Read Ebook: The ruined cities of Mashonaland: Being a record of excavation and exploration in 1891 by Bent J Theodore James Theodore Swan R M W Robert McNair Wilson Contributor

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open space protected on two sides by rocks and on two by walls. This space was also full of wall foundations; but, being open to the sun, it had been occupied and ransacked by the Kaffirs.

To the south of the temple a flight of steps led down to the gold-smelting furnaces and the caves, of which I shall speak more at length in connection with the finds. This corner of the building was the only one in which our excavations were successful, and I entirely attribute this fact to its chilly and shady position--a spot studiously avoided by the succeeding generations of Kaffir tribes for this reason. Below the temple at the bottom of the precipice we commenced work, with great hope of finding the other portions of the bowls, &c., which we had found above. Here there is an enormous mass of fallen stones from the buildings above, but amongst them we found surprisingly little of interest. Perhaps a thorough excavation of this slope would yield further results, as so many of our finds in the temple above are fragmentary, and the presumption is that the other portions were thrown over the precipice; but this will be a gigantic work, entailing an enormous amount of labour and expenditure.

Such is the great fortress of Zimbabwe, the most mysterious and complex structure that it has ever been my fate to look upon. Vainly one tries to realise what it must have been like in the days before ruin fell upon it, with its tortuous and well-guarded approaches, its walls bristling with monoliths and round towers, its temple decorated with tall, weird-looking birds, its huge decorated bowls, and in the innermost recesses its busy gold-producing furnace. What was this life like? Why did the inhabitants so carefully guard themselves against attack? A thousand questions occur to one which one longs in vain to answer. The only parallel sensation that I have had was when viewing the long avenues of menhirs near Carnac, in Brittany, a sensation at once fascinating and vexatious, for one feels the utter hopelessness of knowing all one would wish on the subject. When taken alone this fortress is sufficiently a marvel; but when taken together with the large circular building below, the numerous ruins scattered around, the other ruins of a like nature at a distance, one cannot fail to recognise the vastness and power of this ancient race, their great constructive ingenuity and strategic skill.

About eight miles from Zimbabwe, standing alone in a fertile valley, there is another ruin which we visited, presumably of a later and inferior date, for the courses and stones are irregular and correspond to the later constructions at Zimbabwe. It too stands on a flat granite rock, and its structure is equally intricate, as will be seen from the plan. The natives know it by the name of the Little Zimbabwe, but for purposes of investigation into the origin of the constructing race it affords us no special point of value, which is the case also with most of the other ruins which we visited, and nothing need be said about them except to point out their existence. These remarks refer to the ruins which we found at Metemo, Chilondillo, Chiburwe, and in the Mazoe valley, all of which were obviously erected as forts to protect a surrounding population. Some of them are of the best period of workmanship, notably those at Chiburwe and in the Mazoe valley; others are of inferior workmanship, with uneven courses and irregularly shaped blocks of granite, proving that, as we find the two periods side by side at the Great Zimbabwe, also we have them scattered over the country.

The great ruin at Matindela is second only in importance to the Great Zimbabwe itself, and merits a close description.

The circular building at Matindela encloses an area not far short of that enclosed by the large circular building at the Great Zimbabwe; it crowns a low sloping granite kopje about 150 feet in height. The place is full of huge baobab trees, two of which in their growth have pushed down and grown up in the walls themselves. There are those that tell us about the fabulous age of the baobab, attributing an age of 5,000 years to the larger ones. The Director of Kew Gardens, Mr. Thiselton Dyer, tells me that this is grossly exaggerated, and that a few centuries is probably all that can be attributed to the very largest. Be this as it may, the baobabs have grown up and arrived at maturity long after the building of the Matindela ruins and their subsequent abandonment.

The best built portion of the wall has the same aspect as that at the Great Zimbabwe; but the other side, corresponding to the worst built part of the Zimbabwe wall, has never been completed at Matindela; the fact that the south-eastern side has been so strongly built and so much trouble has been spent on its decoration, and that the north side is comparatively open and neglected, and that the hill is equally assailable from both sides, leads one naturally to infer that the idea of a temple is here more prominent than that of a fortress.

