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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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.

There is no sign in the temples of any observation of anything external to the temples themselves, unless of the heavenly bodies; and no features of the surrounding country, such as prominent mountain-peaks or great isolated rocks, of which there are many striking instances near the temples, have had any regard at all paid to them. The outer walls, with the exception of the decoration towards the solstices, are featureless and blank, and the doorways, where one might expect ornament, are extremely narrow and entirely plain. When one is within the great temple one realises how fitting a place it is in which to observe the starry sky, for the high walls around exclude all view of the landscape, and the only objects which attract one's attention are the heavenly bodies above one; and at night-time one feels how easily the thoughts of a star-worshipper could be concentrated on their proper object.

It is incredible that such a style of architecture as we have described, and such a civilisation as it signifies, could have originated and developed in South Africa, for such a development would have required a very long time, and would have implied at least a long and peaceful settlement in the country; and although the builders of Zimbabwe may have long possessed the place, yet it is apparent that they never considered the country was their own. This is clear from the nature of their defences and the strength of their fortifications. Had they lived long enough in the land to alter or develop any of their arts independently of their mother country, they would have left a deeper mark on their surroundings than they have; besides, living as they must have lived, they could not have increased in civilisation, nor developed any of its arts, and we may assume that they had their architecture as well as their religion in common with their mother country. The balance of probabilities seems to be in favour of that country being South Arabia; and when it and Abyssinia, with which it was so long associated, are better known, we may find temples which are built of similar small stones and with similar mathematical and other peculiarities in their construction. Our information of these countries is meagre, but some of those buildings which are known in Yemen, which seem to combine temple and fortress in one, as on Zimbabwe Hill, may have been built by the same race that constructed Zimbabwe; and the elliptic temples at Marib and Sirwah, and the one at Nakab al Hajar, with its north and south doorways seeming to indicate an observation of the meridian, may embody some of the mathematical principles illustrated by the ruins of Mashonaland.

When the original builders of Zimbabwe have been traced to their home, it will remain to discover who were their successors in Mashonaland that rebuilt the western wall of the great temple and some portions of other buildings, for this certainly was not done by any of the present negro races.

There is nothing to show that even these walls do not belong to a now far distant time; for although they would not long remain in this country, yet at Zimbabwe they might endure for an indefinite period, for there, in a clear atmosphere free from dust, and a tropical climate with its yearly torrential rains, no soil can accumulate among the stones to support vegetation which would destroy the walls. The few small plants which grow even on the oldest walls are of species which do not require much mineral matter for their growth, and whose roots are so soft that they mould themselves to the shape of the interstices in the walls, but do not press asunder the stones. Besides, the present inhabitants of the country do not use stone in any of their constructions, and never trouble themselves to remove stones from any existing walls, so that more stones have probably been disturbed during the two years of British occupation of the country than the Kaffirs would disturb in as many centuries; and under the old conditions the walls might endure for an indefinite time.

THE FINDS AT THE GREAT ZIMBABWE RUINS

In this chapter I propose to discuss all the objects discovered during our excavations in the ruins as apart from the buildings themselves, and to analyse the light that they throw on the original constructors and their cult. All these objects were found, with a few minor exceptions, in the eastern temple on the fortress. As I have said, traces of a recent Kaffir habitation will account for the absence of objects in the lower buildings, but the upper ruin, sheltered from the sun and hidden by trees and lofty boulders, was a spot repugnant to the warmth-loving Kaffir, and to this fact we owe the preservation of so many objects of interest belonging to the ancient inhabitants. The most remarkable feature in connection with the finds is that everything of a decorative nature is made of a steatitic schist or soapstone. This stone is found in the country, and is still employed by natives farther south in making pipes for smoking dokha or hemp; it lends itself easily to the tool of the artist, and is very durable.

First, let us take the birds perched on tall soapstone columns, which, from the position in which we found most of them, would appear to have decorated the outer wall of the semicircular temple on the hill. These birds are all conventional in design. The tallest stood 5 feet 4 inches in height, the smallest about half a foot lower. We have six large ones and two small ones in all, and probably, from the number of soapstone pedestals with the tops broken off which we found in the temple, there were several more. Though they are all different in execution, they would appear to have been intended to represent the same bird; from the only one in which the beak is preserved to us intact, we undoubtedly recognise that they must have been intended to represent hawks or vultures. The thick neck and legs, the long talons and the nature of the plumage point more distinctly to the vulture; the decorations on some of them, namely, the dentelle pattern at the edge of the wings, the necklace with a brooch in front and continued down the back, the raised rosette-shaped eyes, and the pattern down the back, point to a high degree of conventionality, evolved out of some sacred symbolism of which these birds were the embodiment, the nature of which symbolism it is now our object to arrive at. Two of the birds, similar in character, with straight legs and fan-shaped tails different from the others, are represented as perched on zones or cesti; two others have only indications of the cestus beneath their feet; a fifth, with nothing beneath its feet, has two circles carved under it and two on the wings ; a sixth is perched on a chevron pattern similar to that which decorates the large circular temple; hence there is a sort of similarity of symbolism connecting them all.

We have now to look around for comparisons by which we may hope to identify the origin of our birds, and I have little doubt in stating that they are closely akin to the Assyrian Astarte or Venus, and represent the female element in creation. Similar birds were sacred to Astarte amongst the Phoenicians and are often represented as perched on her shrines.

