BY
J. THEODORE BENT, F.S.A. F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF ‘THE CYCLADES, OR LIFE AMONGST THE INSULAR GREEKS’ ETC.
WITH A CHAPTER ON THE
ORIENTATION AND MENSURATION OF THE TEMPLES
BY R. M. W. SWAN
NEW EDITION
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1895
All rights reserved
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
First Edition, 8vo. November 1892; New and Cheaper Edition, with additional Appendix, crown 8vo. August 1893; Reprinted, with additions, January 1895. [[vii]]
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.