The walls at Matindela are nowhere more than fifteen feet in height, nor are the courses nearly as regular as those at the Great Zimbabwe; but the great feature of interest is here the arrangement of the patterns, which establish beyond a doubt that they were inserted in the walls for a more complex purpose than mere ornamentation. The arrangement of these patterns is as follows: First to the south-east comes the herring-bone pattern, running over the chief entrance as a lintel for six yards. Here it ends, and two feet below begins the dentelle pattern for the same distance; then the pattern stops altogether on the outside, but there are indications that it was continued on the inside instead. Then it is again inserted for forty feet on the outside, and finally is again put on the inside for the remainder of its extent--namely, thirteen feet. Above the pattern and nearly over the principal entrance a curious loophole is still left standing, and the best portion of the wall has been battlemented, the outside portion being raised in front two or three feet higher than the back. The wall is eleven feet six inches at its thickest, and on the top of it we saw holes in which monoliths evidently once stood, as they did on the wall of the circular building at the Great Zimbabwe.

Another very marked feature at Matindela is that the doorways are all square, like those at the Lundi ruin, and not rounded off, as those at Zimbabwe, and then again all these doorways have been walled up in an uniform fashion, the courses corresponding exactly to those of the rest of the wall. In the original construction of the building certain spaces of seven feet had been left in the wall; two feet on either side had then been built up, thus leaving an entrance of three feet, which entrance in its turn had also been walled up. Here, as at the Great Zimbabwe, the theory at once occurred to me that these places had been walled up at a time of siege; but when one takes into consideration the care with which these apertures have been walled up, and the triple nature of the added wall, this theory seems untenable. The walling up of the pylons in certain Egyptian temples at Karnak, which Prof. Norman Lockyer brought before my notice, seems an apt parallel, though the reasons for so doing do not seem to my mind at present sufficiently proved. It must also be borne in mind that the walling up of the principal entrance at Matindela must have taken place prior to the construction of the pattern which rests upon it.

The interior of this building, as will be seen from the plan, was divided up into chambers, as the other ruins at Zimbabwe, but the walls here are much straighter, and the circular system of construction seems to have been more or less abandoned. I take it that this ruin at Matindela was constructed by the same race at a period of decadence, when the old methods of building had fallen into desuetude.

Outside the walls of the temple or fortress we found many circular foundations, very regularly built of granite blocks, and varying in diameter from six to fifteen feet. They were built in groups at considerable intervals apart, and we counted over forty of them. Some of these circular foundations have a double circle, as if for a step; the probability is that they formed the foundations of stone huts like those found in the Marico district of the Transvaal, and were the homes of the ancient inhabitants under the protecting wing of the temple-fortress. There are no traces of these circular foundations within the walls of the enclosure, but all were found outside within a radius of two hundred yards. There are traces, too, of other buildings about half-way down the slope of the granite hills, two walls parallel to one another, about thirty feet long, with doorways and six circular foundations outside them. There are also two depressions on the eastern side of the hill, now filled up with timber, which were probably the quarries from which the builders obtained the stone for their work.

About twelve miles to the north of Matindela, near a mountain called Chiburwe, on another low granite hill, we found another fort with similar circular foundations on the plain around it. This fort is about forty feet in diameter, and the walls are of the best period, with courses far more even than those of Matindela, and the stones of more uniform size and fitting more closely, corresponding to the best of the buildings at the Great Zimbabwe. Here, too, was another gigantic baobab tree, which had grown up in the wall and knocked it down; and here, too, the south-eastern portion of the wall is much better and thicker than the rest, which has in places either never existed or fallen down; but the destruction here was so complete that it was impossible to tell if there ever had been a pattern on it or not.

ON THE ORIENTATION AND MEASUREMENTS OF ZIMBABWE RUINS.

BY R. M. W. SWAN.

The form of nature worship which was practised at Zimbabwe found one of its expressions in the worship of the sun, and we have evidence of this cult in some architectural features and decorations of the temples themselves, and in the many images of the solar disc which were found in the temples along with the other symbols of the worship of reproductive power. It was very natural that these two cults should be associated together or merged in one, and it was common to many early peoples to think of the sun in conjunction with moisture as the great creator of all vegetable fertility, for even the most casual observation would show them that in the dark days of winter the vegetable world seemed to sleep, and that it only awoke to activity when the sun's rays had become more powerful and while the soil was still moistened by rain.

