PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
Since the appearance of the second edition of this book I have received many communications about the Mashonaland ruins, considerable additional work in excavation has been done, and many more ruins have come to light as the country has been opened out. Of this material I have set down the chief points of interest.
Professor D. H. Müller.—Professor D. H. Müller, of Vienna, the great Austrian authority on Southern Arabian archæology, wrote to me on the subject, and kindly drew my attention to passages in his work on the towers and castles of South Arabia which bore on the question, and from which I now quote. Marib, the Mariaba of Greek and Roman geographers, was the capital of the old Sabæan kingdom of Southern Arabia, and celebrated more especially for its gigantic dam and irrigation system, the ruin of which was practically the ruin of the country. East-north-east of Marib, half an hour’s ride brings one to the great [[viii]]ruin called by the Arabs the Haram of Bilkis or the Queen of Sheba. It is an elliptical building with a circuit of 300 feet, and the plan given by the French traveller, M. Arnaud, shows a remarkable likeness to the great circular temple at Zimbabwe.
Again, the long inscription on this building is in two rows, and runs round a fourth of its circumference; this corresponds to the position of the two rows of chevron pattern which run round a fourth part of the temple at Zimbabwe. Furthermore, one half of the elliptical wall on the side of the inscription is well built and well preserved, whereas that on the opposite side is badly built and partly ruined. This is also the case in the Zimbabwe ruin, where all the care possible has been lavished on the side where the pattern and the round tower are, and the other portion has been either more roughly finished or constructed later by inferior workmen.
From the inscriptions on the building at Marib we learn that it was a temple dedicated to the goddess Almaqah. Professor Müller writes as follows:—
There is absolutely no doubt that the Haram of Bilkis is an old temple in which sacred inscriptions to the deities were set up on stylæ. The elliptically formed wall appears to have been always used in temple buildings; also at Sirwah, the Almaqah temple, which is decidedly very much older than the Haram of Bilkis, was also built in an oval form. Also these temples, as the inscriptions show, were dedicated to Almaqah. Arabian archæologists also identify Bilkis with Almaqah, and, therefore, make the temple of Almaqah into a female apartment (haram).
[[ix]]
From Hamdani, the Arabian geographer, we learn that Ialmaqah was the star Venus; for the star Venus is called in the Himyaritic tongue Ialmaqah or Almaq, ‘illuminating,’ and hence we see the curious connection arising between the original female goddess of the earlier star-worshipping Sabæans and the later myth of the wonderful Queen Bilkis, who was supposed to have constructed these buildings.
It seems to me highly probable that in the temple of Zimbabwe we have a Sabæan Almaqah temple; the points of comparison are so very strong, and there is furthermore a strong connection between the star-worshipping Sabæans and the temple with its points orientated to the sun, and built on such definite mathematical principles.
Professor Sayce called my attention to the fact that the elliptical form of temple and the construction on a system of curves is further paralleled by the curious temples at Malta, which all seemed to have been constructed on the same principle.
Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen’s interesting communication to the preface of the second edition receives confirmation from details concerning the worship of Sopt at Saft-el-Henneh, published by Herr Brugsch in the Proceedings of Biblical Archæology. Sopt, he tells us, was the feudal god of the Arabian nome, the nome of Sopt. At Saft-el-Henneh this god is described upon the monuments as ‘Sopt the Spirit of the East, the Hawk, the Horus of the East’ (Naville’s ‘Goshen,’ p. 10), and as also connected with Tum, the rising [[x]]and setting sun (p. 13). M. Naville believes that this bird represents not the rising sun, but one of the planets, Venus, the morning star; that is to say, that Sopt was the herald of the sun, not the sun itself. Herr Brugsch, however, believes that it was really the god of the zodiacal light, the previous and the after glow. If M. Naville’s theory is correct, we have at once a strong connection between Almaqah, the Venus star of the Sabæans, and the goddess worshipped at Marib and probably at Zimbabwe, and the hawk of Sopt, the feudal god of the Arabian nome, which was closely connected with the worship of Hathor, ‘the queen of heaven and earth.’
