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)
The walls which are lightly shaded in the accompanying plans are much
inferior in construction to the more darkly shaded walls, for while the
latter are built in most regular courses, and the stones are most
carefully packed in the whole thickness of the walls, the former,
though sometimes having the exterior courses laid with some regularity,
are most carelessly built in their interior, and the stones seem to
have been laid in anyhow, and consequently there is a great difference
in the durability of these walls; and while it would almost be possible
to drive a cart along the top of the better-built part of the outer
wall, one can only creep along the top of the worse-built portion while
risking a fall. Besides, the better-built and the worse-built portions
of the outer wall do not unite near the great doorway, and the
foundation of the well-built walls turns outward, as is shown in the
plan. The worse-built walls of all the temples do not show any of the
peculiarities of design so characteristic of the better walls, except
in two instances, where they seem to be rough reconstructions of older
walls. We may, therefore, assume that these poorer walls are not of the
original period, and that they were built by a people who either did
not practise solar worship or who did not do so under the original
forms. We will, therefore, disregard the poor walls in studying the
plans of the temples. It is much to be regretted that we could recover
no plan of the western side of the original outer wall, as it might
have made clear to us the meaning of many of the features of the
eastern wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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