In this chapter I propose to discuss all the objects discovered during our excavations in the ruins as apart from the buildings themselves, and to analyse the light that they throw on the original constructors and their cult. All these objects were found, with a few minor exceptions, in the eastern temple on the fortress. As I have said, traces of a recent Kaffir habitation will account for the absence of objects in the lower buildings, but the upper ruin, sheltered from the sun and hidden by trees and lofty boulders, was a spot repugnant to the warmth-loving Kaffir, and to this fact we owe the preservation of so many objects of interest belonging to the ancient inhabitants. The most remarkable feature in connection with the finds is that everything of a decorative nature is made of a steatitic schist or soapstone. This stone is found in the country, and is still employed by natives farther south in making pipes for smoking dokha or hemp; it lends itself easily to the tool of the artist, and is very durable. [180]

First, let us take the birds perched on tall soapstone columns, which, from the position in which we found most of them, would appear to have decorated the outer wall of the semicircular temple on the hill. These birds are all conventional in design. The tallest stood 5 feet 4 inches in height, the smallest about half a foot lower. We have six large ones and two small ones in all, and probably, from the number of soapstone pedestals with the tops broken off which we found in the temple, there were several more. Though they are all different in execution, they would appear to have been intended to represent the same bird; from the only one in which the beak1 is preserved to us intact, we undoubtedly recognise that they must have been intended to represent hawks or vultures. The thick neck and legs, the long talons and the nature of the plumage point more distinctly to the vulture; the decorations on some of them, namely, the dentelle pattern at the edge of the wings, the necklace with a brooch in front and continued [183]down the back, the raised rosette-shaped eyes, and the pattern down the back, point to a high degree of conventionality, evolved out of some sacred symbolism of which these birds were the embodiment, the nature of which symbolism it is now our object to arrive at. Two of the birds, similar in character, with straight legs and fan-shaped tails different from the others, are represented as perched on zones or cesti; two others have only indications of the cestus beneath their feet; a fifth, with nothing beneath its feet, has two circles carved under it and two on the wings2; a sixth is perched on a chevron pattern [184]similar to that which decorates the large circular temple; hence there is a sort of similarity of symbolism connecting them all.

We have now to look around for comparisons by which we may hope to identify the origin of our birds, and I have little doubt in stating that they are closely akin to the Assyrian Astarte or Venus, and represent the female element in creation. Similar [185]birds were sacred to Astarte amongst the Phœnicians and are often represented as perched on her shrines.

Of the maternal aspect in which the ancient Egyptians held the vulture we have ample evidence. Horapollo tells us (I. 11) that the vulture was emblematic of ‘Urania, a year, a mother,’ whilst Ælian goes so far as to suppose that all vultures were females, to account for their character as emblems of maternity. The cesti and the circles point obviously to this, and these birds in connection with phallic worship are interesting as emblems, signifying incubation. Let us now consult Lucian, who in his work ‘De Syriâ Deâ’ describes a temple at Hierapolis, near the Euphrates, which, as we have seen, has much in common with these temples at Zimbabwe. In § 33, p. 479, he mentions a curious pediment, of no distinctive shape, called by the Assyrians ‘the symbol,’ on the top of which is perched a bird. Amongst some of Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries at Mycene, there are also images surmounted by birds which differ from the ξόανον in the ‘De Syriâ Deâ’ solely in the fact that they are not shapeless, but represent a nude female figure. The goddess of this shrine was evidently Astarte, and wore a cestus, ‘with which none but Urania is adorned.’3 [186]On a Phœnician coin found in Cyprus we have the dove on the betyle or pedestal as the central object.4 In Egyptian archæology we also come across the bird on the pedestal, more particularly in the curious zodiac of Denderah, where a bird perched on a pillar, and with the crown of Upper Egypt on its head, is, as Mr. Norman Lockyer tells me, used to indicate the commencement of the year; also from the Soudan we have a bird on a pedestal carved on some rude stone fragments now in the Ashmolean Museum. It is just possible that the birds at Zimbabwe had some solstitial meaning, but as their exact position on the temple walls is lost, it is impossible to speak on this point with anything like certainty. Also in the difficult question of early Arabian cult, which was closely bound up with that of Egypt, Assyria, and Phœnicia, we find the vulture as the totem of a Southern Arabian tribe at the time of the Himyaritic supremacy, and it was worshipped there as the god Nasr, and is mysteriously alluded to in Himyaritic inscriptions as ‘the vulture of the East and the vulture of the West,’ which also would seem to point to a solstitial use of the emblem.5