Of the maternal aspect in which the ancient Egyptians held the vulture we have ample evidence. Horapollo tells us that the vulture was emblematic of 'Urania, a year, a mother,' whilst AElian goes so far as to suppose that all vultures were females, to account for their character as emblems of maternity. The cesti and the circles point obviously to this, and these birds in connection with phallic worship are interesting as emblems, signifying incubation. Let us now consult Lucian, who in his work 'De Syri? De?' describes a temple at Hierapolis, near the Euphrates, which, as we have seen, has much in common with these temples at Zimbabwe. In ? 33, p. 479, he mentions a curious pediment, of no distinctive shape, called by the Assyrians 'the symbol,' on the top of which is perched a bird. Amongst some of Dr. Schliemann's discoveries at Mycene, there are also images surmounted by birds which differ from the ?????? in the 'De Syri? De?' solely in the fact that they are not shapeless, but represent a nude female figure. The goddess of this shrine was evidently Astarte, and wore a cestus, 'with which none but Urania is adorned.' On a Phoenician coin found in Cyprus we have the dove on the betyle or pedestal as the central object. In Egyptian archaeology we also come across the bird on the pedestal, more particularly in the curious zodiac of Denderah, where a bird perched on a pillar, and with the crown of Upper Egypt on its head, is, as Mr. Norman Lockyer tells me, used to indicate the commencement of the year; also from the Soudan we have a bird on a pedestal carved on some rude stone fragments now in the Ashmolean Museum. It is just possible that the birds at Zimbabwe had some solstitial meaning, but as their exact position on the temple walls is lost, it is impossible to speak on this point with anything like certainty. Also in the difficult question of early Arabian cult, which was closely bound up with that of Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia, we find the vulture as the totem of a Southern Arabian tribe at the time of the Himyaritic supremacy, and it was worshipped there as the god Nasr, and is mysteriously alluded to in Himyaritic inscriptions as 'the vulture of the East and the vulture of the West,' which also would seem to point to a solstitial use of the emblem.

The religious symbolism of these birds is further attested by our finding two tiny representations of the larger emblems; they, too, represented birds on pillars, the longest of which is only three and a half inches, and it is perched on the pillar more as the bird is represented in the zodiac of Denderah. Evidently these things were used as amulets or votive offerings in the temple. Lucian alludes to the phalli used as amulets by the Greeks with a human figure on the end, and he connects them with the tower thirty cubits in height.

In the centre of the temple on the hill stood an altar, into the stones of which were inserted and also scattered around a large number of soapstone objects representing the phallus either realistically or conventionally, but always with anatomical accuracy which unmistakably conveys their meaning, and proves in addition that circumcision was practised by this primitive race; 'its origin both amongst the Egyptians and Ethiopians,' says Herodotus, ii. 37, 104, 'may be traced to the most remote antiquity.' We have seen in the previous description of the tower the parallel to Lucian's description of the phalli in the temple at Hierapolis. Here, in the upper temple, we found no less than thirty-eight miniature representations of the larger emblem; one is a highly ornate object, with apparently a representation of a winged sun on its side, or perchance the winged Egyptian vulture, suggesting a distinct Semitic influence. There is a small marble column in the Louvre, twenty-six inches in height, of Phoenician origin, with a winged symbol on the shaft like the one before us; it is crowned by an ornament made of four petalled flowers. This winged globe is met with in many Phoenician objects, and MM. Perrot and Chipiez, in their work on Phoenicia, thus speak of it as 'a sort of trade-mark by which we can recognise as Phoenician all such objects as bear it, whether they come from Etruria or Sardinia, from Africa or Syria.' And of the stele in the Louvre the same authors say, 'We may say that it is signed.' A carefully executed rosette with seven petals forms the summit of our object found in the temple. Now the rosette is also another distinctly Phoenician symbol used by them to indicate the sun. We have the rosette on Phoenician sepulchral stelae in the British Museum in conjunction with the half-moon to indicate the heavenly luminaries, and here at Zimbabwe we have this object surmounted by a rosette, rosettes carved on the decorated pillars, and the eyes of the birds, as before mentioned, are made in the form of rosettes. The fact of finding these objects all in close juxtaposition around the altar and in the vicinity of the birds on pillars is sufficient proof of the nature of the objects and their religious symbolism. Thus we have in both cases the larger emblems and their miniature representatives, the tower and the smaller phalli, the large birds and the tiny amulets, proving to us that the ancient inhabitants of the ruins worshipped a combination of the two deities, which together represented the creative powers of mankind.

A curious confirmation of this is found in the pages of Herodotus, who tells us : 'The Arabians of all the gods only worshipped Dionysus, whom they called Ourotalt, and Urania;' that is to say, they worshipped the two deities which, in the mind of the father of history, represented in themselves all that was known of the mysteries of creation, pointing to the very earliest period of Arabian cult, prior to the more refined religious development of the Sabaeo-Himyaritic dynasty, when Sun-worship, veneration for the great luminary which regenerated all animal and vegetable life, superseded the grosser forms of nature-worship, to be itself somewhat superseded or rather incorporated in a worship of all the heavenly luminaries, which developed as a knowledge of astronomy was acquired.

We have already discussed the round towers and the numerous monoliths which decorated the walls and other parts of the Zimbabwe ruins; excavation yielded further examples of the veneration for stones amongst the early inhabitants. One of these was a tall decorated soapstone pillar 11 feet 6 inches in height, which stood on the platform already alluded to, and acted as a centre to a group of monoliths; the base of this pillar we found in situ, the rest had been broken off and appropriated by a Kaffir to decorate a wall; it was worked with bands of geometric patterns around it, each different from the other and divided into compartments by circular patterns, one of which is the chevron pattern found on the circular ruin below; it only runs round a portion of the pillar; and may possibly have been used to orient it towards the setting sun. Besides this tall pillar we found two fragments of other similar pillars decorated one with geometric patterns and the other with an extraordinary and entirely inexplicable decoration. On these pillars the rosette is frequently depicted, and it would seem that they all came from the same place, namely, the platform decorated with monoliths. Here also we found several stones of a curious nature and entirely foreign to the place. Two of them are stones with even bands of an asbestiform substance, a serpentine with veins of chrysolite, the grooves being caused by the natural erosion of the fibrous bands. Another stone is an irregular polygonal pillar-like object of coarse-grained basalt, the smooth faces of which are natural points, the whole being a portion of a rough column or prism. Another, again, is a fragment of schistose rock, apparently hornblendic; also we found several round blocks of diorite in this place. The collection here of so many strange geological fragments cannot be accidental, and points to a veneration of curious-shaped stones amongst the earlier inhabitants of the ruins, which were collected here on the platform, a spot which, I am convinced, will compare with the ???????? or betyles of the Phoenicians, and of this stone cult we have ample evidence from Arabia. El Masoudi alludes to the ancient stone-worship of Arabia, and leads us to believe that at one time this gross fetichism formed a part of the natural religion of the Semitic races. Marinus of Tyre says they honoured as a god a great cut stone. Euthymius Zygabenus further tells us that apparently 'this stone was the head of Aphrodite, which the Ishmaelites formerly worshipped, and it is called Bakka Ismak;' also, he adds, 'they have certain stone statues erected in the centre of their houses, round which they danced till they fell from giddiness; but when the Saracens were converted to Christianity they were obliged to anathematise this stone, which formerly they worshipped.' Herr Kremer, in his account of the ancient cult of Arabia, makes frequent allusions to the stone-worship. In the town of Taif a great unformed stone block was worshipped, identical with the goddess which Herodotus calls Urania; and one must imagine that the Kaaba stone at Mecca resembles the black schistose block which we found at Zimbabwe; it is an exceedingly old-world worship, dating back to the most primitive ages of mankind.

