FRONT AND BACK OF A BROKEN SOAPSTONE BIRD ON PEDESTAL
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[1] 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 [[183]]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[2]; a sixth is perched on a chevron pattern [[184]]similar to that which decorates the large circular temple; hence there is a sort of similarity of symbolism connecting them all.
BIRD ON PEDESTAL
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 [[185]]birds were sacred to Astarte amongst the Phœnicians and are often represented as perched on her shrines.
BIRD ON PEDESTAL FROM THE ZODIAC OF DENDERAH
Of the maternal aspect in which the ancient Egyptians held the vulture we have ample evidence. Horapollo tells us (I. 11) that the vulture was emblematic of ‘Urania, a year, a mother,’ whilst Ælian 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 Syriâ Deâ’ 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 ξόανον in the ‘De Syriâ Deâ’ 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.’[3] [[186]]On a Phœnician coin found in Cyprus we have the dove on the betyle or pedestal as the central object.[4] In Egyptian archæology 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 Phœnicia, 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.[5]
MINIATURE BIRDS ON PEDESTALS