The religious symbolism of these birds is further attested by our finding two tiny representations of the larger emblems; they, too, represented birds on pillars, the longest of which is only three and a half inches, and it is perched on the pillar more as the [187]bird is represented in the zodiac of Denderah. Evidently these things were used as amulets or votive offerings in the temple. Lucian alludes to the phalli used as amulets by the Greeks with a human figure on the end, and he connects them with the tower thirty cubits in height.

In the centre of the temple on the hill stood an altar, into the stones of which were inserted and also [188]scattered around a large number of soapstone objects representing the phallus either realistically or conventionally, but always with anatomical accuracy which unmistakably conveys their meaning, and proves in addition that circumcision was practised by this primitive race; ‘its origin both amongst the Egyptians and Ethiopians,’ says Herodotus, ii. 37, 104, ‘may be traced to the most remote antiquity.’ We have seen in the previous description of the tower the parallel to Lucian’s description of the phalli in the temple at Hierapolis. Here, in the upper temple, we found no less than thirty-eight miniature representations of the larger emblem; one is a highly ornate object, with apparently a representation of a winged sun on its side, or perchance the winged Egyptian vulture, suggesting a distinct Semitic influence. There is a small marble column in the Louvre, twenty-six inches in height, of Phœnician origin, with a winged symbol on the shaft like the one [189]before us; it is crowned by an ornament made of four petalled flowers. This winged globe is met with in many Phœnician objects, and MM. Perrot and Chipiez, in their work on Phœnicia, thus speak of it as ‘a sort of trade-mark by which we can recognise as Phœnician all such objects as bear it, whether they come from Etruria or Sardinia, from Africa or Syria.’ And of the stele in the Louvre the same authors say, ‘We may say that it is signed.’ A carefully executed rosette with seven petals forms the summit of our object found in the temple. Now the rosette is also another distinctly Phœnician symbol used by them to indicate the sun. We have the rosette on Phœnician sepulchral stelæ in the British Museum in conjunction with the half-moon to indicate the heavenly luminaries, and here at Zimbabwe we have this object surmounted by a rosette, rosettes carved on the decorated pillars, and the eyes of the birds, as before mentioned, are made in the form of rosettes. The fact of finding these objects all in close juxtaposition around the altar and in the vicinity of the birds on pillars is sufficient proof of the nature of the objects and their religious symbolism. Thus we have in both cases the larger emblems and their miniature representatives, the tower and the smaller phalli, the large birds and the tiny amulets, proving to us that the ancient inhabitants of the ruins worshipped a combination of the two deities, which together represented the creative powers of mankind.

A curious confirmation of this is found in the [190]pages of Herodotus, who tells us6: ‘The Arabians of all the gods only worshipped Dionysus, whom they called Ourotalt, and Urania;’ that is to say, they worshipped the two deities which, in the mind of the father of history, represented in themselves all that was known of the mysteries of creation, pointing to the very earliest period of Arabian cult, prior to the more refined religious development of the Sabæo-Himyaritic dynasty, when Sun-worship, veneration for the great luminary which regenerated all animal and vegetable life, superseded the grosser forms of nature-worship, to be itself somewhat superseded or rather incorporated in a worship of all the heavenly luminaries, [191]which developed as a knowledge of astronomy was acquired.