The next series of finds to be discussed are the numerous fragments of decorated and plain soapstone bowls which we found, most of them deeply buried in the immediate vicinity of the temple on the fortress; and these bring us to consider more closely the artistic capacities of the race who originally inhabited these ruins. The work displayed in executing these bowls, the careful rounding of the edges, the exact execution of the circle, the fine pointed tool-marks, and the subjects they chose to depict, point to the race having been far advanced in artistic skill--a skill arrived at, doubtless, by commercial intercourse with the more civilised races of mankind. Seven of these bowls were of exactly the same size, and were 19?2 inches in diameter, which measurements we ascertained by taking the radii of the several fragments. The most elaborate of these fragments is a bowl which had depicted around its outer edge a hunting scene; it is very well worked, and bears in several points a remarkable similarity to objects of art produced by the Phoenicians. There is here, as we have in all Phoenician patterns, the straight procession of animals, to break the continuity of which a little man is introduced shooting a zebra with one hand and holding in the other an animal by a leash. To fill up a vacant space, a bird is introduced flying, all of which points are characteristic of Phoenician work. Then the Phoenician workmen always had a great power of adaptability, taking their lessons in art from their immediate surroundings, which is noticeable all over the world, whether in Greece, Egypt, Africa, or Italy. Here we have the same characteristic, namely, a procession of native African animals treated in a Phoenician style--three zebras, two hippopotami, and the sportsman in the centre is obviously a Hottentot. The details in this bowl are carefully brought out, even the breath of the animals is depicted by three strokes at the mouth. There is also a fragment of another bowl with zebras on it similarly treated, though somewhat higher and coarser. The fragments of a large bowl, which had a procession of bulls round it, is also Phoenician in character. The most noticeable feature in the treatment of these bulls is that the three pairs of horns we have preserved to us are all different.

There are three fragments of three very large bowls, which are all of a special interest, and if the bowls could have been recovered intact they would have formed very valuable evidence. Search, however, as we would, we never found more of these bowls, and therefore must be content with what we have. The first of these represents on its side a small portion of what must have been a religious procession; of this we have only a hand holding a pot or censer containing an offering in it, and an arm of another figure with a portion of the back of the head with the hair drawn off it in folds. Representations of a similar nature are to be found in the religious functions of many Semitic races, and it is much to be regretted that we have not more of it for our study.

The second fragment has an elaborate design upon it, taken from the vegetable world, probably an ear of corn; it was evidently around the lip of the bowl and not at the side; it is a very good piece of workmanship, and of a soapstone of brighter green than that employed in the other articles. The third fragment is perhaps the most tantalising of all; it is a fragment of the lip of another large bowl which must have been more than two feet in diameter, and around which apparently an inscription ran. The lettering is provokingly fragmentary, but still there can be no doubt that it is an attempt at writing in some form: the straight line down the middle, the sloping lines on either side recall some system of tally, and the straightness of the lettering compares curiously with the proto-Arabian type of lettering used in the earlier Sabaean inscriptions, specimens of which I here give, and also with some curious rock carvings found by Mr. A. A. Anderson in Bechuanaland. It was common in Phoenician and early Greek vases to have an inscription or dedication round the lip; vide, for example, a lebes in the British Museum from a temple at Naucratis with a dedication to Apollo on the rim, and used, like the one before us, in temple service. The circles on the birds also appear to have a line across, like the fourth letter given as illustrating the early Arabian alphabet.

Of the other fragments of bowls we found, one has a well-executed cord pattern running round it, another a herring-bone pattern alternating with what would appear to be a representation of the round tower; and besides these there are several fragments of what have been perfectly plain bowls, notably one large one, the diameter of which is outside 2 feet and inside 1 foot 8 inches. The edges of this bowl are very carefully bevelled and the bottom rounded, and it is a very fine specimen of workmanship, the whole of which we were able to recover saving a portion of the bottom. Another plain bowl has a round hole pierced through its side, and another fragment is made of a reddish sort of soapstone with oxide of iron in it. The tool marks on these bowls point to very fine instruments having been used in carving them. Altogether these bowls are amongst the most conspicuous of our finds, and the fact they all came from the proximity of the temple would undoubtedly seem to prove that they were used in temple service, broken by subsequent occupants of the ruins, and the fragments thrown outside.

