The Lost City of Solomon and Sheba (13 page)

Far and away the most exciting find after the furnace was the gold-crusted soapstone ingot mould. This mould has become almost a metaphor for all the mysteries of the lost city and was certainly the artefact which most intrigued me when I first heard of it; indeed, my first feature article for the Salisbury newspaper,
The Sunday Mail
, was about an ingot which had been found at the bottom of Falmouth harbour in Cornwall which matched the Zimbabwe mould.

So many different historical elements flow into its various features. It is cut from soapstone as opposed to any other rock, indicating strongly that it was made at Great Zimbabwe, which specialised in the carving of soapstone. The ingot shape is very indicative of ingots being a form of currency, or at least a standardised measure – but standardised to what system?

As soon as the Bents got the mould home they looked around for something to compare it with and in the School of Mines, Jermyn Street, London, they found a casting of the Cornish ingot (the original is tin). Bent's Zimbabwe mould is distinctively – or as he put it ‘curiously' – shaped and the London ingot, he felt, ‘corresponded almost exactly' to the Cornish casting. Looking at Mrs Bent's photographs I think it is fair to say that if this particular ingot wasn't actually cast in the Great Zimbabwe mould (and so far as I know nobody has ever checked that by so doing) the two are of the same system or, if you like, denomination. If the comparison is made with coinage, coins of a particular denomination – currency – all come out of moulds of a specific size.

If the Cornish ingot is a form of currency, or a measure in a standardised system, then it and the Zimbabwe mould are seemingly part of the same system. The shape – and let us not overlook the fact that it is a cross – is too distinctive to be otherwise. Today, gold is stored in bulk in the shape of bars of a specific weight and measure. There would be no point in casting crosses unless the measure in ancient times was a cross. The measure is the mould.

Zimbabwe – especially a fledgling Zimbabwe gold industry from the time of Solomon and Sheba – is a very long way from Cornwall. A link between the two, it has been often claimed, surely requires an impossible stretch of the imagination. Perhaps not. Very little serious work – certainly nothing definitive – has been done on the earliest possible beginnings of the Zimbabwe culture because, of course, in those distant days there was no culture. There was just gold.

We do know, however, from the existence of a very early Christian ‘colony' in Ethiopia that the first Christian missionaries carried the gospel far and wide. There is another legend at least as long-lived as that of the Ethiopian Christian king, Prester John, which holds that Joseph of Arimathea, who was given Jesus' body for burial and provided the tomb where he was interred until his resurrection, accompanied the Apostle Philip on a preaching mission to Gaul and was sent on to Britain for the purpose of converting the island to Christianity. Joseph was a wealthy metal trader who is commonly held to have made regular buying trips to Roman Britain. Cornwall was in those days the country's chief mining district and was well known to the metal-traders for the quality of its tin. Falmouth was the port for this trade. There seems to have been a very ancient trade in precious metals between Arabia, Europe and Britain and the tin from Cornish mines shipped through Falmouth was cast as ingots, ingots shaped in moulds all but identical to the unique moulds being carved in soapstone by the Zimbabwe culture in the heart of Africa.

Theodore Bent, however, did not compromise his scientific objectivity by tempting his readers with legendary Cornish– Christian links; he steers well clear of it because he has something better: the Falmouth ingot is ‘hallmarked'. ‘This ingot of tin was undoubtedly made by Phoenician workmen for it bears a punch-mark thereon like those usually employed by workmen of that period,' Bent reports. ‘Sir Henry James, in his pamphlet describing it, draws attention to the statement of Diodorus, that in ancient Britain ingots of tin were made of the shape of astragali [knuckle-bone crosses]. . . . Probably this shape of ingot was common in the ancient world, for Sir John Evans, K.C.B., has called my attention to an ingot mould somewhat similar in form, found in Dalmatia, and the Kaffirs far north of the Zambesi now make ingots of iron of a shape which might easily be supposed to have been derived from astragalus.'

In support of all this, Swan has finally located gold outcrops a few miles from Zimbabwe. New, smaller, ruined
zimbabwes
are also found, all of them close to ancient gold workings. At the bottom of some of the old workings Swan observes that the reefs continue to carry visible gold. On the edge of the escarpment Swan finds evidence that ‘an enormous amount of alluvial [gold] has been worked'.