All religions have their times and seasons for special ceremonies of worship, and the appropriate time for the greatest of these festivals of solar worship would be at mid-summer, when the sun seemed most brilliant and his rays most energetic. Accordingly we find that at Zimbabwe means had been provided for ascertaining the time of the summer solstice, and that the side of the temple which faced the rising sun at this period of the year was adorned with a decoration symbolical of fertility.

But the temples at Zimbabwe seem also to have served a more directly practical purpose than that of mere worship of the powers of nature, and while regulating the festivals held in honour of natural powers, to have provided the means of observing the passage of the seasons and of fixing the limits of a tropical year, and thus providing the elements of a calendar.

The simplest way of ascertaining the period of a tropical year is by observing the position of the sun relatively to the equator, or its declination, and this can conveniently be done either when the sun is on the horizon or on the meridian, but most easily with accuracy in the former way, as the angle to be subdivided will generally be greater, and greater accuracy will be attained, because long shadows can more conveniently be used in this way than in the other. Or the right ascension of the sun might also be observed; that is, its place among the stars, or its position in the zodiac. This can be found most readily by observing the heliacal rising of stars, or the meridian passage of stars when the sun is near the horizon. At Zimbabwe all of these methods seem to have been used, and to do so does not necessarily imply more astronomical knowledge than is possessed by the peasantry in any of the more secluded districts of Europe, where watches are not much used, and where almanacks are not read, but where the people have the habit of telling the time of the day and of the year by the motions of the sun and of the stars; for to an agricultural people the change in position of the sun in summer and winter is as obvious as the seasons themselves, and the variation of the times of rising of the stars with the seasons can as little escape observation. Herodotus tells us that the Greeks used the gnomon to measure the length of shadows, and thus ascertain the position of the sun at midday, or its declination. The Chinese also used it at a very early period, and we have similar arrangements in some of our modern churches. Instances of the observation of the position of the sun on the horizon, except at Zimbabwe, are few and doubtful, although gnomons seem sometimes to have been used for this purpose; but ancient literature contains very many references to the observation of the heliacal risings of stars, and ancient architectural remains illustrate these literary allusions. Hesiod often speaks of the times of different agricultural operations having been fixed by the rising of stars, and Egyptian records tell us that the rising of Sirius was observed at the overflowing of the Nile; also it has recently been found that both Egyptian and Greek temples were generally built so that the rising of some star could be observed from their sanctuaries, and a coincidence has been traced between the date of the great festival proper to each temple and the time of the heliacal rising of the star towards which the axis of the temple was originally directed. The Malays, at the beginning of this present century, had a tradition that their seed-time had in old days been very well fixed by the rising of the Pleiades, but that since they had become Mohammedans the festivals of their religion and its calendar did not so well regulate their seed-time as was done in old times. It has been found that means were provided by the ancient Egyptians for observing the meridian transits of stars; and did we possess detailed and carefully oriented plans of the temples of Chaldaea and Assyria, there is little doubt that we should find that the meridian had been observed there also.

Thus it is evident that the several means which were adopted at Zimbabwe for observing the motions of the heavenly bodies were used in other countries also, and in all cases they seem to have been used for regulating the time of celebration of religious festivals as well as the ordinary affairs of life. Forms of nature worship analogous to that practised at Zimbabwe seem often to have been accompanied in other countries by an observation of the heavenly bodies. It is also worthy of note that the stars which were observed at Zimbabwe seem all to have been northern ones, and the builders of these temples probably acquired the habit of observing these stars in the northern hemisphere. To this we shall refer again.

