Chapter VI: , we find a description of a temple at Hierapolis, in

Mesopotamia, in the propylæa of which, he tells us (§ 16), ‘there stood two very large phalli, about thirty cubits high.’ Our tower at Zimbabwe stood apparently twenty cubits high and ten in diameter. He further says (§ 29), ‘These phalli are solid, for when a priest had to ascend he had to put a rope round himself and the phallus and walk up.’

Herr Mauch, in his account of Zimbabwe, alludes to a sacrifice which took place here amongst the natives in his day (1871). This ceremony seems to correspond very closely to the sacrifice celebrated elsewhere in this country to the spirits of their ancestors. It is pretty evident that another tribe of Kaffirs dwelt near Zimbabwe at that time, who looked upon the circular building as sacred; whereas the present people do not seem to look upon it with any religious superstition, which will account for the growth of vegetable matter inside only during late years. This was further evidenced by our excavations in this building; we found but little depth of soil, very little débris, and indications of a Kaffir occupation of the place up to a very recent date, and no remains like those we afterwards discovered in the fortress.

The rest of the circular building, as the plan shows, is divided off into various smaller enclosures, and in one spot we imagine, by comparison with the temples on the hill, an altar stood; it is now only a heap of rubbish. There are also three remarkable monoliths erected in it, two near the north-western entrance and one behind the altar. They are about 11 feet in height—rough, unhewn blocks of granite, firmly buried in the ground. On the hill fortress, and also, as I have said, on the wall of the circular building, the quantity of monoliths is very marked, and stone-worship seems to have formed an integral feature in the ancient cult of this place. MM. Perrot and Chipiez write (vol. i. p. 58), ‘We find the worship of betylæ (βαιτύλια, bethels, i.e. sacred stones) in every country reached by Phœnician influence’ (vide Chap. VI). Probably we shall be more correct in considering it an even more remote Semitic influence, which continued in vogue amongst the Phœnicians until more recent times. Palgrave in his Arabian travels also speaks of the many monoliths he saw in Lower Nejed: ‘Huge stones, like enormous boulders, placed endways perpendicularly on the soil. They were arranged in a curve, once forming part, it would appear, of a large circle.... That the object of these strange constructions was in some measure religious seems to me hardly doubtful ... in fact, there is little difference between the stone wonder of Kaseem and that of Wiltshire’ (Stonehenge).

The valley between the lower circular ruin and the fortress on the hill is a mass of ruins. About a hundred yards from it, and connected by a wall, is a curious angular enclosure, divided into several chambers at different levels; it has three entrances, all of which are straight, like those at the Lundi and Matindela, and not rounded off like those in the circular ruin. The main entrance leads into two narrow passages: the one going to the left is protected by an ambuscade; the other, going to the right, ascends a slope, at the top of which evidently once stood two round towers, the bases of which we excavated, and near them we found several long pillars, presumably fallen monoliths. But here again the Kaffirs had been living until a recent date, and consequently we made no discoveries here. Outside this ruin we opened three kitchen middens, and came across one or two small articles of interest.

Sloping down from this ruin into the valley below a narrow passage conducts one through a perfect labyrinth of ruins. Some of these, notably the large circular erection just outside the big temple, are of very inferior workmanship, and would appear to have been constructed at a much later period; whereas the wall surrounding a large space at the bottom of the valley is as good as the best part of the large circular building. We did not attempt any excavation amongst these, and if we had I expect the results would have been unsatisfactory. All the surface of them has been dug over and over again by generations of Kaffirs for their mealy fields. There is a great growth of brushwood, and probably a considerable depth of soil, which our limited appliances and inexperienced workmen would have found it hard to deal with.

Again and again these circular ruins repeat themselves, always, if possible, occupying a slightly raised ground for about a mile along a low ridge, acting, doubtless, the double purpose of temples and fortresses for separate communities, the inhabitants dwelling in beehive huts of mud around. This, to my mind, is the probable restoration of this ancient African settlement.

