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 Phœnician 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 [[226]]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 Phœnician 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 Phœnician 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.
From an Egyptian source also certain knowledge may be gained, though the Egyptians themselves would appear never to have carried their commerce outside the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, but to have met at the port of Adule, at the south of the Red Sea, Arabian merchants who did so. Now in the reign of Queen Hatasou, of the eighteenth dynasty, in the seventeenth century B.C., the land of Punt was conquered by an Egyptian expedition, and on the monuments of Deir-el-Bahari the conquered people of Punt are depicted as sending tribute, which included ebony, ostrich feathers, leopard skins, giraffes, lions, living leopards, cynocephalous apes, elephants’ tusks, and ingots of gold, all products of South-eastern Africa. When compared with the Biblical account of King Solomon’s expedition about seven centuries later, the productions of both show a very [[227]]remarkable analogy. Gold was the most important of the objects brought, gold in ingots such as the mould would produce which we found at Zimbabwe, and the gold of Arabia in antiquity was proverbial. During the height of the prosperity of Rome gold was sent thither by the Arabians, as we have seen from Aristeas. Horace bears testimony to this in his line, ‘Thesauris Arabum et divitis Indiæ.’ Agatharcides, in B.C. 120, speaks in glowing terms of the wealth of the Sabæans; allusions to it are common in the Bible, and the connection between Phœnicia and Arabia is borne testimony to by Ezekiel in his denunciation of Tyre: ‘Arabia and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold.’[1] Probably community of origin, the inherent commercial instinct common to the Semitic races, brought about this intimate relationship between Phœnicia and Sabæa. Another testimony to the wealth of gold in Arabia is given us by the Assyrian inscriptions, on which Tiglath Pileser II., B.C. 733, is mentioned as receiving tribute from that country in gold, silver, and much incense; and Sargon in his annals also mentions the tribute of Shamsi, Queen of Arabia, as paid in gold and spices. There was little, if any, gold to be found in Arabia itself; on this point all travellers who have [[228]]penetrated this country are agreed. Here, near the east coast of Africa, far nearer to Arabia than India and China and other places, which they were accustomed to visit, not only is there evidence of the extensive production of gold, but also evidence of a cult known to Arabia and Phœnicia alike, temples built on accurate mathematical principles, containing kindred objects of art, methods of producing gold known to have been employed in the ancient world, and evidence of a vast population devoted to the mining of gold.
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 (ix. 3), and the subject could be flooded with [[229]]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 Phœnician 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 Sabæan 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 (given us by Eratosthenes as one of the Arabian tribes), of the Æthiopians, and of the Sabæans.’ Three cities of the name of Sabæ are [[230]]mentioned as connected with this kingdom, two in Arabia and one in Æthiopia; 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 Sabæ or Sabi, and in the Æthiopian 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 (Arabia) 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.’
Arabian writers of the ninth and tenth centuries a.d. frequently allude to the gold of Sofala; but to the Western world this country was a blank until Portuguese enterprise again opened it out. John II. of Portugal sent Pedro de Covilham and Alfonso de Payva in 1487 to Cairo to gather information concerning a route to India by the Cape. It is not at all unlikely that Covilham heard from the Arabs reports concerning the gold country behind Sofala; but sufficient evidence to this effect is not forthcoming. He died in Abyssinia, and never returned to Portugal to tell in person his experiences. At any rate, ten years later the Cape was rounded by the Portuguese, and Vasco da Gama in all the ports he called at on the east coast of Africa found Arab traders established, who told him about the gold. The next expedition, [[231]]under Alvarez de Cahal in 1505, found Sofala, and in its harbour two Arab dhows laden with gold.
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 (the name applied to the Arabs by the Portuguese), 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, [[232]]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 [[233]]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 [[234]]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 [[235]]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.’