Sir John Willoughby conducted further excavations at Zimbabwe, which lasted over a period of five weeks. He brought to light a great number of miscellaneous articles, but unfortunately none of the finds are different from those which we discovered. He obtained a number of crucibles, phalli, and bits of excellent pottery, fragments of soapstone bowls. One object only may be of interest, which he thus describes:—
This was a piece of copper about six inches in length, a quarter of an inch wide, and an eighth of an inch thick, covered with a green substance (whether enamel, paint, or lacquer, I am unable to determine), and inlaid with one of the triangular Zimbabwe designs. It was buried some five feet below the surface, almost in contact with the east side of the wall itself.
Sir John also found some very fine pieces of [[xi]]pottery which would not disgrace a classical period in Greece or Egypt. Furthermore, he made it abundantly clear that the buildings are of many different periods, for they show more recent walls superposed on older ones.
Mr. R. W. M. Swan, who was with us on our expedition as cartographer and surveyor, has this year returned to Mashonaland, and has visited and taken the plans of no less than thirteen sets of ruins of minor importance, but of the same period as Zimbabwe, on his way up from the Limpopo river to Fort Victoria. The results of these investigations have been eminently satisfactory, and in every case confirming the theory of the construction of the great Zimbabwe temple.
At the junction of the Lotsani river with the Limpopo he found two sets of ruins and several shapeless masses of stones, not far from a well-known spot where the Limpopo is fordable. Both of these are of the same workmanship as the Zimbabwe buildings, though not quite so carefully constructed as the big temple; the courses are regular, and the battering back of each successive course and the rounding of the ends of the walls are very cleverly done. The walls are built of the same kind of granite and with holes at the doorways for stakes as at Zimbabwe. But what is most important, Mr. Swan ascertained that the length of the radius of the curves of which they are built is equal to the diameter of the Lundi temple or the circumference of the great round tower [[xii]]at Zimbabwe. He then proceeded to orientate the temple, and as the sun was nearly setting he sat on the centre of the arc, and was delighted to find that the sun descended nearly in a line with the main doorway; and as it was only seventeen days past the winter solstice, on allowing for the difference in the sun’s declination for that time, he found that a line from the centre of the arc through the middle of the doorway pointed exactly to the sun’s centre when it set at the winter solstice. The orientation of the other ruin he found was also to the setting sun. ‘This,’ writes Mr. Swan, ‘places our theories regarding orientation and geometrical construction beyond a doubt.’
Continuing his journey northwards, Mr. Swan found two sets of ruins in the Lipokole hills, four near Semalali, and one actually 300 yards from the mess-room of the Bechuanaland Border Police at Macloutsie camp. Owing to stress of time Mr. Swan was not able to visit all the ruins that he heard of in this locality, but he was able to fix the radii of two curves at the Macloutsie ruin, and four curves at those near Semalali, and he found them all constructed on the system used at Zimbabwe. The two ruins on the Lipokole hills he found to be fortresses only, and not built on the plan of the temples. The temples consist generally of two curves only, and are of half-moon shape, and seem never to have been complete enclosures; they are all built of rough stone, for no good stone is obtainable, yet the curves [[xiii]]are extremely well executed, and are generally true in their whole length to within one or two inches.
Further up country, on the ’Msingwani river, Mr. Swan found seven sets of ruins, three of which were built during the best period of Zimbabwe work. He measured three of the curves here, and found them to agree precisely with the curve system used in the construction of the round temple at Zimbabwe, and all of them were laid off with wonderful accuracy.
Another important piece of work done by Mr. Swan on his way up to Fort Victoria was to take accurate measurements of the small circular temple about 200 yards from the Lundi river. This we had visited on our way up; but as we had not then formed any theory with regard to the construction of these buildings, we did not measure the building with sufficient accuracy to be quite sure of our data.
With regard to this ruin, Mr. Swan writes:—
One door is to the north and the other 128° and a fraction from it; so that the line from the centre to the sun rising at mid-winter bisects the arc between the doorways. If one could measure the circumference of this arc with sufficient accuracy, we could deduce the obliquity of the ecliptic when the temple was built. I made an attempt, and arrived at about 2000 B.C.; but really it is impossible to measure with sufficient accuracy to arrive at anything definite by this method, although from it we may get useful corroborative evidence.
