Chapter II: Preface: To the Second Edition

In looking over this work for a second edition, I find little to add to the material as it appeared in the first, and next to nothing to alter. Sir John Willoughby has kindly supplied me with details concerning five weeks’ excavation which he carried on the summer following the one which we spent there, the results of which, however, appear only to have produced additional specimens of the objects we found—namely, crucibles with traces of gold, fragments of decorated bowls, phalli, &c.—but no further object to assist us in unravelling the mystery of the primitive race which built the ruins.

No one of the many reviewers of my work has criticised adversely my archæological standpoint with regard to these South African remains: on the contrary, I continue to have letters on the subject from all sides which make me more than ever convinced that the authors of these ruins were a northern race coming from Arabia—a race which spread more extensively over the world than we have at present any conception of, a race closely akin to the Phœnician and the Egyptian, strongly commercial, and eventually developing into the more civilised races of the ancient world.

Professor D. H. Müller, of Vienna, endorses our statements concerning the form and nature of the buildings themselves in his work ‘Burgen und Schlösser’ (ii. 20), to which he kindly called my attention; and Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen has also favoured me with the following remarks on certain analogous points that have struck him during an archæological tour in Egypt this last winter:—

The Hawks Gods over the Mines in Mashonaland.

A curious parallel and possible explanation to the birds found in
Mashonaland over the works at Zimbabwe seems to me to be afforded
by the study of the mines and quarries of the ancient Egyptians.
During my explorations in Egypt this winter I visited a large
number of quarries, and was much struck by noticing that in those
of an early period the hawk nearly always occurs as a guardian
emblem.

Of this we have several examples.

In the Wady Magharah, the mines of which were worked for copper and
turquoise by the ancient Egyptians of the period of the Third and
Fourth Dynasties, especially by Senefru, Kufu, and Kephren, the
figure of the hawk is found sculptured upon the rocks as the
special emblem of the god of the mines. Another striking example of
this connection of the hawk with the mines is afforded by a quarry
worked for alabaster, which I visited in February of this year. The
quarry is situated in the Gebel-Kiawleh, to the east of the Siut
road. It is a large natural cave, which has been worked into a
quarry yielding a rich yellow alabaster, such as was used for
making vases and toilet vessels. Over the door were sculptured the
cartouches of Teta, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty, but, as
may be seen from the accompanying sketch, in the centre of the
lintel was a panel on which is sculptured the figure of a hawk.
This quarry was only worked during the Sixth and Twelfth Dynasties,
as in the interior were found inscriptions of Amen-em-hat II. and
Usortesen III. A third example of this association of the hawk and
the mines is afforded by a quarry of the period of the Eighteenth
Dynasty. In the mountains at the back of the plain of Tel-el-Amarna
is a large limestone quarry. On one pillar of this great excavation
extending far into the hill is sculptured the cartouche of Queen
Tii. On another column we have the hawk and emblems of the goddess
Hathor, to whom all mines were sacred. This seems to show that
the hawk was the emblem of the goddess Hathor, to whom all
mines were sacred, as we know from the inscription at Denderah,
where the king says, ‘I bestow upon thee the mountains, to produce
for thee the stones to be a delight to see.’ And it must be
remembered that the region of Sinai was especially sacred to the
goddess Hathor. This association of mines with Hathor especially
explains the birds, as, according to Sinaitic inscriptions, she was
in this region particularly worshipped. Here were temples to her
where she was worshipped as ‘the sublime Hathor, queen of heaven
and earth and the dark depths below’; and here she was also
associated with the sparrow-hawk of Supt, ‘the lord of the East.’
This association with Sinai, and also with Arabia and Punt, which
is attached to the goddess Hathor, and her connection with the
mines in Egypt, seems to me to be most important in connection with
the emblem of the hawk in the mines at Zimbabwe.

According to the oldest traditions of the Egyptians there was a
close association between Hathor, the goddess of Ta-Netu, ‘the Holy
Land,’ and Punt. She was called the ‘Queen and Ruler of Punt.’ Now,
Punt was the Somali coast, the Ophir of the Egyptians; but, at the
same time, there was undoubtedly a close association between it and
Arabia, and indeed, as Brugsch remarks, there is no need to limit
it to Somali land, but to embrace in it the coasts of Yemen and
Hydramaut. ‘Here in these regions,’ he says (‘Hist. Eg.’ p. 117),
‘we ought to seek, as it appears to us, for those mysterious places
which in the fore ages of all history the wonder-loving Cushite
races, like swarms of locusts, left in passing from Arabia and
across the sea to set foot on the rich and blessed Punt and the
“Holy Land,” and to continue their wanderings into the interior in
a northerly and western direction. We may also bring this
connection between Punt, Sinai, and Egypt more close in the time of
the Eighteenth Dynasty, when we see on a rock-cut tablet at Sinai,
in the Wady Magharah, the dual inscription of Hatsepsu and Thothmes
III., who present their offerings to the “lord of the East, the
sparrow-hawk Supt, and the heavenly Hathor.”’

With all these facts before us there seems little doubt that the
association between the hawks and the mines and miners is a very
ancient one, and may be attributed to either ancient Egyptian, or
rather, I think, to very ancient Arabian times; for, as we know
from the inscriptions of Senefru, the builder of the Pyramid of
Medum, the mines in Sinai were worked by ‘foreigners,’ who may have
been Chaldeans or ancient Arabians.

Another point which seems to me to throw some additional light upon
this subject, and again imply a possible Arabian connection, is the
remarkable ingot mould discovered at Zimbabwe. The shape is exactly
that of the curious objects, possibly ingots of some kind, which
are represented as being brought by the Amu in the tomb of
Khemmhotep at Beni Hasan, an event which took place in the ninth
year of the reign of King Usortesen II., of the Twelfth Dynasty.
The shape is very interesting, as it has evidently been chosen for
the purposes of being tied on to donkeys or carried by slaves. The
curious phalli found at Zimbabwe may also resemble the same emblems
found in large numbers near the Speos Artemidos, the shrine of
Pasht, near to Beni Hasan, and may have been associated with the
goddess Hathor. There are many other features which seem to me to
bear out a distinctly Arabo-Egyptian theory as to the working of
this ancient gold-field, and future study will no doubt bring these
in greater prominence.

W. St. C. Boscawen.

Certain critics from South Africa have attacked my derivations of words. I admit that the subject is open to criticism; almost anyone could state a derivation for such words as Zimbabwe, Makalanga, Mashona, and they would all have about the same degree of plausibility. Some people write and tell me that they are quite sure I am right; others, again, write and tell me that they are quite sure I am wrong. Such being the case, I prefer to let the derivations stand as I originally put them until positive proof be brought before me, and for that I feel sure I shall have to wait a long time.

J. THEODORE BENT.

13 Great Cumberland Place:
May 26, 1893.

CONTENTS

PART I

ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS

CHAP. PAGE

I. The Journey up by the Kalahari Desert Route 3
II. First Impressions of Mashonaland 31
III. Camp Life and Work at Zimbabwe 60

PART II

DEVOTED TO THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE RUINED CITIES

IV. Description of the various Ruins 95
V. On the Orientation and Measurements of Zimbabwe
Ruins, by R. M. W. Swan 141
VI. The Finds at the Great Zimbabwe Ruins 179
VII. The Geography and Ethnology of the Mashonaland Ruins 223