Around the year 900 groups of Edo people began to cut down trees and make clearings in the rainforest. At first they lived in small family groups, but gradually these groups developed into a kingdom.

  The kingdom was called Igodomigodo. It was ruled by a series of kings, known as Ogisos, which means ‘rulers of the sky’.

In the 1100s there were struggles for power and the Ogisos lost control of their kingdom.

 The Edo people feared that their country would fall into chaos, so they asked their neighbor, the King of Ife, for help. The king sent his son Prince Oranmiyan to restore peace to the Edo kingdom.

Oranmiyan chose his son Eweka to be the first Oba of Benin. Eweka was the first in a long line of Obas, who reached the peak of their power in the 1500s.

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