We have already discussed the round towers and the numerous monoliths which decorated the walls and other parts of the Zimbabwe ruins; excavation yielded further examples of the veneration for stones amongst the early inhabitants. One of these was a tall decorated soapstone pillar 11 feet 6 inches in height, which stood on the platform already alluded to, and acted as a centre to a group of monoliths; the base of this pillar we found in situ, the rest had been broken off and appropriated by a Kaffir to decorate a wall; it was worked with bands of geometric patterns around it, each different from the other and divided into compartments by circular patterns, one of which is the chevron pattern found on the circular [192]ruin below; it only runs round a portion of the pillar; and may possibly have been used to orient it towards the setting sun. Besides this tall pillar we found two fragments of other similar pillars decorated one with geometric patterns and the other with an extraordinary and entirely inexplicable decoration. On these pillars the rosette is frequently depicted, and it [193]would seem that they all came from the same place, namely, the platform decorated with monoliths. Here also we found several stones of a curious nature and entirely foreign to the place. Two of them are stones with even bands of an asbestiform substance, a serpentine with veins of chrysolite, the grooves being caused by the natural erosion of the fibrous [194]bands. Another stone is an irregular polygonal pillar-like object of coarse-grained basalt, the smooth faces of which are natural points, the whole being a portion of a rough column or prism. Another, again, is a fragment of schistose rock, apparently hornblendic; also we found several round blocks of diorite in this place. The collection here of so many strange geological fragments cannot be accidental, and points to a veneration of curious-shaped stones amongst the earlier inhabitants of the ruins, which were collected here on the platform, a spot which, I am convinced, will compare with the βαιτύλια or betyles of the Phœnicians, and of this stone cult we have ample evidence from Arabia. El Masoudi alludes to the ancient stone-worship of Arabia, and leads us to believe that at one time this gross fetichism formed a part of the natural religion of the Semitic races. Marinus of Tyre says they honoured as a god a great cut stone. Euthymius Zygabenus [195]further tells us that apparently ‘this stone was the head of Aphrodite, which the Ishmaelites formerly worshipped, and it is called Bakka Ismak;’ also, he adds, ‘they have certain stone statues erected in the centre of their houses, round which they danced till they fell from giddiness; but when the Saracens were converted to Christianity they were obliged to anathematise this stone, which formerly they worshipped.’7 Herr Kremer, in his account of the ancient cult of Arabia, makes frequent allusions to the stone-worship. In the town of Taif a great unformed stone block was worshipped, identical with the goddess which Herodotus calls Urania; and one must imagine that the Kaaba stone at Mecca resembles the black schistose block which we found at Zimbabwe; it is an exceedingly old-world worship, dating back to the most primitive ages of mankind.

The next series of finds to be discussed are the numerous fragments [196]of decorated and plain soapstone bowls which we found, most of them deeply buried in the immediate vicinity of the temple on the fortress; and these bring us to consider more closely the artistic capacities of the race who originally inhabited these ruins. The work displayed in executing these bowls, the careful rounding of the edges, the exact execution of the circle, the fine pointed tool-marks, and the subjects they chose to depict, point to the race having been far advanced in artistic skill—a skill arrived at, doubtless, by commercial intercourse with the more civilised races of mankind. Seven of these bowls were of exactly the same size, and were 19·2 inches in diameter,8 which measurements we ascertained by taking the radii of the several fragments. The most elaborate of these fragments is a bowl which had depicted around its outer edge a hunting scene; it is very well worked, and bears in several points a remarkable similarity to objects of art produced by the Phœnicians. There is here, as we have in all Phœnician patterns, [197]the straight procession of animals, to break the continuity of which a little man is introduced shooting a zebra with one hand and holding in the other an animal by a leash. To fill up a vacant space, a bird is introduced flying, all of which points are characteristic of Phœnician work. Then the Phœnician workmen always had a great power of adaptability, taking their lessons in art from their immediate surroundings, which is noticeable all over the world, whether in Greece, Egypt, Africa, or Italy. Here we have the same characteristic, namely, a procession of native African animals treated in a Phœnician style—three zebras, two hippopotami, and the sportsman in the centre is obviously a Hottentot. The details in this bowl are carefully brought out, even the breath of the animals is depicted by three strokes at the mouth. There is also a fragment of another bowl with zebras on it similarly treated, though somewhat higher and coarser. The fragments of a large bowl, which had a procession of bulls [198]round it, is also Phœnician in character.9 The most noticeable feature in the treatment of these bulls is that the three pairs of horns we have preserved to us are all different.

