Ejisu

The Asante Empire reached its high point in the 18th century, and its architecture was part of that power. The shrine houses near Kumasi — arranged around courtyards, built of timber, bamboo and mud plaster, and originally roofed in steeply pitched thatch — were the physical expression of a wealthy, organised state. When the empire fell during the British occupation of 1806 to 1901, most buildings of the period were destroyed. Among them was the royal mausoleum, demolished by Robert Baden-Powell in 1895.

What survived were the shrines. Ten of them remain: Abirim, Asawase, Asenemaso, Bodwease, Ejisu Besease, Adarko Jachie, Edwenase, Kentinkrono, Patakro and Saaman. Most sit to the north-east of Kumasi, with Patakro to the south. UNESCO describes them as the last remaining testimony of the unique architectural style of the great Asante Kingdom, inscribed under criterion (v) for that rarity. The buildings were acquired by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board between 1960 and 1970 and scheduled as a National Monument under Ghanaian law, with chiefs, elders and community members also involved in their care.

Time has not been kind. Because the structures are made of earth, wood and straw, the warm humid tropical climate is actively destructive: heavy rainfall and high humidity encourage mould on wall surfaces, and termites and other insects breed prolifically. In twelve of the thirteen buildings, the original palm-frond thatch has been replaced by lighter corrugated iron, and paved flooring has replaced rammed earth. The present appearance is largely authentic in form and materials, but many have been substantially reconstructed. Their survival is a running negotiation between conservation, climate and community.

Yaa Asantewaa was born around 1840 in Besease, the daughter of Kwaku Ampoma and Ata Po. Her brother, Afrane Panin, became chief of Edweso — Ejisu — and appointed her Queen Mother, a position that carried responsibility for protecting the Golden Stool, advising the king and nominating candidates for the next ruler. When her brother died in 1894 she used her right as Queen Mother to nominate her own grandson as Ejisuhene. In 1896 the British exiled him to the Seychelles, along with the Asantehene Prempeh I and other members of the Asante government. Yaa Asantewaa became regent of the Ejisu–Juaben district.

Then the British governor of the Gold Coast, Frederick Hodgson, demanded the Golden Stool itself — the symbol of the Asante nation's soul, never sat upon, kept beside the throne. At a secret meeting in Kumasi, the chiefs argued. Yaa Asantewaa stood and spoke. If the men of Asante would not go forward, she said, then the women would; she would call upon her fellow women and they would fight until the last of them fell. To dramatise her determination, she seized a gun and fired a shot in front of the men. She was chosen by regional Asante kings as war leader — the first and only time a woman held that role in Asante history.

Beginning in March 1900, the rebellion laid siege to the British fort at Kumasi. The governor eventually sent a force of 1,400 to quell it. Yaa Asantewaa and fifteen of her closest advisers were captured and exiled to the Seychelles, where she died on 17 October 1921. The war was the final conflict in the Anglo-Asante wars of the 19th century, and on 1 January 1902 the British annexed the territory as a protectorate. Yet the Golden Stool was never surrendered: a fake was delivered to the governor while the real one was hidden. In 1924 Prempeh I returned and arranged for the remains of Yaa Asantewaa and the other exiles to be brought home for royal burial. Her dream of an Asante free of colonial rule was realised on 6 March 1957, when Ghana became independent.

It is easy to read the shrines as monuments. They are not. The traditional religion is still practised at them, which is precisely why they have been maintained. The practice takes the form of consulting the deities for advice on specific situations, or before an important initiative — which is why the shrines have been kept complete with all their symbolic features. UNESCO notes that protection operates on two levels: customary regulations, prohibitions and penalties handed down through generations, and modern statutory regulation through the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board. The two systems complement each other, one built into the belief system of the communities where the sites stand, the other prescribing the Board's role.

The Besease shrine, also called the Yaw Tano Shrine, was built by the komfo Yaw Awua in the 19th century during the reign of Nana Kwaku Dɛɛkyi, the Edwesohene. It houses the shrine of the Besease Tano deity known as Tano Yaw, a protective deity reputed as a great protector of its people in times of war. Local knowledge holds that Yaa Kyaa, a relative of Yaa Asantewaa, gave birth to a mysterious object rather than a child; consultations with mediums revealed it as the representation of the powerful deity Tano, given the day name Tano Yaw because it was born on a Thursday. Yaa Kyaa became the deity's priestess.

The buildings themselves are arranged as four rooms facing a central courtyard on a raised plinth. Three rooms were used for ritual activity; the fourth was the shrine itself, with restricted access. The bas-reliefs are not merely ornamental — the spiral and arabesque forms, the animals, birds and plants, are linked to Adinkra symbols with meanings handed down across generations. At Besease, the nnomaa mmienu motif of two birds feeding from one source sits above the shrine-room doorway, carrying the idea of peaceful coexistence between opposing forces. Both the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board and the French Embassy in Ghana carried out restoration work on the shrine, in 1963 and 1998.