Down the valley to the north-west runs a long wall of irregular stones, roughly put together, for a mile or more—such a wall as Kaffirs would erect to-day to protect themselves from the advance of an enemy. This I do not connect with the more ancient and regularly built edifices, but it probably owes its erection to a period when Zulu hordes swept down on the more peaceful and effeminate descendants of the Monomatapa.

Many were the miles we walked in every direction, around and on the hill fortress, to the east, west, north, and south, intent on one object—namely, that of finding indications of a cemetery, which the ancient inhabitants of these ruins might have used—but our searches were always in vain. Kaffir remains we found in abundance, and a small cemetery of some twenty graves of rough stone piled over the bodies, about ten miles from Zimbabwe, also Kaffir, but nothing else. Consequently we came to the conclusion that the ancient inhabitants, who formed but a garrison in this country, were in the habit of removing their dead to some safer place. This plan seems to have a parallel in Arabia in antiquity, a notable instance of which is to be found on the Bahrein Islands, in the Persian Gulf, where acres and acres of mounds contain thousands of tombs, and no vestige of a town is to be found anywhere near them. The custom still prevails amongst the Mohammedans of Persia, who transport their dead to such places as Kerbela, Meshed, and Kum, to rest in the vicinity of some sacred shrine; and the absence of any burial place near Zimbabwe would seem to point to the same custom having prevailed here.

Having failed to bring to light any definite records of the past during the first fortnight of our work, we naturally cast our eyes around for the most likely spot to carry on our work, and our choice fell on the south-western portion of the hill fortress. Here were certain indications which struck us as favourable, and furthermore it occurred to us that a spot situated on the shady side of the hill behind the great rock might possibly be free from Kaffir desecration; and the results of our excavations on this spot proved this to be the case, for here, and here only, did we come across relics of the past in our digging. In fact, the ancient builders seemed to have originally chosen the most shady spots for their buildings. Undoubtedly the oldest portions of the Zimbabwe ruins are those running along the sunless side of the hill fortress; on the other side, where now the Kaffir village is, we found hardly any trace of ancient structures. Our difficulty was to get the shivering Kaffirs to work there, for whenever our backs were turned they would hurry off to bask in the rays of their beloved sun.

I will now proceed to describe the hill fortress, approaching it from the valley below. The labyrinthine nature of this fortress will best be realised by a glance at the accompanying plan. The kopje itself is of great natural strength, being protected on one side by gigantic granite boulders, and on the south by a precipice from seventy to ninety feet in height, and on the only accessible side the ancient inhabitants constructed a wall of massive thickness, like those of the ruins below. This wall is thirteen feet thick on the summit, with a batter of one foot in six; it is thirty feet high in parts, and the flat causeway on the top was decorated on the outside edge by a succession of small round towers alternating with tall monoliths; seven round towers in all we made out, about three feet in diameter, and several others had been destroyed by the fall of a portion of the wall. This system of round towers and monoliths produces one of the most peculiar and unique forms of decoration I have ever seen.

To open out the approach to this fortress town was a work of considerable time and labour; it will easily be seen by the plan how intricate it is, protected at every turn with traverses and ambuscades, and there commences at the bottom of the precipice a flight of steps leading up the steep ascent. The architects availed themselves of a narrow slit in the granite boulder, up which the steps led, the passage being exceedingly narrow; then the path divided into two, one path turning abruptly to the right, and at the turning a pretty little bit of wall with the stones placed pointways for about a yard relieved the monotony and formed a sort of dentelle pattern; then it led along a narrow ledge over the precipice, and in spite of the impossibility of attack at such a point it was nevertheless protected by traverses even here. In fact, the redundancy of fortification all over this mountain, the useless repetition of walls over a precipice itself inaccessible, the care with which every hole in the boulders through which an arrow could pass is closed, prove that the occupants were in constant dread of attack, and lived like a garrison in the heart of an enemy’s country.