There are three fragments of three very large bowls, which are all of a special interest, and if the bowls could have been recovered intact they would have formed very valuable evidence. Search, however, as we would, we never found more of these bowls, and therefore must be content with what we have. The first of these represents on its side a small portion of what must have been a religious procession; of this we have only a hand holding a pot or censer containing an offering in it, and an arm of another figure with a portion of the back of the head with the hair drawn off it in folds. Representations of a similar nature are to be found in the religious functions of many Semitic races, and it is much to be regretted that we have not more of it for our study. [199]

The second fragment has an elaborate design upon it, taken from the vegetable world, probably an ear of corn; it was evidently around the lip of the bowl and not at the side; it is a very good piece of workmanship, and of a soapstone of brighter green than that employed in the other articles. The third fragment is perhaps the most tantalising of all; it is a fragment of the lip of another large bowl which must have been more than two feet in diameter, and around which apparently an inscription ran. The lettering is provokingly fragmentary, but still there can be no doubt that it is an attempt at writing in some form: the straight line down the middle, the sloping lines on either side recall some system of tally, and the straightness of the lettering compares curiously with the [200]proto-Arabian type of lettering used in the earlier Sabæan inscriptions, specimens of which I here give, and also with some curious rock carvings found by Mr. A. A. Anderson in Bechuanaland. It was common in Phœnician and early Greek vases to have an inscription or dedication round the lip; vide, for example, a lebes in the British Museum from a temple at Naucratis with a dedication to Apollo on the rim, and used, like the one before us, in temple service. The circles on the birds also appear to have a line across, like the fourth letter given as illustrating the early Arabian alphabet.

Of the other fragments of bowls we found, one has a well-executed cord pattern running round it, another a herring-bone pattern alternating with what [201]would appear to be a representation of the round tower; and besides these there are several fragments of what have been perfectly plain bowls, notably one large one, the diameter of which is outside 2 feet and inside 1 foot 8 inches. The edges of this bowl are very carefully bevelled and the bottom rounded, and [202]it is a very fine specimen of workmanship, the whole of which we were able to recover saving a portion of the bottom. Another plain bowl has a round hole pierced through its side, and another fragment is made of a reddish sort of soapstone with oxide of iron in it. The tool marks on these bowls point to very fine instruments having been used in carving [203]them. Altogether these bowls are amongst the most conspicuous of our finds, and the fact they all came from the proximity of the temple would undoubtedly seem to prove that they were used in temple service, broken by subsequent occupants of the ruins, and the fragments thrown outside.

The next find from Zimbabwe which we will discuss is the circular soapstone object with a hole in the centre, which at first is suggestive of a quern; but being of such friable material such could not have been the case. It is decorated round the side and on the top with rings of knobs, four on the side and four on the top; from the central hole a groove has been [204]cut to the side, and the whole is very well finished off. This thing is 2 feet 2 inches in circumference. We also found portions of a smaller bowl with the same knob pattern thereon. The use of this extraordinary soapstone find is very obscure. Mr. Hogarth calls my attention to the fact that in the excavations at Paphos, in Cyprus, they found a similar object, similarly decorated, which they put down as Phœnician. It is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, and is a cylindrical object of coarse white marble six inches in diameter and about four and three-quarter inches high. It is studded with round projecting studs left in relief on the marble, resembling in general disposition those on our soapstone find, and there is no question about the similarity of the two objects. They remind one of Herodian’s description of the sacred cone in the great Phœnician temple of the sun at Emesa, in Syria (Herodian, bk. v. § 5), which was adorned with certain ‘knobs or protuberances,’ a pattern supposed by him to represent the sun, and common in phallic decorations.