The next find from Zimbabwe which we will discuss is the circular soapstone object with a hole in the centre, which at first is suggestive of a quern; but being of such friable material such could not have been the case. It is decorated round the side and on the top with rings of knobs, four on the side and four on the top; from the central hole a groove has been cut to the side, and the whole is very well finished off. This thing is 2 feet 2 inches in circumference. We also found portions of a smaller bowl with the same knob pattern thereon. The use of this extraordinary soapstone find is very obscure. Mr. Hogarth calls my attention to the fact that in the excavations at Paphos, in Cyprus, they found a similar object, similarly decorated, which they put down as Phoenician. It is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, and is a cylindrical object of coarse white marble six inches in diameter and about four and three-quarter inches high. It is studded with round projecting studs left in relief on the marble, resembling in general disposition those on our soapstone find, and there is no question about the similarity of the two objects. They remind one of Herodian's description of the sacred cone in the great Phoenician temple of the sun at Emesa, in Syria , which was adorned with certain 'knobs or protuberances,' a pattern supposed by him to represent the sun, and common in phallic decorations.

In the vicinity of the temple we also came across some minor objects very near the surface, which did not do more than establish the world-wide commerce carried on at the Great Zimbabwe at a much more recent date, and still by the Arabians--namely, a few fragments of Celadon pottery from China, of Persian ware, an undoubted specimen of Arabian glass, and beads of doubtful provenance, though one of them may be considered as Egyptian of the Ptolemaic period. Glass beads almost of precisely the same character--namely, black with white encircling lines--have come from ancient tombs at Thebes, in Boeotia, and are to be found in almost every collection of Egyptian curiosities.

The pottery objects must have been brought here by Arabian traders during the middle ages, probably when the Monomatapa chiefs ruled over this district and carried on trade with the Arabians for gold, as European traders do now with objects of bright appearance and beads. Similar fragments have been found by Sir John Kirk in the neighbourhood of Quiloa, where in mediaeval times was a settlement of Arabs who came from the Persian Gulf, forming an hereditary intercourse between the Arabs and the east coast of Africa until the Portuguese found them there and drove them away three centuries ago. It is impossible that a collection of things such as these could have been brought together by any but a highly commercial race during the middle ages, and the Arabians alone had this character at the time in question.

Considering the large quantity of soapstone fragments, bowls, and other things, the finds of pottery of a good period at Zimbabwe were not many. Noticeably one piece of pottery is exceedingly excellent, worthy of a good period of classic Greek ware. The pattern round it is evidently stamped on, being done with such absolute accuracy. It is geometric, as all the patterns on the pottery are. It is not hand-made pottery, for on the back of it are distinct signs of a wheel. Then there are some black fragments with an excellent glaze and bevel, also fragments of pottery lids, and a pottery stopper, pointing to the fact that the old inhabitants of Zimbabwe had reached an advanced state of proficiency in ceramic art. Fragments of one pot with holes neatly bored round the neck remind one of water-coolers still found in the East. Besides the fragments of pots, we found an enormous number of small circular objects of pottery, which may have been used as spindle-whorls, though most of them show no signs of wear, and some of them having rude decorations thereon. The only fragment which shows an attempt at the use of pottery for other than domestic purposes is a sow which we found in a kitchen midden just outside the large circular building on the plain, with two phalli near it. This animal compares well with the rude attempts to depict animal life found in prehistoric excavations on the Mediterranean. Whether it has any religious significance or not is, of course, only conjecture, but it is curious that AElian tells us that the Egyptians 'sacrifice a sow to the moon once a year;' and Herodotus says 'the only deities to whom the Egyptians are permitted to offer a pig are the moon and Bacchus.' All that the pottery proves to us is that the ancient inhabitants of Zimbabwe had reached a high state of excellence in the manufacture of it, corresponding to a state of ceramic art known only to the rest of the world in classical times.

Concerning the bronze and iron weapons and implements which we found at Zimbabwe it is very difficult to say anything definite. In the first place, these ruins have been overrun for centuries by Kaffir races with a knowledge of iron-smelting, who would at once utilise fragments of iron which they found for their own purposes; secondly, the shapes and sizes of arrows and spear-heads correspond very closely to those in use amongst the natives now. As against this it must be said that there are many iron objects amongst our finds which are quite unlike anything which ever came out of a Kaffir workshop, and the patterns of the assegai, or spear-head, and arrow are probably of great antiquity, handed down from generation to generation to the present day. Amongst the most curious of our iron finds at Zimbabwe certainly are the double iron bells, of which we found three in the neighbourhood of the temple on the fortress. Similar bells are found now on the Congo. There are some in the British Museum, and also in the Geographical Society's Museum at Lisbon, which came from San Salvador, on the Congo, and are called Chingongo, whereas amongst the present race inhabiting Mashonaland the knowledge of this bell does not exist, nor did it presumably exist in Dos Santos' days, who enumerates all the Kaffir instruments which he saw; and he would assuredly have mentioned these bells had they existed there in his days 300 years ago. We must, therefore, conclude that either these bells are ancient, and were used by the old inhabitants of these ruins, the traditional form of which has been continued amongst the negroes of the Congo, or that some northern race closely allied to the Congo races swept over this country at some time or another, and have left this trace of their occupation. The barbed bronze spear-head we found under a mass of fallen rock close to the entrance to the fortress. This again finds a parallel in weapons which come from much farther north in Nubia, though its execution is finer than any of that class which has come before my notice. The shape of this weapon is exactly the same as that of the unbarbed spear-head, which has a coating of gold on it, and shows the same peculiarity of make as the assegai-heads still made by the natives--namely, the fluting which runs down the centre being reversed on either side. Then there are the tools--chisels, an adze, pincers, spades, &c., which are quite unknown to the Kaffir races which now inhabit this country. Still it is possible that all these things may have been made during the time of the Monomatapa, who evidently had reached a higher pitch of civilisation than that existing to-day; so that I am inclined to set aside the iron implements as pertaining to a more recent occupation, though at the same time there is no actual reason for not assigning to them a remoter antiquity.