What El Masoudi says of the temples of the Sabaeans of Mesopotamia does not, of course, directly apply to the temples at Zimbabwe; but in the plans of those temples one is reminded of the multiform temples which he describes, and of the mysteries involved in some of their architectural features which he could not fathom, for in these temples of Mashonaland there are some curious evidences of design in plan. A glance at the plan of the great temple suggests that the architects had carelessly drawn a great ellipse on the ground and built round it, getting occasionally out of line and leaving occasional doorways; but when one realises the wonderfully careful nature of the masonry, and the great accuracy with which the comparatively rough stones have been laid in regular courses, and been forced to combine to produce regular forms, and when a careful plan of the whole building has been made, then it is seen that what were regarded as careless irregularities in construction are, in reality, carefully constructed architectural features, which doubtless had some religious significance to the worshippers, but whose meaning remains a mystery to us.

The walls which are lightly shaded in the accompanying plans are much inferior in construction to the more darkly shaded walls, for while the latter are built in most regular courses, and the stones are most carefully packed in the whole thickness of the walls, the former, though sometimes having the exterior courses laid with some regularity, are most carelessly built in their interior, and the stones seem to have been laid in anyhow, and consequently there is a great difference in the durability of these walls; and while it would almost be possible to drive a cart along the top of the better-built part of the outer wall, one can only creep along the top of the worse-built portion while risking a fall. Besides, the better-built and the worse-built portions of the outer wall do not unite near the great doorway, and the foundation of the well-built walls turns outward, as is shown in the plan. The worse-built walls of all the temples do not show any of the peculiarities of design so characteristic of the better walls, except in two instances, where they seem to be rough reconstructions of older walls. We may, therefore, assume that these poorer walls are not of the original period, and that they were built by a people who either did not practise solar worship or who did not do so under the original forms. We will, therefore, disregard the poor walls in studying the plans of the temples. It is much to be regretted that we could recover no plan of the western side of the original outer wall, as it might have made clear to us the meaning of many of the features of the eastern wall.

We need hardly expect to find the same measure always applying to the buildings on the hill, for the form of these buildings is often controlled by the nature of the ground. Still they do apply, and the diameter of the curve on which the wall of the eastern temple is built is 84 1/2 feet, which is equal to half of 17?17 x 3?142. Of the two curved walls on the left hand when entering this temple from the south the diameter of the curve of one is equal to 17?17 x 3?14, and the radius of the other is 17?17 feet. The only other regularly curved wall on the hill is the western great wall with monoliths and round towers, and the diameter of the circle of which the curve of this wall forms a part is 254 feet, and this does not agree with our system of measure. But this wall and its towers are not well built, and there is good reason to suppose that it is not the original wall, or that the outer portion of it is not original; and, in fact, we discovered the foundation of part of another parallel wall, as is partly shown in plan, six feet west of this wall. If this were the original wall, it would give a diameter of 266 feet for the circle, which is half of 17?17 x 3?143.

The ruin at the Lundi River is circular in form and well built, and its diameter is fifty-four feet, which is equal to 17?17 x 3?14.

Of course all the above measurements refer to the outside of the walls at the base, as this is the way in which the tower itself was measured.

The same principle of measurement applies to the curves which determine the shape of the two towers themselves, and this explains why it is that the little tower tapers much more rapidly towards the top than does the great one. If we describe a circular curve with its centre on the same level as the base of the great tower and its radius equal to twice 17?17 x 3?14 on 107 4/5 feet, we find that it exactly fits the outline of the great tower as it is shown in our photographs. Also, a curve described in a similar way but with a radius equal to twice the diameter of the little tower multiplied by 3?14 will correspond to the outline of that tower.

The towers when built were doubtless made complete in their mathematical form and were carried up to a point as we see in a coin of Byblos, where we have a similar tower represented with curved outlines. Their heights as determined by these curves would be 42?3 and 13?5 feet respectively, and these numbers also bear the same relation to each other that the circumference of a circle does to its diameter.

We have no explanation to give of the position of the little tower relatively to the great one, but there probably was some meaning in it which might appear had we a plan of the original walls around the towers. It is very doubtful that these walls, which now mark off the sacred enclosure, are of the same period as the towers. They are shaded darkly in our plan because they are fairly well built; but although they are better built than most of the secondary walls, yet they are not equal in point of execution to the great outer wall and the towers, and their lines, too, are not so regular as those of the original walls generally are. It seems probable that they are rough copies of some old walls which had fallen, and are wanting in some of the essential features of their originals. We can only say that the centre of one tower is distant 17?17 feet from the centre of the other, within a limit of error of two inches.