In the vicinity of the temple we also came across some minor objects very near the surface, which did not do more than establish the world-wide commerce carried on at the Great Zimbabwe at a much more recent date, and still by the Arabians—namely, a few fragments of Celadon pottery from China, of Persian ware, an undoubted specimen of Arabian glass, and beads of doubtful provenance, though one of them may be considered as Egyptian of the [205]Ptolemaic period. Glass beads almost of precisely the same character—namely, black with white encircling lines—have come from ancient tombs at Thebes, in Bœotia, and are to be found in almost every collection of Egyptian curiosities.

The pottery objects must have been brought here by Arabian traders during the middle ages, probably when the Monomatapa chiefs ruled over this district and carried on trade with the Arabians for gold, as European traders do now with objects of bright appearance and beads. Similar fragments have been found by Sir John Kirk in the neighbourhood of Quiloa, where in mediæval times was a settlement of [206]Arabs who came from the Persian Gulf, forming an hereditary intercourse between the Arabs and the east coast of Africa until the Portuguese found them there and drove them away three centuries ago. It is impossible that a collection of things such as these could have been brought together by any but a highly commercial race during the middle ages, and the Arabians alone had this character at the time in question.

Considering the large quantity of soapstone fragments, bowls, and other things, the finds of pottery of a good period at Zimbabwe were not many. Noticeably one piece of pottery is exceedingly excellent, worthy of a good period of classic Greek ware. The pattern round it is evidently stamped on, being [207]done with such absolute accuracy. It is geometric, as all the patterns on the pottery are. It is not hand-made pottery, for on the back of it are distinct signs of a wheel. Then there are some black fragments with an excellent glaze and bevel, also fragments of pottery lids, and a pottery stopper, pointing to the fact that the old inhabitants of Zimbabwe had reached an advanced state of proficiency in ceramic art. Fragments of one pot with holes neatly bored round the neck remind one of water-coolers still found in the East. Besides the fragments of pots, we found an enormous number of small circular objects of pottery, which may have been used as spindle-whorls, though most of them show no signs of wear, and some of [208]them having rude decorations thereon. The only fragment which shows an attempt at the use of pottery for other than domestic purposes is a sow which we found in a kitchen midden just outside the large circular building on the plain, with two phalli near it. This animal compares well with the rude [209]attempts to depict animal life found in prehistoric excavations on the Mediterranean. Whether it has any religious 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, [210]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 [211]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 [212]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 [213]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 [214]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,10 and shows the same peculiarity of make as the assegai-heads still made by the natives—namely, the fluting which [215]runs down the centre being reversed on either side. Then there are the tools—chisels, an adze, pincers, spades, &c., which are quite unknown to the Kaffir races which now inhabit this country. Still it is possible that all these things may have been made during the time of the Monomatapa, who evidently had reached a higher pitch of civilisation than that existing to-day; so that I am inclined to set aside the iron implements as pertaining to a more recent occupation, though at the same time there is no actual reason for not assigning to them a remoter antiquity.

The finds in the fortress of Zimbabwe which touch upon, perhaps, the most interesting topic of all are those which refer to the manufacture of gold. Close underneath the temple in the fortress stood a gold-smelting furnace made of very hard cement of powdered granite, with a chimney of the same material, and with neatly bevelled edges. Hard by, in a chasm between two boulders, lay all the rejected casings from which the gold-bearing quartz had been extracted by exposure to heat prior to the crushing, proving beyond a doubt that these mines, though not immediately on a gold reef, formed the capital of a gold-producing people who had chosen this hill fortress with its granite boulders for their capital owing to its peculiar strategic advantages. Gold reefs and old workings have been lately discovered about twelve miles from Zimbabwe, and it was from these that their auriferous quartz was doubtless obtained.

