At Zimbabwe both the ravages of time, as well as preventable damage during the last decade, have brought about the wholesale destruction of walls as seen to-day in their dilapidated condition. This is the plaint of all who have known the ruins since the time of the occupation. These all bemoan the fact that on each renewed visit to the ruins some wall is found to have disappeared, or some new bulging out of the massive structures threatens serious and immediate destruction, which no amount of lateral support or pinning up can now possibly prevent. Many such visitors complain that the decorative patterns are becoming less perfect. Photographs show this to be the case. In fact, so much dilapidation has taken place within the last few years that it is a common remark of pioneers that “the ruins are becoming less and less every year,” while intense disappointment and vexation are expressed by “old hands” when they revisit the temple after an interval of a few years at the serious reduction in the height of the Conical Tower. Photographs of the tower taken as recently as 1896 represent the summit as being higher than is seen to-day, while almost every photograph taken within the last two or three years of any single part of these ruins shows portions, if not the whole, of walls, with their distinctive features that have completely disappeared. To those who venerate these ancient edifices nothing can be sadder than a comparison of the ruins as seen to-day with the ruins as they were some years ago.
But before dealing with the dilapidations of later years it might be well to examine the history of such of the dilapidations as can be read in the wall débris heaps which line the bases of every wall, for these débris heaps can be read with the same facility as one can read a book. These dilapidations are what might be termed legitimate, being the natural results of the ravages of time, which no means taken could possibly have avoided, and which have extended for very many centuries on end since the latest of the ancient occupiers disappeared.
In Tintern, Melrose, and many another old building at Home we have ruins even now incomplete, owing to the dilapidations of but a few hundred years. But the most ancient ruins of Great Britain, excepting, of course, Stonehenge, the round towers of Ireland, the Druidical circles of Wales, the stone circles and cloven stones of the Isle of Man, and the reputed pagan temples found elsewhere, and certain of the Roman remains of which at present little is known, possess histories, and Domesday Book, and even much later records, state the names of the actual builders of these castles and abbeys. These buildings have a stamp upon them of modernity which is altogether absent at Zimbabwe, in comparison with the age of which the term “ancient,” as applied to those at Home, elastic as it is, sounds strangely inappropriate. And yet after a comparatively short period of non-occupation of these castles and buildings only sections of them can now be seen. Guides will state that the walls have been quarried for material for farm buildings, most probably for the erection of the adjoining mansion, and that portions were destroyed by lightning.
But Zimbabwe, with its minimum age of some three millenniums, stands far more firm, more intact, and complete than any one of the comparatively few-centuried old ruins to be found anywhere at Home. Planted in South-East Africa at over two hundred miles inland from the coast, in the midst of populations that know nothing whatever of its origin, Zimbabwe’s massive and imposing walls reveal even to the most casual and indifferent of visitors the plan, purpose, and design of the original builders. Yet has it been subjected for three millenniums to the destructive agency of lightning storms, the frequency and severity of which in South-East Africa are well known. Severe earthquakes must have shaken its foundations, but the massive walls remain practically intact. Arab tradition speaks of violent earthquakes in South-East Africa during the fifth century, while the condition of some of the ruins in Rhodesia, where the walls have fallen en bloc sideways on to the ground, testifies to frequent, general, and violent earth-movements and earth-strains having taken place. The South-East African cyclones passing over it during thirty centuries probably have caused further dilapidations. Still, though so many walls at Zimbabwe remain more or less intact, it would be impossible to estimate the extent to which many walls may have suffered, or what have possibly disappeared altogether from the effects of earthquakes, for it would be difficult to suppose that these extensive ruins—some walls being built on the actual brink of precipices—have escaped all the destructive effects of earth-movements and storms which have occurred during the last three thousand years.
