Deep within the Royal compound of Abomey, scientists have unearthed a grisly secret woven into the fabric of history. New research has revealed that two ancient huts, part of a vast palace complex in this West African city, were constructed using mortar mixed with human blood from 41 people. This macabre discovery, tied to the reign of the ruthless King Ghezo, highlights the dark rituals that permeated the kingdom of Dahomey in the 19th century.

The huts are part of a large palace in Abomey, a city in West African country. Abomey and many other regions of modern-day Benin were parts of Dahomey, an ancient African kingdom that thrived between the 17th and 20th centuries. 

In 1818, Dahomey had a new king named Ghezo who followed voodoo traditions and conducted sacrificial rituals involving human blood. He ruled the kingdom for the next 40 years and treated his enemies in the worst possible way you can imagine. 

“The hallmarks of King Ghezo’s reign were death and warrior power. It is said that the alley leading to his hut was paved with the skulls and jawbones of defeated enemies and that one of his thrones rested on the skulls of four defeated enemy leaders,” the study authors note.

The two huts also have unusual construction materials. For instance, “the binder used in their walls is not a standard mortar, but is claimed to be made of red oil and lustral water mixed with the blood of 41 sacrificial victims—41 being a sacred number in voodoo,” they added.

Why King Ghezo’s palace has funerary huts

The Voodoo religion is believed to have originated in Haiti. It is based on a simple philosophy — everything including humans is a spirit. While some spirits (humans and animals) live in the visible world, others including the dead ancestors, deities, and mysterious creatures we can’t see, inhabit the invisible world.

To please the spirits in the invisible world, the followers of the voodoo religion pray and perform various rituals. They believe these practices will fulfill their wishes and lead to good health and prosperity.

“Voodoo, if you want to define it, is the means at your disposal to establish harmony between you and everything that surrounds you, both visible and invisible,” Carl-Henry Desmornes, Voodoo Supreme Leader, told Reuters.

According to the study authors, the huts are sacred funerary structures that Ghezo built in memory of his father, Abandozan. It is possible he used blood in constructing the huts as part of some sacred voodoo tradition to please his father’s spirit.

But how did researchers detect blood in the walls?

The sacred huts were built hundreds of years ago, so it wasn’t easy to identify the biological materials used in their construction. This is because ancient DNA in such old structures degrades easily unless stored and preserved in a protected environment. The study authors, therefore, decided to study the proteins — a technique known as metaproteomic analysis — instead of the DNA in the collected samples from the walls.

“We conceived an original strategy to analyze the proteins present in minute amounts of the cladding sampled from the inner facade of the cenotaph wall and establish their origin. The extracted proteins were proteolyzed and the resulting peptides were characterized by high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry,” the study authors said. 

Mass spectrometry is an advanced technique used to identify different materials in a sample by measuring the mass of their molecules. It revealed the presence of hemoglobin (a protein found in blood cells) and immunoglobin (antibodies/glycoproteins produced by white blood cells), originally from humans and chickens. This confirmed the use of human and chicken blood in the mortar.

Surprisingly, the researchers also found traces of wheat in the mortar sample. In those times, wheat wasn’t cultivated in Benin. It is possible that King Ghezo received wheat as a gift from French emperor Napoleon III. Ghezo had a friendly relationship with the emperor and he used to gift him textiles, weapons, and, various other items. 

“In light of these diplomatic exchanges, flour and wheat may have circulated at the royal court of Dahomey, allowing the sovereign to taste bread and other French delicacies,” the study authors note.

King Ghezo died in 1858. His palace, which housed the sacred huts in Abomey, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site attracting many tourists from across the globe.

The study is published in the journal Proteomics.