The angular height of both the towers measured from the centres of the curves which determine their forms is the same--namely 23? 1?.

None of the angular values of the arcs seem to have been of any special significance, except perhaps the angle at the altar in the great temple, which is subtended by the arc AK. The value of this angle is about 57?, and is equal to our modern unit of the circular measure of an angle, which is the angle at the centre of any circle that is subtended by an arc equal to the radius. It is hardly likely that it can have had this meaning to the builders of the temple, and the probable cause of the coincidence is that at A they meant to halve the angular distance between K and the doorway. Besides, the sun's rays, when it rises at the summer solstice, do not fall directly on the part of the wall beyond A, and this probably had some connection with their reason for changing the radius of the arc at this point.

There is no evidence that any of the trigonometrical functions were known to the builders of Zimbabwe; not even the chord, which was probably the earliest recognised function of an angle, for the chords of the various arcs bear no simple relation to each other. The only interesting mathematical fact which seems to have been embodied in the architecture of the temples is the ratio of diameter to circumference, and it may have had an occult significance in the peculiar form of nature worship which was practised there. We do not suppose that it was intended to symbolise anything of an astronomical nature, and it is extremely improbable that the builders of Zimbabwe had any notion of mathematical astronomy, for their astronomy was purely empirical, and amounted merely to an observation of the more obvious motions of the heavenly bodies. When the minds of men were first interested in geometry it would at once occur to them that there must be some constant ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, and they would easily discover what this ratio was, and they may have considered this discovery so important and significant that they desired to express it in their architecture. Analogous instances of an embodiment of simple mathematical principles in architectural forms will occur to every one.

The centres of the arcs seem generally to have been important points, and altars were sometimes erected at them from which the culminations or meridian transits of stars could be observed, and on which sacrifices were probably offered to the sun when it was rising or setting at either of the solstices.

One hundred and seven and four-fifths feet from A and the same distance from K and from B is the centre of the arc AK, and at this point is some ruined masonry which seems once to have formed an altar. Zimbabwe is in South latitude 20? 16? 30?, and consequently the sun, when rising there at the summer solstice, would bear East 25? South were the horizon level. But Mount Varoma interposes itself between the temple and the rising sun at this time, so that the sun attains an altitude of 5? before its rays reach the temple. Then its amplitude will be more nearly 24?, and a line produced in this direction from the altar will pass across the doorway of the sacred enclosure, where the curve of the wall changes its radius, and, roughly speaking, through the middle of the chevron pattern. The same line drawn in an opposite direction for seventy-three feet would fall on a tall monolith which we there found lying by its well-built foundation. Where the pattern ends at A and B the rays of the sun are nearly tangential to the wall, so that all parts of the wall, and those parts only, which receive the direct rays of the sun when rising at the summer solstice are decorated by this symbolical pattern.

The sun's rays would not fall on the altar at this time, and it seems strange to have an altar devoted to solar worship under the shadow of a wall; but the same objection would apply to every part of the interior of the temple, and we can hardly suppose that the priests at Zimbabwe performed their ceremonies of worship outside of the temple, as some tribes of Arabs do with some stone circles at the present day, neither is there any sign of such ceremonies having been performed on the top of the broad wall. The monolith, seventy-three feet from the altar, was sufficiently tall to receive the rays of the sun when it rose over Mount Varoma, and the shadow of a monolith erected on the wall at K would fall on it at the same time, thus marking with great accuracy the occurrence of the solstice. Monoliths had been erected at intervals along the decorated part, and only on this part, of the wall, and these may have served to indicate other periods of the year in a similar way.

Near the top of the great tower, which at present stands thirty-two feet high, there is a dentelle pattern, which may be described as a chevron pattern laid on its side, and which resembles a common Egyptian pattern. This extends partly round the tower, but it is impossible to determine its aspect with accuracy as so much of it has fallen away. It seems, however, to have faced the setting sun at the winter solstice.