The finds in the fortress of Zimbabwe which touch upon, perhaps, the most interesting topic of all are those which refer to the manufacture of gold. Close underneath the temple in the fortress stood a gold-smelting furnace made of very hard cement of powdered granite, with a chimney of the same material, and with neatly bevelled edges. Hard by, in a chasm between two boulders, lay all the rejected casings from which the gold-bearing quartz had been extracted by exposure to heat prior to the crushing, proving beyond a doubt that these mines, though not immediately on a gold reef, formed the capital of a gold-producing people who had chosen this hill fortress with its granite boulders for their capital owing to its peculiar strategic advantages. Gold reefs and old workings have been lately discovered about twelve miles from Zimbabwe, and it was from these that their auriferous quartz was doubtless obtained.

Near the above-mentioned furnace we found many little crucibles, of a composition of clay, which had been used for smelting the gold, and in nearly all of them still exist small specks of gold adhering to the glaze formed by the heat of the process. Also we found several water-worn stones, which had been used as burnishers, which was evidenced by the quantity of gold still adhering to them; and in the adjoining cave we dug up an ingot mould of soapstone of a curious shape, corresponding almost exactly to an ingot of tin found in Falmouth Harbour, which is now in the Truro Museum, and a cast of which may be seen at the School of Mines in Jermyn Street. This ingot of tin was undoubtedly made by Phoenician workmen, for it bears a punch mark thereon like those usually employed by workmen of that period; and Sir Henry James, in his pamphlet describing it, draws attention to the statement of Diodorus, that in ancient Britain ingots of tin were made ?????????? ???????, or of the shape of astragali or knuckle-bones; and the form of both the ingots is such that the astragalus may easily be used as a rough simile to describe them. Probably this shape of ingot was common in the ancient world, for Sir John Evans, K.C.B., has called my attention to an ingot mould somewhat similar in form, found in Dalmatia, and the Kaffirs far north of the Zambesi now make ingots of iron of a shape which might easily be supposed to have been derived from the astragalus; but at the same time the finding of two ingots in two remote places where Phoenician influence has been proved to be so strong is very good presumptive evidence to establish the fact that the gold workers of ancient Zimbabwe worked for the Phoenician market. A small soapstone object with a hole in the centre would appear to have been a sort of tool used for beating gold.

An interesting parallel to the ancient gold workings in Mashonaland is to be found by studying the account of the ancient gold workings at the Egyptian gold mines in Wadi Allaga, also given us by Diodorus. There, too, the gold was extracted from the quartz by a process of crushing and washing, as we can see from the process depicted in the paintings on the Egyptian tombs; and in any gold-producing quarter of Mashonaland, near old shafts and by the side of streams, innumerable crushing-stones are still to be seen, used anciently for a like purpose, when slave labour was employed. Diodorus tells us of the gangs of slaves employed, of the long dark shaft into which they descended, of which a countless number are scattered still over Mashonaland; and after describing the process of washing and crushing he concludes: 'They then put the gold into earthen crucibles well closed with clay, and leave it in a furnace for five successive days and nights, after which it is suffered to cool. The crucibles are then opened, and nothing is found in them but the pure gold a little diminished in quantity.' Hence it is obvious that the process employed by the ancient Egyptians for crushing, smelting, and forming into ingots was exactly the same as that employed by the ancient inhabitants of Zimbabwe; which fact, when taken in conjunction with the vast amount of evidence of ancient cult, ancient construction, and ancient art, is, I think, conclusive that the gold-fields of Mashonaland formed one at least of the sources from which came the gold of Arabia, and that the forts and towns which ran up the whole length of this gold-producing country were made to protect their men engaged in this industry. The cumulative evidence is greatly in favour of the gold diggers being of Arabian origin, before the Sabaeo-Himyaritic period in all probability, who did work for and were brought closely into contact with both Egypt and Phoenicia, penetrating to many countries unknown to the rest of the world. The Bible is full of allusions to the wealth of Arabia in gold and other things. Ezekiel tells us that the Sabaeans were merchants in gold for the markets of Tyre. Aristeas tells us that a large quantity of spices, precious stones, and gold was brought to Rome ??? ??? ??????, not from Arabia, but by the Arabians. The testimony of all travellers in Arabia is to the effect that little or no gold could have come from the Arabian peninsula itself; it is, therefore, almost certain that the country round Zimbabwe formed one at least of the spots from which the 'Thesaurus Arabum' came. Egyptian monuments also point to the wealth of the people of Punt, and the ingots of gold which they sent as tribute to Queen Hatasou. No one, of course, is prepared to say exactly where the kingdom of Punt was; the consensus of opinion is that it was Yemen, in the south of Arabia. But suppose it to be there, or suppose it to be on the coast of Africa, opposite Arabia, or even suppose it to be Zimbabwe itself, the question is the same: where did they get the large supply of gold from, which they poured into Egypt and the then known world? In Mashonaland we seem to have a direct answer to this question. It would seem to be evident that a prehistoric race built the ruins in this country, a race like the mythical Pelasgi who inhabited the shores of Greece and Asia Minor, a race like the mythical inhabitants of Great Britain and France who built Stonehenge and Carnac, a race which continued in possession down to the earliest dawnings of history, which provided gold for the merchants of Phoenicia and Arabia, and which eventually became influenced by and perhaps absorbed in the more powerful and wealthier organisations of the Semite.

THE GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY OF THE MASHONALAND RUINS

Ptolemy's information is provokingly vague, and he candidly admits in his first chapter that it was obtained from a merchant of Arabia Felix; he gives us such names as Cape Aromata, supposed to be Guardafui, outside the straits, the inland province of Azania and Rhapta. The only thing we gather from him is that they were trade emporia, and therefore places of considerable importance.

The 'Periplus' enters into further details, and mentions that the Arab settlement at Rhapta was subject to the sovereign of Maphartes, a dependency of Sabaea or Yemen. Dean Vincent imagines Rhapta to have been 10? south of the equator, that is to say, near Quiloa, where again an Arab settlement continued right down into the middle ages. The 'Periplus' further tells how Muza, Aden, and other points near the mouth of the Red Sea were emporia for the goods brought from outside by the Arabians and then transferred to Egyptian and Phoenician trading vessels.