The team had begun to work on a theory that Great Zimbabwe was the capital of a gold-producing empire covering much of Mashonaland commanding a fiefdom of smaller gold-mining
zimbabwes
. Most intriguing were reports that they obtained from their workers, of a stone fort on the Sabi river which rivalled Great Zimbabwe. As the Sabi, with the Zambesi, were the most likely routes by which coastal traders could reach the Shona hinterland, Bent was particularly keen to inspect this Sabi fort.

The journey promised to be intrepid. There were no roads so the wagons could not be used to carry supplies or tents. Donkeys were employed, together with their drivers, and Bent hired an armed overseer, Mashah, who had been given a Martini-Henry rifle for saving the lives ‘of a band of pioneers when on a wild prospecting trip'. Two days of chilly, drizzling rain resulted in four members of the party going down with fever and they were warned that their destination was presently the border of two competing raider-tribes, the Shangaans and the Ndebele. Undeterred, the indomitable Mrs Bent set out with them on horseback. They passed safely through a number of native villages, making notes of the arts and crafts, of a tribe who wove their hair into wicker baskets ‘like miniature Eiffel towers' and the women who wore sandals on their feet. Ever cross-referencing, Bent observed that the chiefs carried long iron staffs and he mused, admittedly with no great conviction, about the Israelitish kings who ‘ruled with rods of iron'. They were given a calabash of good beer ‘which we drank with pleasure', Bent noting that the natives called it ‘hava', as did the Arabians. They gave the chief a cup of tea ‘which he detested'.

Four days later they entered the Sabi valley and the high plateau gave way to valleys and deep, rugged mountains. They stopped to inspect an insignificant set of ruins at a village called Luti perched upon a foothill of Mount Lutilo. The place was ‘almost Alpine in character' but the fort, comprising three circles of stone poorly put together, was completely ruined. Bent notes that it did form a link ‘in the great chain of forts stretching northwards' but they left it and moved on, arriving soon after dawn at extensive ruins called Matindela which Bent thought were probably those he was looking for although they were still some twenty miles from the Sabi river.

‘The ruins certainly are fine,' Bent reports. ‘But far inferior to those of Zimbabwe; they are perched on top of a bare granite rock about 150 feet high, a most admirable strategic position.'

The expedition spent three days here, coming to the conclusion that Matindela was more likely a temple than a fort because its north side was entirely vulnerable. The walls were half the size of Great Zimbabwe, entered via four square doors, and beautifully decorated.

‘The great feature of interest here,' says Swan, ‘is the arrangement of the patterns in the stone. To the south-east are herring-bone patterns, below a dentelle pattern running for six yards. Then the pattern stops altogether on the outside, but there are indications that it was continued on the inside instead. It starts again on the outside and runs on for 40 feet, finally going inside for another 13 feet. The wall has been battlemented, the outside portion being raised in front 2 or 3 feet higher than the back. The wall is 11 feet 6 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 Great Zimbabwe.'

Outside this perimeter wall they found circular sub-walls regularly built of granite blocks, 6 to 15 feet across. The party assumed these were the foundations of stone huts. There were more than forty of them. Other foundation walls ran on down the hill.

In one sense their ‘discovery' of the extent of this Matindela complex raised something of a conflict with earlier theories. This many ruins – Matindela's stone huts could easily have accommodated 1,000 people – made nonsense of the idea of an immigrant workforce. I suspect it must have been about this time that Theodore Bent started to think of words like ‘authors' (which he would use in his final report) for the architects who created these structures rather than ‘builders'.

Work at Matindela came to an abrupt halt however, when scouts reported the existence of yet another large ruined fort, twelve miles closer to the river, near a mountain called Chiburwe. This turned out to be a 40-foot circle with much better walls than Matindela, corresponding to the best of the building at Great Zimbabwe. They found a giant baobab tree which had grown up in the outer wall and knocked part of it down. Bent later checked this tree with Kew experts and was told that baobabs took hundreds of years to reach maturity. All over the plain below Chiburwe were more circular hut foundations.