The action of sub-tropical rains for centuries has destroyed whole lengths of walls. For instance, a trench which occupied half a dozen labourers two days to excavate was, after a heavy shower lasting but an hour, completely filled up by mud streams from a higher level. There is hardly a wall on the Acropolis Hill that has not had to bear some added weight of silted soil from higher levels, and these in places have been so extensive that when accumulated on the upper sides of walls the effect has been to push the wall bodily over. In this way the terraces of enclosures round the north, west, and south faces of the Acropolis have in most instances been entirely filled up and buried, while in others the outer and down-side wall has been burst through and destroyed. Streams of water during storms of real African violence have worn deep channels along the bases of some of the walls, exposing the foundations which bridge across the holes, the water causing the decomposition of the cement bed of the foundations and making the wall throughout its complete height to sway downwards and to bulge threateningly outwards. Some of these water-made holes up against the bases of the walls contained damp and moisture all through the dry season, especially those on the south side of walls where the holes were protected from the sun. In as many cases as possible for the time engaged on the preservation work (1902–4) these spots were levelled, and catchment areas were made, so that for the future no rain-water can lodge there, but the waving lines of the courses in the walls still show where these holes existed.
In a similar way block débris falling from higher levels has lodged behind lower walls and eventually pressed them over. In some instances on the Acropolis a mass of walling has fallen from a great height and completely demolished walls below. These were no gradual dilapidations, but instances where sections of the higher wall had gone completely over en masse. Such falls almost entirely explain the damage done to the outer walls of the South-East Ancient Ascent, lengths of which have evidently been made good by Kafirs of a very old period, as the well-built ancient foundations can be seen below the later walls.
But some walls have also been seriously damaged by falls of huge slabs and boulders from the faces of the granite cliffs, buttresses have been broken, entrances and passages completely blocked up if not utterly demolished. These falls, though later than the times of the ancients, occurred very long ago, for the depressions in the cliffs from which these slabs and boulders fell are now become weather-stained, but the shapes of the depressions and of the slabs and boulders still agree. It is conjectured that the gap in the central portion of the main wall of the Eastern Temple was caused by the fall of an immense boulder from the summit of the sixty-foot cliff on the north side of the temple. By the moving forward of a boulder for six feet from the position it occupied at the time of the ancients—and they had utilised this boulder in forming the west entrance of the same temple—the entrance was completely blocked up.
But there is a process of dilapidation going on continually, a process which, judging by the débris piles, has been operating for many centuries. When walking near a wall one has to be very careful not to walk under any of the overhanging blocks on the summit of the wall. Some of these blocks are very delicately poised on the edges of the walls, so much so that it seems as if a shout would cause them to fall. Wherever possible these blocks have been drawn back flush again with the face of the wall, but in very many cases the walls are so ruined that it would be dangerous work to do this. It is one of the unfortunate effects of this ancient dry masonry that when one block topples over a small cascade of blocks usually follows it. Such falls, followed by cascades of blocks, are continually taking place. One hears them night and day, especially after rains, and frequently these cascades, especially those from walls above the precipice on the Acropolis, will continue uninterruptedly for some minutes together. There are many points in walls so threatening to collapse that no builder’s art of shoring-up could possibly prevent their fall, for sooner or later they must come down with a crash. Natives give the information that from the time of their childhood they always remembered these falls taking place when no one was near the walls. Probably the noise of falling blocks, especially at night, has served to inspire the local natives with some of the dread in which after sundown they regard the ruins. After a heavy shower one can always find some damage done to the walls. This is mainly due to the quantity of silted soil behind walls, which, becoming overgutted with water, forces the walls over. The only remedy, and that a partial one, would appear to be to remove the silted soil from behind the walls, but to complete such operations a large gang of labourers would have to be engaged for many months. Still the complaint of the early pioneer that the walls at Zimbabwe are gradually becoming not only less but fewer remains perfectly incontrovertible.
But there is an infinitude of other causes working for the dilapidation of the ancient walls at Zimbabwe, and some of these are undoubtedly preventable. It was for the purpose of removing such causes of damage that the recent work of preservation was undertaken on behalf of the Rhodesian Government, and these operations it is the purpose of this volume to describe.
The Great Zimbabwe, as also the many associated ruins scattered throughout Southern Rhodesia, has been subject to wholesale destruction of its walls by the growth of trees, the presence of damp, the falling of immense trees across walls, the quarrying of its walls by past and present natives for building material, for cattle kraals, and other purposes. All the ruins at Zimbabwe afford ample evidences of the ravages caused by vegetable growth, and no ruin appears to have escaped some measure of destruction from this cause.