At the summit of the mountain are huge boulders about fifty feet high. Immediately below the highest is a curious little plateau which had been decorated by the ancient occupiers; it is approached by narrow passages and steps on either side, and a curious passage through the wall below, covered with huge beams of granite to support the superincumbent weight. The steps on one side were made of the same strong cement, and the wall to the left was decorated with the same design of stones, placed edgeways for six rows, that we had found at the angle of the approach. The little plateau itself was adorned with huge monoliths and decorated pillars of soapstone, the patterns on which were chiefly of a geometric character, and one of which was eleven and a half feet in height. Here too we unearthed many stones of natural but curious forms, to which I shall have again occasion to refer in Chapter VI.

The large semicircular space below this platform was a dense jungle when we started to work upon it, consisting of nettles of extraordinary pricking powers and other obnoxious plants, which our natives cleared away with marvellous dexterity. In the centre of this building stood an altar covered with a thick coating of cement, and several large blocks of cement were lying about. In a wall in this enclosure was another of those curious holes pierced through its thickness, and there was plenty of evidence to show that this had once been a most prominent point in the ancient structure, forming, as it does, by far the largest available level space on the fortress, and must probably have been used as an agora, where from the platform an assembled crowd could have been addressed, and for religious celebrations on a large scale. The view from it is extensive and magnificent over the Livouri and Bessa ranges, and situated, as it is, far above the level of the marshy ground below, it would be healthy and habitable during all seasons of the year.

The labyrinthine nature of the buildings now before us baffles description. In one place is a narrow sloping gully, four feet across, ascending between two boulders, and protected, for no conceivable reason, by six alternate buttresses and a wall at the upper end, forming a zigzag passage narrowed in one place to ten inches. Walls of huge size shut off separate chambers. In all directions everything is tortuous; every inch of ground is protected with buttresses and traverses. Here too, as in the large circular building below, all the entrances are rounded off, and I imagine that here we have quite the oldest portion of the ruins, built at a time when defence was the main object. When they were able to do so with safety, they next constructed the circular temple below, and as time went on they erected the more carelessly put together buildings around, which I have described.

The south-western end of this line of ruins was obviously a temple; it has been lately used as a cattle pen by the chief, but the soil has not been disturbed. On removing the soil we came across a level cement floor, supported on an elaborate system of under-walls filled up with large stones on which the cement floor rested, as was the case in the raised platform in the circular temple below. In the centre stood the altar, an angular structure of small granite blocks, which fell to pieces a short time after exposure to the air; when we removed the soil which had buried this altar, around it we found the phalli, the birds or soapstone pillars, and fragments of soapstone bowls, which I shall subsequently describe more in detail.

On a portion of the wall outside, as in the circular building below, ran a pattern—a dentelle pattern formed by placing the stones edgeways, with exactly the same aspect as the pattern below. To the north of the temple a steep ascent, constructed on supporting walls, led through the granite boulders to a hollow space walled in on one side, and protected by the rocks on the other three; a rounded buttress guarded the entrance, and in the centre stood two tall monoliths of slate firmly fixed into the cement floor and the stones beneath; from this spot a slope led up to the top of the rock, on which a terrace had been constructed overlooking the temple and facing the rising sun. Another gully between two boulders, only wide enough for one man to pass at a time, led out of the temple to the side where the modern Kaffir village is. This had also been anciently strongly protected.

The temple was approached from the lower ridge above the precipice by a narrow passage between two high walls gently ascending to a flight of steps. This passage ended in a most curious architectural feature—namely, steps were formed leading to the temple on the one side, and apparently only for ornamentation on the other, by continuing the rounded courses of the outer wall so that they produced the effect of two miniature theatres facing one another, and proving almost more than any other point amongst the ruins the high pitch to which the ancient builders had brought their knowledge of keeping even courses in dry building. This point in the architecture proves the especial attention paid by the constructors to curves, and these curves would seem to have been constructed on the same principle as the curves in the large circular building which Mr. Swan will discuss in Chapter V.