Further south the 'Periplus' mentions Prasum as the farthest point known to the author; and here he says 'an ocean curves towards sunset and, stretching along the southern extremities of Ethiopia, Libya, and Africa, amalgamates with the western sea.' All this probably the author of the 'Periplus' got from the Arabs, just as the Portuguese got all their information from the same source thirteen centuries later, and just as Herodotus got his vague story of the circumnavigation of Africa six centuries before, when he tells us how the Phoenicians in the service of Pharaoh Necho, B.C. 600, 'as they sailed round Africa had the sun on their right hand.'

From these and other statements in Marinus of Tyre, Pliny, and others, it is obvious that the waters of East Africa were known only to the Greeks and Romans vaguely through a Phoenician and Arabian source. The early legendary stories of Greece tell of a voyage fraught with every danger in search of gold. The celebrated Argonautic expedition has given commentators an immense amount of trouble to reconcile its conflicting statements--namely, that it went to the extremities of the Euxine, entered the great stream ocean that went round the world, and returned by the Nile and Libya. It certainly appears to me simple to suppose that it is merely the mutilation of some early Phoenician story made to suit the existing circumstances of the people to whom the story was narrated. The Bible gives us the account of King Solomon's expedition undertaken under Phoenician auspices; in fact, the civilised world was full of accounts of such voyages, told us, unfortunately, in the vaguest way, owing doubtless to the fact that those who undertook them guarded carefully their secret.

As to the vexed question of the land of Ophir, I do not feel that it is necessary to go into the arguments for and against here. Mashonaland may have been the land of Ophir or it may not; it may have been the land of Punt or it may not; Ophir and Punt may be identical, and both situated here, or they may be both elsewhere. There is not enough evidence, as far as I can see, to build up any theory on these points which will satisfy the more critical investigation to which subjects of this kind are submitted in the present day. All that we can satisfactorily establish is that from this country the ancient Arabians got a great deal of gold; but as gold was in common use in prehistoric times, and lavishly used many centuries before our era, there is no doubt that the supply must have been enormous, and must have been obtained from more places than one. 'Tyre heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets,' Zechariah tells us , and the subject could be flooded with evidence from sculptural and classical sources; and though the output from the old workings in Mashonaland is seen to have been immense, yet it can hardly have supplied the demand that antiquity made upon it. The study of Arabian and Phoenician enterprise outside the Red Sea is only now in its infancy--we have only as yet enough evidence to prove its extent, and that the ruins in Mashonaland owe their origin to it.

After the commencement of the Christian era there is a great gap in our geographical knowledge of these parts; and as far as Western civilisation is concerned, this corner of the world had to be discovered anew. It was not so, however, with the Arabians, who, though probably banished from the interior many centuries before by the incursions of savage tribes, still held to the coast, and exchanged with the natives their cloth and their beads for gold which they brought down. Of Arab extension in Africa we have also other evidence. The 'Periplus' tells us that the Sabaean King Kharabit in A.D. 35 was in possession of the east coast of Africa to an indefinite extent. The Greek inscription from Axume in Abyssinia, copied by Mr. Salt in his travels there, further confirms this. It was a dedication to Mars of one golden statue, one silver, and three of brass in honour of a victory gained by 'Aizanes, king of the Axomites, of the Homerites , of the AEthiopians, and of the Sabaeans.' Three cities of the name of Sabae are mentioned as connected with this kingdom, two in Arabia and one in AEthiopia; and now we have the river which doubtless in those days formed the great outlet for the population between the Zambesi and the Limpopo, still bearing the name of Sabae or Sabi, and in the AEthiopian tongue the word Saba is still used for 'a man.' Herr Eduard Glaser, the Arabian traveller and decipherer of Himyaritic inscriptions, states in his work: 'So much is absolutely certain, that Himyar then possessed almost the whole of East Africa. Such a possession, however, was not won in a night, but rather presupposes, in those old times, without cannon and without powder, centuries of exertion.'

The Portuguese commander, Pedro de Nhaya, took possession of the town of Sofala in the name of the King of Portugal and garrisoned the old Arab fort there, and with this act began the modern history of this country, about which a veil of mystery had hung from the very beginning of time. That the Arabs were confined to the coast at this period is evident from Duarte Barbosa's remarks, who wrote in 1514: 'The merchants bring to Sofala the gold which they sell to the Moors , without weighing it, for coloured stuffs, and beads of Cambay.'

Before discussing the Portuguese accounts of this country, let us linger a little longer amongst the Arabs, and see what we can get from them about the inhabitants of this district and the irruption of the wild Zindj tribes over it, which probably caused the destruction of the earlier civilisation. Zaneddin Omar ibn 'l Wardi' gives us an account of these Zindj. He wrote in the 336th year of the Hegira, and tells us that 'their habitations extend from the extremity of the gulf to the low land of gold, Sofala 't il Dhab,' and remarks on a peculiarity of theirs, namely, that 'they sharpen their teeth and polish them to a point.' He goes on to say: 'Sofala 't il Dhab adjoins the eastern borders of the Zindj ... the most remarkable produce of this country is its quantity of native gold, that is found in pieces of two or three meskalla, in spite of which the natives generally adorn their persons with ornaments of brass.' He also states that iron is found in this country and that the natives have skill in working it, and adds that 'ships come from India to fetch it.' This shows us the origin of the skill still possessed by the natives in smelting iron, which has been handed down from generation to generation.