Near the above-mentioned furnace we found many [216]little crucibles, of a composition of clay, which had been used for smelting the gold, and in nearly all of them still exist small specks of gold adhering to the glaze formed by the heat of the process. Also we found several water-worn stones, which had been used as burnishers, which was evidenced by the quantity of gold still adhering to them; and in the adjoining cave we dug up an ingot mould of soapstone of a curious shape, corresponding almost exactly to an ingot of tin found in Falmouth Harbour, which is now in the Truro Museum, and a cast of which may be seen at the School of Mines in Jermyn Street. This ingot of tin was undoubtedly made by Phœnician workmen, for it bears a punch mark thereon like those usually employed by workmen of that period; and Sir Henry James, in his pamphlet describing it, draws attention to the statement of Diodorus, that in ancient Britain ingots of tin were made ἀστραγάλων ῥυθμοὺς, or of the shape of astragali or knuckle-bones; and the form of both the ingots is such that the astragalus may easily be used as a rough simile to describe them. 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 [218]now make ingots of iron of a shape which might easily be supposed to have been derived from the astragalus; but at the same time the finding of two ingots in two remote places where Phœnician influence has been proved to be so strong is very good presumptive evidence to establish the fact that the gold workers of ancient Zimbabwe worked for the Phœnician market. A small soapstone object with a hole in the centre would appear to have been a sort of tool used for beating gold.

An interesting parallel to the ancient gold workings in Mashonaland is to be found by studying the account of the ancient gold workings at the Egyptian gold mines in Wadi Allaga, also given us by Diodorus. There, too, the gold was extracted from the quartz by a process of crushing and washing, as we can see from [219]the process depicted in the paintings on the Egyptian tombs; and in any gold-producing quarter of Mashonaland, near old shafts and by the side of streams, innumerable crushing-stones are still to be seen, used anciently for a like purpose, when slave labour was employed. Diodorus tells us of the gangs of slaves employed, of the long dark shaft into which they descended, of which a countless number are scattered still over Mashonaland; and after describing the process of washing and crushing he concludes: ‘They then put the gold into earthen crucibles well closed with clay, and leave it in a furnace for five successive days and nights, after which it is suffered to cool. The crucibles are then opened, and nothing is found in them but the pure gold a little diminished in quantity.’ Hence it is obvious that the process employed by the ancient Egyptians for crushing, smelting, and forming into ingots was exactly the same as that employed by the ancient inhabitants of Zimbabwe; which fact, when [220]taken in conjunction with the vast amount of evidence of ancient cult, ancient construction, and ancient art, is, I think, conclusive that the gold-fields of Mashonaland formed one at least of the sources from which came the gold of Arabia, and that the forts and towns which ran up the whole length of this gold-producing country were made to protect their men engaged in this industry. The cumulative evidence is greatly in favour of the gold diggers being of Arabian origin, before the Sabæo-Himyaritic period in all probability, who did work for and were brought closely into contact with both Egypt and Phœnicia, penetrating to many countries unknown to the rest of the world. The Bible is full of allusions to the wealth of Arabia in gold and other things. Ezekiel tells us that the Sabæans were merchants in gold for the markets of Tyre. Aristeas [221]tells us that a large quantity of spices, precious stones, and gold was brought to Rome διὰ τῶν Ἀράβων, not from Arabia, but by the Arabians. The testimony of all travellers in Arabia is to the effect that little or no gold could have come from the Arabian peninsula itself; it is, therefore, almost certain that the country round Zimbabwe formed one at least of the spots from which the ‘Thesaurus Arabum’ came. Egyptian monuments also point to the wealth of the people of Punt, and the ingots of gold which they sent as tribute to Queen Hatasou. No one, of course, is prepared to say exactly where the kingdom of Punt was; the consensus of opinion is that it was Yemen, in the south of Arabia. But suppose it to be there, or suppose it to be on the coast of Africa, opposite Arabia, or even suppose it to be Zimbabwe itself, the question is the same: [222]where did they get the large supply of gold from, which they poured into Egypt and the then known world? In Mashonaland we seem to have a direct answer to this question. It would seem to be evident that a prehistoric race built the ruins in this country, a race like the mythical Pelasgi who inhabited the shores of Greece and Asia Minor, a race like the mythical inhabitants of Great Britain and France who built Stonehenge and Carnac, a race which continued in possession down to the earliest dawnings of history, which provided gold for the merchants of Phœnicia and Arabia, and which eventually became influenced by and perhaps absorbed in the more powerful and wealthier organisations of the Semite.

[223]