Adjoining the temple to the north is another semicircular building, the inner wall of which has six vertical rows, six feet high, let into the construction, as if for beams, with a ledge on the top, as if for a roof. We were unable to form any opinion as to the use of this chamber, and though we emptied it of soil we found nothing in it.

Between two boulders to the north-west of the temple led a narrow passage, tortuously winding, with walls on either side wedged up against the boulders, and every conceivable hole in the rocks was walled up. This passage led to another open space protected on two sides by rocks and on two by walls. This space was also full of wall foundations; but, being open to the sun, it had been occupied and ransacked by the Kaffirs.

To the south of the temple a flight of steps led down to the gold-smelting furnaces and the caves, of which I shall speak more at length in connection with the finds. This corner of the building was the only one in which our excavations were successful, and I entirely attribute this fact to its chilly and shady position—a spot studiously avoided by the succeeding generations of Kaffir tribes for this reason. Below the temple at the bottom of the precipice we commenced work, with great hope of finding the other portions of the bowls, &c., which we had found above. Here there is an enormous mass of fallen stones from the buildings above, but amongst them we found surprisingly little of interest. Perhaps a thorough excavation of this slope would yield further results, as so many of our finds in the temple above are fragmentary, and the presumption is that the other portions were thrown over the precipice; but this will be a gigantic work, entailing an enormous amount of labour and expenditure.

Such is the great fortress of Zimbabwe, the most mysterious and complex structure that it has ever been my fate to look upon. Vainly one tries to realise what it must have been like in the days before ruin fell upon it, with its tortuous and well-guarded approaches, its walls bristling with monoliths and round towers, its temple decorated with tall, weird-looking birds, its huge decorated bowls, and in the innermost recesses its busy gold-producing furnace. What was this life like? Why did the inhabitants so carefully guard themselves against attack? A thousand questions occur to one which one longs in vain to answer. The only parallel sensation that I have had was when viewing the long avenues of menhirs near Carnac, in Brittany, a sensation at once fascinating and vexatious, for one feels the utter hopelessness of knowing all one would wish on the subject. When taken alone this fortress is sufficiently a marvel; but when taken together with the large circular building below, the numerous ruins scattered around, the other ruins of a like nature at a distance, one cannot fail to recognise the vastness and power of this ancient race, their great constructive ingenuity and strategic skill.

About eight miles from Zimbabwe, standing alone in a fertile valley, there is another ruin which we visited, presumably of a later and inferior date, for the courses and stones are irregular and correspond to the later constructions at Zimbabwe. It too stands on a flat granite rock, and its structure is equally intricate, as will be seen from the plan. The natives know it by the name of the Little Zimbabwe, but for purposes of investigation into the origin of the constructing race it affords us no special point of value, which is the case also with most of the other ruins which we visited, and nothing need be said about them except to point out their existence. These remarks refer to the ruins which we found at Metemo, Chilondillo, Chiburwe, and in the Mazoe valley, all of which were obviously erected as forts to protect a surrounding population. Some of them are of the best period of workmanship, notably those at Chiburwe and in the Mazoe valley; others are of inferior workmanship, with uneven courses and irregularly shaped blocks of granite, proving that, as we find the two periods side by side at the Great Zimbabwe, also we have them scattered over the country.

The great ruin at Matindela is second only in importance to the Great Zimbabwe itself, and merits a close description.

The circular building at Matindela encloses an area not far short of that enclosed by the large circular building at the Great Zimbabwe; it crowns a low sloping granite kopje about 150 feet in height. The place is full of huge baobab trees, two of which in their growth have pushed down and grown up in the walls themselves. There are those that tell us about the fabulous age of the baobab, attributing an age of 5,000 years to the larger ones. The Director of Kew Gardens, Mr. Thiselton Dyer, tells me that this is grossly exaggerated, and that a few centuries is probably all that can be attributed to the very largest. Be this as it may, the baobabs have grown up and arrived at maturity long after the building of the Matindela ruins and their subsequent abandonment.