El Masoudi, who has been called the Herodotus of Arabia, gives us still further details about the race, speaking of Sofala as a place to which the Arabs of his time went habitually to obtain gold and precious stones from the natives. He is more explicit about the descent from the north of the Zindj tribes, which took place not long before his day; and unless there was a previous wave of barbarians, concerning whom we have no account, it may be supposed that it was owing to their advent that the gold settlements up country were finally abandoned, and the Arab traders restricted to the coast. Describing the natives of the land behind Sofala, he speaks of them as negroes naked except for panther skins; they filed their teeth and were cannibals; they fought with long lances, and had ambuscades for game. They hunted for elephants, but never used for their own purposes the ivory or gold in which their country abounded. From this picture it is easy to see that in those days the inhabitants were just as they are now, an uncultured wild race of savages. We get another testimony to this in the voyage of two Arabs who went to China in 851 A.D., and returned by the east coast of Africa. M. Renaudot has translated their experiences, in which they describe the Zindj as follows: 'Among them are preachers who harangue them, clad in a leopard skin. One of these men, with a staff in his hand, shall present himself before them, and having gathered a multitude of people about him, preach all the day to them. He speaks of God and recites the actions of their countrymen who are gone before them.' In this account we easily recognise the witch-doctor and ancestor worship, the Mozimos and Muali of the present race. Abou Zeyd's evidence is also to the same effect. He thus speaks of the Zindj: 'Religious discourses are pronounced before this people, and one never finds elsewhere such constant preachers. There are men devoted to this life who cover themselves with panther and monkey skins. They have a staff in their hands, and go from place to place.' Quite an accurate description of the South African witch-doctor. Consequently, from this mass of evidence we may affirm with absolute certainty that for a thousand years at least there has been no change in the condition of this country and its inhabitants. Further testimony to the same effect is given us by Edrisi in his geography, who alludes to the Zendj tribes as inhabiting this country, and occupying the coast towns Dendema and Siorma, 'which latter is situated on a gulf where foreign vessels come to anchor.' He speaks, too, of the iron trade which the Zendj carried on with the Indians, and of the abundance of gold in the mountains behind Sofala, adding, 'nevertheless, the inhabitants prefer brass, making their ornaments of the latter metal.'

The simple Arabian stories of Sindbad the sailor and Aladdin are quite as credible as some of the stories which the first Portuguese travellers who visited the east coast of Africa tell us about the great Emperor Monomatapa and the wealth of gold in his dominions. When they first appeared on the scenes the Monomatapa was a big Kaffir chief, like Cetewayo or Lobengulu, who ruled over the gold district in which the Zimbabwe ruins are situated; nevertheless they burden their accounts with stories of the gilded halls in which he lived, of nuggets of the precious metal as big as a man's head, and which with their force raised the roots of trees. Needless to say these are the fabrications of their own brains, written to attract attention to the country they had discovered.

That this big Kaffir chief, Monomatapa, lived at his Zimbabwe or head kraal is, however, pretty clear, not necessarily at the place where the ruins are, because the whole of this country is scattered with Zimbabwes. Each petty chief now calls his head kraal by this name, and this fact, not thoroughly recognised, has brought about endless confusion in topography. The derivation for this name which to my mind appears the most satisfactory is of Abantu origin, and came from the north, where it is generally used to denote the head kraal of any chief. Zi is the Abantu root for a village, umzi being in Zulu the term for a collection of kraals. Zimbab would signify somewhat the same, or rather 'the great kraal,' and we is the terminal denoting an exclamation, so that Zimbabwe would mean, 'here is the great kraal.'

Again, another source of confusion arises from the fact that Monomatapa--or, as it ought to be written, Muene, or lord of Matapa--is a dynastic name, just as every petty chief in Mashonaland to-day has his dynastic name, which he takes on succeeding to the chiefdom. So did the lords of Matapa. In various Portuguese treaties we have the names of different Monomatapa's: one is called Manuza, another Lucere, and so forth, right down to the days of Livingstone, when the Monomatapa he mentions was a petty chief near the Zambesi.

When the Portuguese arrived at Sofala they got a lot of information from the Arab traders they found there concerning the wonders of the country, the great chief and the great ruins; and as Zimbabwe was the name of the chief's residence and the name given by the inhabitants to the ruins, it is not to be wondered at that some confusion arose.

Now these Arab traders were particularly and not unnaturally jealous of the arrival of the Portuguese, perhaps not unlike the Portuguese are now of the British arrival. They made all the mischief they could between the Portuguese and the natives, they represented the Portuguese Jesuit Father Silveira, who nearly managed to convert the Monomatapa to Christianity, as a spy, and conduced to his martyrdom in 1561. In fact, one of the great obstacles to the success of the Portuguese was Arab jealousy, which was at the bottom of the failure of all their expeditions up country.

Of all the Portuguese travellers who wrote about this country, Father dos Santos is the most reliable. Though he did not travel far up country, nevertheless he told no lies; and anyone who has been amongst the inhabitants as they are now will recognise in his narrative a faithful and accurate account of the people, proving how little they have altered in the lapse of between three and four centuries. A few extracts will show this: 'They beat their palms, which is their mode of courtesy.' 'They smelt iron and make mattocks, arrows, assegai-points, spears, little axes, and they have more iron than is necessary, and of copper they make bracelets, and both men and women use them for their legs and arms.' He describes their indistinct idea of a Supreme Being, their feasts in honour of their ancestors, their curious pianos, 'with bars of iron enclosed in a pumpkin,' their 'wine of millet, which the Portuguese could not bear, but were obliged to drink and make festivity, for fear of quarrelling.' 'They have an infinity of fowls, like those of Portugal;' and also he describes the days on which they are not to work, appointed by the king, unknown to them, when they make feasts and call these days Mozimos, or days of the holy already dead. In fact, this narrative is so truthful in all its details, that we may safely take from it his account of the disintegration of the Monomatapa chiefdom, as it accounts for many things which otherwise would be obscure. He tells us that a Monomatapa sent three sons to govern in three provinces, Quiteve, Sedanda, and Chicanga; on their father's death they refused to give up to the heir their respective territories, and the country became divided into four. Since then it has been subdivided again and again; each petty chief fought with his neighbour, union was impossible, and in their turn they have fallen an easy prey to the powerful Zulu organisation under Umzilikatze and his successor Lobengulu. This I take to be, in a few words, the history of the country and its people during modern times, and as much probably as will ever be known of them.

