The ruined cities of Mashonaland: Being a record of excavation and exploration in 1891Bent, J. Theodore (James Theodore)
History
The ruined cities of Mashonaland: Being a record of excavation and exploration in 1891
Bent, J. Theodore (James Theodore)
Extinct cities -- Zimbabwe -- Mashonaland; Great Zimbabwe (Extinct city)
significance or not is, of course, only conjecture, but it is curious
that Ælian tells us that the Egyptians ‘sacrifice a sow to the moon
once a year;’ and Herodotus says ‘the only deities to whom the
Egyptians are permitted to offer a pig are the moon and Bacchus.’ All
that the pottery proves to us is that the ancient inhabitants of
Zimbabwe had reached a high state of excellence in the manufacture of
it, corresponding to a state of ceramic art known only to the rest of
the world in classical times.
Concerning the bronze and iron weapons and implements which we found at
Zimbabwe it is very difficult to say anything definite. In the first
place, these ruins have been overrun for centuries by Kaffir races with
a knowledge of iron-smelting, who would at once utilise fragments of
iron which they found for their own purposes; secondly, the shapes and
sizes of arrows and spear-heads correspond very closely to those in use
amongst the natives now. As against this it must be said that there are
many iron objects amongst our finds which are quite unlike anything
which ever came out of a Kaffir workshop, and the patterns of the
assegai, or spear-head, and arrow are probably of great antiquity,
handed down from generation to generation to the present day. Amongst
the most curious of our iron finds at Zimbabwe certainly are the double
iron bells, of which we found three in the neighbourhood of the temple
on the fortress. Similar bells are found now on the Congo. There are
some in the British Museum, and also in the Geographical Society’s
Museum at Lisbon, which came from San Salvador, on the Congo, and are
called Chingongo, whereas amongst the present race inhabiting
Mashonaland the knowledge of this bell does not exist, nor did it
presumably exist in Dos Santos’ days, who enumerates all the Kaffir
instruments which he saw; and he would assuredly have mentioned these
bells had they existed there in his days 300 years ago. We must,
therefore, conclude that either these bells are ancient, and were used
by the old inhabitants of these ruins, the traditional form of which
has been continued amongst the negroes of the Congo, or that some
northern race closely allied to the Congo races swept over this country
at some time or another, and have left this trace of their occupation.
The barbed bronze spear-head we found under a mass of fallen rock close
to the entrance to the fortress. This again finds a parallel in weapons
which come from much farther north in Nubia, though its execution is
finer than any of that class which has come before my notice. The shape
of this weapon is exactly the same as that of the unbarbed spear-head,
which has a coating of gold on it, [21] and shows the same peculiarity
of make as the assegai-heads still made by the natives—namely, the
fluting which runs down the centre being reversed on either side. Then
there are the tools—chisels, an adze, pincers, spades, &c., which are
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