The best built portion of the wall has the same aspect as that at the Great Zimbabwe; but the other side, corresponding to the worst built part of the Zimbabwe wall, has never been completed at Matindela; the fact that the south-eastern side has been so strongly built and so much trouble has been spent on its decoration, and that the north side is comparatively open and neglected, and that the hill is equally assailable from both sides, leads one naturally to infer that the idea of a temple is here more prominent than that of a fortress.

The walls at Matindela are nowhere more than fifteen feet in height, nor are the courses nearly as regular as those at the Great Zimbabwe; but the great feature of interest is here the arrangement of the patterns, which establish beyond a doubt that they were inserted in the walls for a more complex purpose than mere ornamentation. The arrangement of these patterns is as follows: First to the south-east comes the herring-bone pattern, running over the chief entrance as a lintel for six yards. Here it ends, and two feet below begins the dentelle pattern for the same distance; then the pattern stops altogether on the outside, but there are indications that it was continued on the inside instead. Then it is again inserted for forty feet on the outside, and finally is again put on the inside for the remainder of its extent—namely, thirteen feet. Above the pattern and nearly over the principal entrance a curious loophole is still left standing, and the best portion of the wall has been battlemented, the outside portion being raised in front two or three feet higher than the back. The wall is eleven feet six inches at its thickest, and on the top of it we saw holes in which monoliths evidently once stood, as they did on the wall of the circular building at the Great Zimbabwe.

Another very marked feature at Matindela is that the doorways are all square, like those at the Lundi ruin, and not rounded off, as those at Zimbabwe, and then again all these doorways have been walled up in an uniform fashion, the courses corresponding exactly to those of the rest of the wall. In the original construction of the building certain spaces of seven feet had been left in the wall; two feet on either side had then been built up, thus leaving an entrance of three feet, which entrance in its turn had also been walled up. Here, as at the Great Zimbabwe, the theory at once occurred to me that these places had been walled up at a time of siege; but when one takes into consideration the care with which these apertures have been walled up, and the triple nature of the added wall, this theory seems untenable. The walling up of the pylons in certain Egyptian temples at Karnak, which Prof. Norman Lockyer brought before my notice, seems an apt parallel, though the reasons for so doing do not seem to my mind at present sufficiently proved. It must also be borne in mind that the walling up of the principal entrance at Matindela must have taken place prior to the construction of the pattern which rests upon it.

The interior of this building, as will be seen from the plan, was divided up into chambers, as the other ruins at Zimbabwe, but the walls here are much straighter, and the circular system of construction seems to have been more or less abandoned. I take it that this ruin at Matindela was constructed by the same race at a period of decadence, when the old methods of building had fallen into desuetude.

Outside the walls of the temple or fortress we found many circular foundations, very regularly built of granite blocks, and varying in diameter from six to fifteen feet. They were built in groups at considerable intervals apart, and we counted over forty of them. Some of these circular foundations have a double circle, as if for a step; the probability is that they formed the foundations of stone huts like those found in the Marico district of the Transvaal, and were the homes of the ancient inhabitants under the protecting wing of the temple-fortress. There are no traces of these circular foundations within the walls of the enclosure, but all were found outside within a radius of two hundred yards. There are traces, too, of other buildings about half-way down the slope of the granite hills, two walls parallel to one another, about thirty feet long, with doorways and six circular foundations outside them. There are also two depressions on the eastern side of the hill, now filled up with timber, which were probably the quarries from which the builders obtained the stone for their work.

About twelve miles to the north of Matindela, near a mountain called Chiburwe, on another low granite hill, we found another fort with similar circular foundations on the plain around it. This fort is about forty feet in diameter, and the walls are of the best period, with courses far more even than those of Matindela, and the stones of more uniform size and fitting more closely, corresponding to the best of the buildings at the Great Zimbabwe. Here, too, was another gigantic baobab tree, which had grown up in the wall and knocked it down; and here, too, the south-eastern portion of the wall is much better and thicker than the rest, which has in places either never existed or fallen down; but the destruction here was so complete that it was impossible to tell if there ever had been a pattern on it or not.