Dos Santos calls these people Mocarangas, and in this too, I think, he is right, for the reasons I have previously given. They are now, as we have seen, a miserable race of outcasts, fleeing to the mountain fastnesses on the approach of a Zulu raid, hounded and robbed until there is no more spirit in them. Monteiro mentions a Monomotapa, or emperor of Chidima, very decayed, but respectable, with a territory to the west of the Zambesi, near Zumbo. This is probably the same that Livingstone alludes to. An interesting fact that Monteiro also gives us is the number of Zimbabwes north of the Zambesi, as the head kraals of chiefs, showing the northern origin of the name.

Having considered the people in whose country the Great Zimbabwe ruins are, let us now proceed to cull what we can from a Portuguese source concerning the ruins themselves.

De Barros gives us the fullest account of the ruins. Let us take it and see what it is worth: 'In the midst of the plains in the kingdom of Batua, in the country of Toroe, nearest the oldest gold mines, stands a fortress, square, admirably built, inside and out, of hard stone. The blocks of which the walls consist are put together without mortar and are of marvellous size. The walls are twenty-five spans in thickness; their height is not so considerable compared with their breadth. Over the gate of the building is an inscription, which neither the Moorish traders who were there, nor others learned in inscriptions, could read, nor does anyone know in what character it is written. On the heights around the edifice stand others in like manner built of masonry without mortar; among them a tower of more than twelve bra?as in height. All those buildings are called by the natives Zimbahe--that is, the royal residence or court, as are all royal dwellings in Monomotapa. Their guardian, a man of noble birth, has here the chief command, and is called Symbacao; under his care are some of the wives of Monomotapa, who constantly reside here. When and by whom these buildings were erected is unknown to the natives, who have no written characters. They merely say they are the work of the Devil , because they are beyond their powers to execute. Besides these, there is to be found no other mason work, ancient or modern, in that region, seeing that all the dwellings of the barbarians are of wood and rushes.'

De Barros further states that when the Portuguese Governor of Sofala, Captain Vicento Pegado, pointed to the masonry of the fort there, with a view to comparison with the buildings up country, the Moors who had been at the ruins observed that the latter structure was of such absolute perfection that nothing could be compared to it; and they gave their opinion that the buildings were very ancient, and erected for the protection of the neighbouring gold mines. From this, De Barros inferred that the ruins must be the Agizymba of Ptolemy, and founded by some ancient ruler of the gold country, who was unable to hold his ground, as in the case of the city of Axume, in Abyssinia.

In criticising this account, it is at once apparent that it was written by a person who had never seen the ruins; the fortress is round, not square; the blocks of stone are all small and not of 'marvellous size;' the tower is wrongly placed on the heights above instead of in the ruin on the plain. But at the same time De Barros is candid, and as good as tells us that his account was gathered from 'the Moorish traders who were there.' That is to say, all the wonders of the upper country we get second hand from an Arabian source. Legends of inscriptions on stone are common to all mysterious ruins in every country. Possibly the decorated soapstone pillar gave rise to it, as it did to the subsequent account of the 'Zimbabwe cryptogram,' which ran through the papers shortly after the visit of the first pioneers of the Chartered Company. At all events, now there is no sign of anything over any gateway or any trace of such a stone having been removed.

Alvarez gives us an account even vaguer than De Barros. The following is Pory's translation, published in London in 1600: 'For here in Toroa and in divers places of Monomatapa are till this day remaining manie huge and ancient buildings of timber, lime and stone being singular workmanship, the like whereof are not to be found in all the provinces thereabout. Heere is also a mightie wall of five-and-twenty spannes thick, which the people ascribe to the workmanship of the divell, being accounted from Sofala 510 miles the nearest way.'

Pigafetta copies this account in pretty much the same strain, as also does Dapper, whose account of this country is a tissue of exaggerations. He says: 'In this country, far to the inland on a plain in the middle of many iron mills, stands a famous structure called Simbaoe, built square like a castle with hewn stone, but the height is not answerable. Above the gate appears an inscription which cannot be read or understood, nor could any that have seen it know what people used such letters.... The inhabitants report it the work of the devil, themselves only building in wood, and aver that for strength it exceeds the fort of the Portuguese at the seashore, about 150 miles from hence.'

We could quote several other allusions to the ruins from Portuguese, Dutch, and English sources, copied one from the other, and all bearing the stamp of having come from the same fountain-head, namely, the Arabians, who told the Portuguese about them when they first arrived at Sofala. Our examination of the ruins confirms this in every respect. In our excavations we found Celadon pottery, Persian pottery, and Arabian glass, similar to the things found at Quiloa, where the Arabs also had a settlement. These objects represent the trading goods brought by the Arabians and exchanged with the inhabitants who lived in and around these ruins in the middle ages; but at the same time we found no trace whatsoever of the Portuguese, which would have been the case, as in other places occupied by them in Arabia and the Persian Gulf, had they ever been there. From these facts I think it is certain that we may remove from the Portuguese the honour claimed by them of being the modern discoverers of the ruins, an honour only claimed in the face of recent events, for De Barros is candid enough in telling us that his information came 'from the Arabs who were there.' Clearly to settle this question it is only necessary to quote a letter which I saw in the library at Lisbon, dated April 17, 1721, from the Governor of Goa, Antonio Rodrigue da Costa, to the king. East Africa was included then in the province of India, and the governor wrote as follows:--

' There is a report that in the interior of these countries many affirm there is in the court of the Monomatapa a tower or edifice of worked masonry which appears evidently not to be the work of black natives of the country, but of some powerful and political nations such as the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Egyptians, or Hebrews; and they say that this tower or edifice is called by the natives Simbab?e, and that in it is an inscription of unknown letters, and because there is much foundation for the belief that this land is Ophir, and that Solomon sent his fleets in company with the Phoenicians; and this opinion could be indubitably established if this inscription could be cleared up, and there is no one there who can read it. If it were in Greek, Persian, or Hebrew, it would be necessary to command that an impression be made in wax or some other material which retains letters or figures, commanding that the original inscription be well cleaned.

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