Dahomey's kings ruled from Abomey over a state whose central institution was a cult. Each king built his own palace within the royal enclosure and, on his death, joined the line of royal ancestors who were served with offerings and consulted on the affairs of the kingdom; the annual ceremonies known as the customs gathered the court, the provincial chiefs and the tribute, redistributed wealth, and honoured those ancestors, so that the fiscal, political and religious year were one thing. Some of these ceremonies included the killing of captives, which European visitors reported in detail and often in inflated numbers, and which modern historians read as a state ritual of ancestral service rather than the mass spectacle of the travel literature.
Above and beside the royal ancestors stood the vodun: Mawu and Lisa as the paired creator principle, Legba at the threshold, Dan the serpent, Sakpata and Hevioso and the rest, each with its own priesthood, initiates, songs and shrines. Melville Herskovits' fieldwork in the 1930s produced the first systematic account of the system, and Edna Bay's later work showed how far the palace itself, with its thousands of resident women and the office of the kpojito who reigned alongside each king, was organised through these religious relationships.
The palace bas-reliefs at Abomey, which carry the emblems of each reign, are the kingdom's own record of that order, and the site is now protected as a world heritage property.