases."  Winning!

Here's yet another Kennedy associated with a head wound...and some etymologies have the name Kennedy itself deriving from a Gaelic word for...."head."  Of course, let's not forget Hoffman and Downard's King-Kill-33, the seminal conspiratorial text positing that the assassination of JFK was a ritual psychodrama, a "killing of the king" by shadowy Masonic forces....as part of their ongoing plan to usher in a "new order for the the ages."

Anyway, this Benin flag is just one of many curiosities on the list, and it's a fun read.  Flags, like coins, are great Ports of Entry into History.  I for one am digging these forays into vexillology and since you're reading (or not), I hope you are too.

By Thingsomyipisntvisable - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116797073