From this mass of fresh evidence as to the curves and orientation of the Mashonaland ruins we may [[xiv]]safely consider that the builders of these mysterious structures were well versed in geometry, and studied carefully the heavens. Beyond this nothing, of course, can really be proved until an enormous amount of careful study has been devoted to the subject. It is, however, very valuable confirmatory evidence when taken with the other points, that the builders were of a Semitic race and of Arabian origin, and quite excludes the possibility of any negroid race having had more to do with their construction than as the slaves of a race of higher cultivation; for it is a well-accepted fact that the negroid brain never could be capable of taking the initiative in work of such intricate nature.
Mr. Cecil Rhodes also had another excavation done outside the walls of the great circular ruin, and the soil carefully sifted. In it were discovered a large number of gold beads, gold in thin sheets, and 2½ ounces of small and beautifully made gold tacks; also a fragment of wood about the tenth of an inch square, covered with a brown colouring matter and a gilt herring-bone pattern.
Mr. Swan thus describes these finds:—
Very many gold beads have been found; also leaf gold and wedge-shaped tacks of gold for fixing it on wood. Finely twisted gold wire and bits of gilt pottery, also some silver. The pottery is the most interesting; it is very thin, only about one-fifteenth of an inch thick, and had been coated with some pigment, on which the gilt is laid. On the last fragment found the gilding is in waving lines, but on a former piece there is a herring-bone pattern. The work is [[xv]]so fine that to see it easily one has to use a magnifying glass. The most remarkable point about the gold ornaments is the quantity in which they are found. Almost every panful of stuff taken from anywhere about the ruins will show some gold. Just at the fountain the ground is particularly rich. I have tested some of the things from Zimbabwe, and, in addition to gold, find alloy of silver and copper, and gold and silver.
One of the most interesting of the later finds in Mashonaland is a wooden platter found in a cave about 10 miles distant from Zimbabwe, a reproduction of which forms the frontispiece to this edition. Mr. Noble, clerk of the Cape Houses of Parliament, to whom I am indebted for the photograph of this object, thus describes it:—
In the centre of the dish, which is about 38 inches in circumference, there is carved the figure of a crocodile (which was probably regarded as a sacred animal) or an Egyptian turtle, and on the rim of the plate is a very primitive representation of the zodiacal characters, such as Aquarius, Pisces, Cancer, Sagittarius, Gemini, as well as Taurus and Scorpio. Besides these there occur the figures of the sun and moon, a group of three stars, a triangle, and four slabs with triangular punctures (two of them being in reversed positions), all carved in relief, and displaying the same rude style of art which marked the decorated bowl found by Mr. Bent in the temple at Zimbabwe. A portion of the rim of the plate has been eroded by insects, probably from resting on damp ground. Altogether, the relic presents to the eye an unquestionable specimen of rare archaism, which has been remarkably preserved through many centuries, probably dating back even before the Christian era. Previous observation [[xvi]]and measurements of Zimbabwe, by Mr. R. Swan, established the presumption that the builders of it used astronomical methods and observed the zodiacal and other stars; and this plate shows that the ancient people, whether Phœnician, Sabæan, or Mineans—all of Arabian origin—were familiar with the stellar grouping and signs said to have been first developed by the Chaldeans and dwellers in Mesopotamia.
Another interesting find in connection with this early civilisation is a Roman coin of the Emperor Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138); it was found in an ancient shaft near Umtali at a depth of 70 feet, and forms a valuable link in the chain of evidence as to the antiquity of the gold mines in Mashonaland.
Concerning the more recent ruins discovered in Matabeleland, north of Buluwayo, we have not much definite detail to hand at present. Mr. Swan writes that he has seen photographs of them, and that ‘many of the ruins are of great size. One can clearly see that in most cases the mason work is at least as good as that at Zimbabwe, and the decorations on the wall are at least as well constructed and are more lavishly used. In one ruin you have the chevron, the herring-bone, and the chessboard patterns.’
J. THEODORE BENT
13 Great Cumberland Place:
October 31, 1894. [[xvii]]