The cockerel, the Benin cockerel? Yes. The cockerel, the Benin cockerel. It comes in two shapes: brass and wood. The first cockerel was created around 1520 when Ọba Ẹsigie was creating a shrine in honour of his mother, the first Iy’Ọba of Benin, Idiaro, popularly known as Idia N’Iye Ẹsigie. Beyond the cockerel, you have the Urhotọ, which is an … which is a sign of achievement. And whatever you do in Benin, when you have fought a good battle, the Benin man says ‘okhonren muobọ yan ikega’. But for the Iy’Ọba she has Urhotọ, which is the symbol of the highest achievement. The Benin woman is initially a daughter before she becomes a sister, and then she becomes a wife. But the ultimate is the wife of the Ọba. But the greatest achievement of a Benin woman is being the mother of the Ọba. So that cock signifies her ascendancy from the ordinary female, through being a queen, then she now transmutes into a male, becoming Iy’Ọba. ‘Ọkpa n’Usẹlu, nọ ma riẹ izobo, nọ ma giẹ omwa vbe e re’_ _(cockerel of Uselu that does not eat the sacrifice of mashed yam mixed with palm oil and would not allow another cock to eat it) is one of the appellations of the Iy’Ọba Ọba (ringing phone). The cock shows the artistic creativity of the Benin man, the Benin artists. When the Benin artists are producing human figures they are much more figurative, but when we are producing animals, it will show you our in-depth study of these animals, like the cock, like the leopard, like the ram. Then you will understand the ingenuity of the Benin artist. Back to the cock, the white man did not take one. Before the fall of Benin, between Esigie and Iheya, the mother of Ovonramwen, there were more than eighteen Iy’Ọba. Apart from Ọba Ohuan, who did not send his mother to Uselu, every other Ọba sent his mother to Uselu. And in these palaces, you had an Ọdiọnwere (village head), you had the priests who took care of the altar. On this altar were objects both secular and religious. The most important were the cock and the Urhotọ. Of course, you had brass ancestral staff. Every object that you have in the palace certainly the Ọba will create for his mother. So when the white man took Benin, after looting the palace, they went to Uselu and looted every Iy’Ọba’s palace, not just the palace of Iy’Ọba Iheya. But they deliberately destroyed the palace of Iy’Ọba Iheya, because the white man claimed it was another centre of vice in the city of blood. That was on 21 February 1897.