At the temple at the east end of the fortress on the hill similar means are provided for observing the summer solstice. Only a small part of the decorated wall remains, the middle part, which was of great height, having fallen, so that we do not know how far the decoration may have extended towards the south. On the other side it terminates at the doorway, which is placed close to the high cliff which forms the northern side of the temple. We discovered the altar, with several phalli and many little terracotta images of the solar disc lying near it, and some among the stones of the altar. This altar is not at the centre of the arc, but is placed ten feet nearer the rising sun at the solstice, and its position seems to be due to the position of the break in the cliff, which is true north of the altar, so that the meridian can be observed through this passage from the altar in its actual position, and it could not have been observed from the altar were it placed at the centre of the arc. It was impossible to describe the arc with the altar as its centre owing to the position of some rocks which would have interfered with the building of the wall. At the summer solstice the sun rises here on a level horizon and bears East 25? South, and a line drawn from the altar in this direction passes through the pattern, and continued for ten feet in the opposite direction it would fall on the centre of the arc.

The great curved wall at the western end of the fortress, which is surmounted by little round towers and erect monoliths, faces the setting sun at the winter solstice. If we suppose the altar was placed here, we have on an eminence marked A, fifty feet true north of the altar, a tall monolith which would enable the meridian transits of northern stars to be observed from the altar, and a line drawn from this altar towards the setting sun at the winter solstice would seem to have passed through the middle of the line of towers and monoliths. This great wall is not so well built as the walls at the eastern temple, and it seems probable that it is a restoration of an old wall which was originally parallel to this, and whose foundations we discovered as already mentioned. Possibly on the original wall the round towers and monoliths were aligned between the altar and the setting sun at certain definite periods of the year. At present they do not seem to mark any important periods, but the position of the setting sun at the summer solstice is well marked by a round tower on the wall overhanging the high cliff, and this is undoubtedly a wall of the best period.

At this western end of the fortress we have two instances of parts of walls which faced the setting sun at the winter solstice being decorated by a dentelle pattern.

The disposition of the ornamental patterns on the little round ruin at the Lundi River is interesting. It faces the rising sun at the winter solstice, but the place had been inhabited by Kaffirs, and all vestige of an altar, if it ever existed, had been destroyed. The nature of the patterns here is different from that of those at Zimbabwe. The one near the top of the wall is composed of two rows of little squares alternating with blank spaces, and a little way below this are two rows of a herring-bone pattern. There is a curious rounded protuberance on the outside of the wall, and the herring-bone pattern stops at this point, but the other extends right round to the south-eastern doorway.

This temple is similar in many ways to the partly circular one north-west of the great tower at Zimbabwe. They have both the same diameter and they each have two doorways which are in somewhat similar positions, although the temple at the Lundi is oriented towards the rising sun at the winter solstice, and the other, if it ever had a pattern, would have had it facing the setting sun at this solstice.

The dentelle pattern on the great tower seems to have been oriented towards the setting sun at the winter solstice, and the centre of the partly circular temple at G is roughly in a line between the centre of the tower and the sun at this time. When the sun is rising at the summer solstice G will be behind the tower and in the middle of its shadow, in a position analogous to that of the altar behind the arc AK. The direction of the wall at the north-eastern extremity of the arc of which G is the centre is towards the rising sun at the winter solstice, and its inner side points past the centre of the arc AK towards the point of the outer wall which is in a straight line between the altar and the sun when it rises at this solstice. The wall at the other extremity of the arc points to the rising sun at the other solstice.

It is perhaps worthy of remark that the centre of the great tower is distant the length of its own height from the solstitial line MK, while the centre of the little tower would be the same distance from a parallel solstitial line drawn from the south-eastern extremity of the arc of which G is the centre; and also that the centres of the great tower and the centres of the arcs AK and KB lie in one straight line.