It is now known that there are more than 200 substantial
zimbabwes
within the various tribal areas which the British South Africa Company named Rhodesia, and many more outside it. A great number of these have either abandoned gold-workings near them or gold-smelting facilities. Most of these monuments are not on any tourist itinerary; indeed, even today's tourist guides bemoan the general neglect of a heritage completely unique to this part of Africa and rivalled, as previously mentioned, only by the Pyramids in the far north.

Imagine what it must have felt like for Theodore Bent and his wife as they rode through splendid mountain country, successful not just in the discovery of yet another mountain fort but with a growing awareness that every day might reveal yet another ‘undiscovered' stone city. Moreover, the fort near Chiburwe was pointing towards a river well capable of carrying to the coast the gold of this ancient empire.

An observation relevant to my own conclusions about the significance of Great Zimbabwe art is that all the Makalanga villages on the Sabi river – reached by Bent's party on the second afternoon after leaving Chiburwe – feature fine decorations, including drawings, one of which is a ‘cartoon' of a trader driving a wagon with a span of six oxen. Bent realises that these are valid records but either does not really appreciate them or is not prepared to concede their proper relevance. He makes this rather patronising aside: ‘I doubt not that those who follow after us will find attempts made to illustrate on their granaries a “Morunko” [white] lady [Mrs Bent] with long flowing hair trotting on that strange animal, the horse.'

These pictograms create new riddles rather than cast light on existing ones. Nothing as representational and specific has been found at any ancient
zimbabwe
. Nor has anyone yet interpreted – if an interpretation is even possible – the meaning of the marks on the stone columns at Great Zimbabwe, especially the ornately carved and marked columns topped by birds. Obviously they have information content, which is possibly arranged in message form. On one bird, for example, is a pair of horns identical to the horns of cattle featured in the bas reliefs of old Egypt. The several other animals and symbols, like the suns and the crocodile deity, are apparently positioned for status. This is surely not all decoration for decoration's sake.

Nothing like enough work has been devoted to the interpretation of the art of Great Zimbabwe. By comparison, the Egyptian monuments have been subject to rigorous study and as a result we know, for example, that the column of Horus, carved some 3,000 years before the birth of Christ, is a signpost. Horus, the hawk-god of royalty, is shown on a wall with a serpent, over other, mighty, stone walls. The serpent is a proven hieroglyph for King Serpent and the rest of the work tells us that the King lived in Horus' palace. Indeed, all the kings of ancient Egypt were considered to be the successors of Horus and were called Horus, followed by their own name.

The Great Zimbabwe stelae are in some cases more decorated than this ancient Egyptian cartouche and they all feature another animal below the bird.

If, hypothetically, you were to apply an Egyptian hieroglyphic translation to the Zimbabwe bird stela featuring a distinctive crocodile, it becomes a signpost. The bird denotes a royal palace of the god-king Crocodile. The crocodile is a common deity in central African cults.

So little is known of the message content of ancient Great Zimbabwe art, however, that we have no option but to assume that the ‘cartoons' the Bents found in the Sabi valley villages were evolved among the rural Karanga long after the Great Zimbabwe culture had collapsed or, as some would have it, emigrated.

At this point the Bents make a peculiar diversion to the Portuguese port of Beira. This reconnaissance has added further fuel to the rumours that the team had interests other than in archaeology. More bluntly, were they spying for Rhodes, who was desperate for an outlet to the sea? Apart from an Arab house or two there are no stone buildings of any note there and even the earliest Portuguese explorers make no mention of Beira being connected with the Zimbabwe culture. It has, though, always been a strategic port for those occupying the hinterland. For Ian Smith's breakaway colony of Rhodesia, Portuguese colonial support for the supply of oil via the use of Beira port had been vital.

So far as I was aware the support of Portuguese colonialists could always be counted on. In fact, in the very early days, Rhodes' occupation of Karanga land had put the relationship under such heavy strain that pitched battles involving a considerable loss of Portuguese life had been fought a few months before Theodore Bent left the beaten track to explore Portuguese territory inland of the coast.