The Golden Stool of the Asante

A sacred, never-surrendered golden stool that started a war in 1900

The Golden Stool, in full Sika Dwa Kofi, the Golden Stool born on a Friday, is the royal throne of the Asante kings and the highest symbol of power among the Asante people of Ghana. Its story begins with Okomfo Anokye, the high priest who was one of the two chief founders of the Asante Confederacy. He is said to have called the stool down from the sky so that it landed on the lap of Osei Tutu, the first Asante king, who rose in the 1670s, overthrew the Denkyira and made Kumasi his seat. The stool is believed to hold the spirit of the nation: the living, the dead and those yet to be born.

Strict rules govern it. It must never touch the ground and rests on a blanket. Only the Asantehene may handle it, it is carried to him on a pillow, and at an installation a new king is raised and lowered over it without touching it. On solemn occasions it sits on a throne of its own at the king's left. It is a curved seat 46 cm high on a platform 61 cm wide and 30 cm deep, inlaid with gold and hung with bells meant to warn the king of danger. Few people have seen it, and only the king, the queen and trusted advisers know where it is kept.

Its history is a run of attempts to take it. In 1896 the British sent the Asantehene, Prempeh I, into exile, most of it in the Seychelles, for nearly 30 years. In January 1900 Sir Frederick Hodgson, Governor of the Gold Coast, told a meeting of Ashanti chiefs that he should sit on the stool and sent soldiers to hunt for it. The insult set off the War of the Golden Stool, led by the Queen Mother, Yaa Asantewa, whose forces besieged the governor in Kumasi until a British expedition defeated her in July 1900. Asante was annexed in 1901, but the stool was never handed over. In 1921 road workers found it and stripped some of its gold; a court held by local custom sentenced them to death, the British had them banished instead, and the stool came out of hiding once the British promised to leave it alone. It was used in 1935 to crown Prempeh II.