At Matindela the general aspect of the decorated part of the building is towards the setting sun, but the masonry is so rough in its construction that we need expect little accuracy in orientation. The whole appearance of the place suggests that what exists at present is merely a rough rebuilding of an older structure. What remains of the internal arrangements of the building is very fragmentary, and we could find no trace of an altar. Over the doorway there is a herring-bone pattern facing the setting sun at the summer solstice, and adjoining this on its north side there is a band of ornament of the dentelle kind with a similar aspect. Above this dentelle pattern there is a loophole in the wall which may have served to pass a ray of light from the setting sun to an altar at some festival. Farther along the wall there is another pattern facing the setting sun at the winter solstice, and on the inside of the wall yet another looking towards the rising sun at the summer solstice. The construction of the doorways at Matindela is remarkable. They have been originally made of considerable width, and then been narrowed very much by square masses of masonry which were built at both sides. The direction of the doorways also seems to have some meaning, for three of them look East 25? North, and four East 25? South, thus corresponding to the direction of the sun rising and setting at the solstices.

At the Mazoe Valley, and to the north-east of Matindela, near Mount Chiburwe, there are well-built ruins of the best period of this style of architecture, but, unfortunately, too little of them remains to allow us to understand their plans. They are both very small, and are not circular, like the Lundi River ruin, but their walls seem to have been built on a series of curves like the wall of the great temple. A very extraordinary thing regarding all the older ruins in Mashonaland is the way in which the stones which once composed the walls have disappeared. They have not been covered up by soil, and there is no trace of them in the surrounding country, and yet in these two ruins not one-twentieth part of the stones remain, and all that do remain are in their original places in the walls.

When the western wall was rebuilt at the great temple at Zimbabwe there was apparently a want of stones, and the rebuilders were too lazy to procure more, so they probably shortened the wall by decreasing the size of the temple, and also economised stones by making the new wall much less thick.

The place marked A near the western end of Zimbabwe Hill is remarkable. It is a natural eminence, the height of which has been increased by building. To the south of it is a great mass of masonry which is pierced by several roofed passages, and over which a winding stairway leads from the eastern buildings to the eminence, while a similar staircase leads from the eminence towards the buildings lying northward. To the eastward of the eminence tower great granite boulders, the termination at this end of that line of boulders which caps the hill along its whole length, and which protects the fortress on the north side. At the highest point of the eminence is erected the great monolith before referred to, which seems to have marked the meridian for the altar at R. Close to this monolith stood another made of soapstone. We found its base in its place, and its other fragments, shown in the illustration, were all discovered near. This monolith was decorated with bands of the chevron pattern running halfway round, with images of the sun and other geometrical patterns placed between the bands. It seems probable that it served as a gnomon, and that means had been provided for measuring the length of its shadow at midday. The foundation of the monolith is twenty-five feet higher than the site of the altar, and the monolith itself was ten feet long, so that we have a total height for its summit of thirty-five feet above the base of the altar, and it stood fifty feet true north of the altar. At Zimbabwe the altitude of the upper limb of the sun at midday, at the winter solstice, is about 46 1/2 ?, so that the top of the monolith would then throw its shadow in the direction of the altar, and to within about seventeen feet of its centre. Probably some arrangement had been made near the altar for observing the length of its shadow; and were the shadow received on an inclined plane or staircase, as seems to have been done with the dial of Ahaz, mentioned in the Old Testament, it might be lengthened to any extent and its variations in length increased in magnitude; and so the change in declination of the sun could be observed with considerable accuracy. The sun is little more than three degrees south of Zimbabwe at midsummer, and it would be difficult to measure with accuracy the short shadows then cast, and we do not find anything to show that they had been observed, and the means provided in the two other temples for observing the position of the sun on the horizon would be much more effectual for fixing this solstice.

The positions of the doorways relatively to the altars or the centres of the arcs is of interest; and we find that every important doorway in walls of the original period, with the exception of the south-eastern doorway in the temple at the Lundi, and the south-western one in the partly circular interior temple at Zimbabwe, is placed true north of the centre of an arc or of an altar, and the centre of every arc has had a doorway or some other means of marking out the meridian placed north of it. True north of the centre of the tower itself we have a doorway in the wall of the sacred enclosure, and although the wall in which this doorway is made was probably not built at the original period, yet there probably was a doorway in a similar position in the wall which it has replaced. The part of the great outer wall north of the tower seems also to have been marked, for about this point we found a great step constructed on its top about five feet high.

Above the temple at the east end of the fortress on the hill, a cliff rises perpendicularly for fifty feet, and poised on its top there stands a most remarkable great rock which may once have been an object of veneration to the worshippers in the temple beneath it. It forms one of the highest points on the hill. A line drawn true south from this rock and produced 680 yards would pass through the doorway in the great temple and fall on the altar in the centre of the decorated arc. Until this line suggested itself we were puzzled to account for the peculiar character of the doorway. It passes through a wall sixteen feet thick, and is itself only three feet wide, and it does not pass through the wall at right angles, but cuts it somewhat obliquely, so that its axis is roughly parallel to the meridian line.

A line drawn true north from the centre of the arc at G will pass through the doorway of the small temple and the centre of the arc KB at P. This line points through the outer wall where the gap occurs, and it is probable that the opening which was made in the outer wall to allow of observation along this line, determined its fall at this point. This meridian line is thirty-six feet distant from the other from the centre of the arc AK, and it must have pointed to the same great stone. But if both these lines point to the middle of this stone, which is 680 yards distant, they will incline towards each other about one degree, and the time of the transit of a star over the stone observed by one line will differ four minutes from that observed by the other. This inaccuracy would be so obvious to the observers that we cannot suppose they would have worked in this way. The great stone measures nearly, if not quite, thirty-two feet across, and were the lines directed, not both to its centre, but one to either side, they would be parallel to each other and would both give the same time for a transit of a star. This would imply that stars were observed, not passing over the stone, but disappearing and reappearing behind it, and a star observed at the altar to disappear would at the same instant reappear to an observer at G and P; or if the rock were less than thirty-two feet wide the star would reappear at G and P before it disappeared at the altar. We have thus a sort of double observation of the same meridian transit.

If we admit that these meridian lines were used for the observation of stars in this way, and if we can determine what star or stars were observed, the time that has elapsed since they were observed admits of calculation. The apparent altitude of the middle of the stone as seen from the centres of the arcs is 7 1/2 ?, and the latitude of Zimbabwe is 20? 16? 30?, so that we want stars having a north polar distance of about 28?. Owing to the changing direction of the pole of the earth, which produces the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes, the declinations and right ascensions of all the stars are undergoing a slow but regular change; but there are no stars of the first magnitude which have had approximately this polar distance since any probable date of the foundation of Zimbabwe. Of stars of the second magnitude there are four, and of the third magnitude many more, which may have been used, and they would all serve for widely different periods. In order to enable us to select the proper star from this number we must have its right ascension, and this we may yet hope to get when we have the date of some important yearly festival at Zimbabwe, and the hour at which the star would be wanted on the meridian on the night of this festival.

There are two other places where the meridian transits of stars have been watched at Zimbabwe, and in these cases it is still the same portion of the heavens which has been observed. The altar in the eastern temple in the fortress has been placed ten feet E.S.E. of the centre of the arc, in order to permit of the meridian being observed through the gap in the rock which formed the northern doorway. Here the line laid off is much shorter than that between the rock and the great temple, but still fairly accurate observations could be made. To the north of the centre of the arc of the great wall of the western temple there is, as we have already shown, a great monolith erected, and at one side of this the stars might be observed at their culminations. As seen from the altar this monolith would mark out an angular distance of 9? of the meridian.

It is remarkable that only stars of the northern hemisphere seem to have been observed at Zimbabwe, for in the great temple itself the culminations of southern stars could quite as easily have been observed as those of northern ones, and in the fortress all view of the northern sky is almost completely shut off by the cliffs and huge boulders which form its northern line of defence; yet every point from which northern stars could have been observed has been used for this purpose, and there is no temple there from which northern stars were not observed, while at the same time the openly displayed southern sky has been left unregarded. This, of course, points to a northern origin for the people, and suggests that before they came to Zimbabwe they had acquired the habit of observing certain stars--a habit so strong that it led them to disregard the use of the southern constellations, though they must have known that they would equally well have served to regulate their calendar; it even seems to indicate that they attached ideas of veneration to certain stars, and rendered them worship. It seems a plausible supposition that while the great temple itself was devoted to solar and analogous forms of worship, the little circular, or partly circular, temples within its walls, of which we found one fairly well preserved and fragmentary remains of several others, were dedicated to the cult of particular stars.

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