Read Online The Lost City of Solomon and Sheba by Robin Brown-Lowe - Free Book Online Page B

from our experience the process seems to have already begun) to recognize their value as a medium of obtaining blankets, limbo and beads from the grateful and enthusiastic visitor. Then, at any rate, they will be led to regard them, at least from a practical and business point of view, much as the Egyptian Arabs regard their Pyramids, the Swiss peasant his glaciers, or the English verger his cathedral. It is satisfying to learn that efficient steps have been taken to protect them from both the thoughtlessness and the Philistinism of any prospector or adventurer.
    The Portuguese have suggested that these ruins form portions of the remains of the city and the palace of the Queen of Sheba, ‘in the land of Ophir’. Again ancient Portuguese records refer repeatedly to people in this part of Africa, whom they found to be established long before their own arrival, and whom they represent to work for gold in the far interior. To these people they give the name of Morisco [Moors?].
    With regard to the word itself – Zimbabye – its etymology and orthography, like most native names, it can be variously and equally correctly spelt Zinbawe, Zinboaoe, and Zinbabye. The Portuguese traveller Lacerda, in his journey through the Zambesi region in 1797, speaks of a tribe, Cazembe (near Lake Nyassa), who in answer to his enquiries regarding the course of a certain river, described it as running close by their Zinbawe, or royal residence. This fact, taken in conjunction with the existence of another Zimbabye in the Manica country, together with the ruins in this neighbourhood, would seem to fix the meaning of the word as palace or royal residence.
    Be this, however, as it may, whether these ruins are to be attributed to either Moorish or Phoenician origin, or whether the circular building was a temple or a palace, and the conical tower the Queen of Sheba’s tumulus, are questions which only the skilled antiquary and those versed in such matters should presume to decide.
    In the meantime, many of us have been privileged to set eyes upon a spectacle which, with the exception of Mauch, as far as we know, no white man has ever hitherto been fortunate enough to behold.
    This, by the standards of the time, was very balanced coverage – but it still left origin theorists with quite a narrow field of choice: Moors, Phoenicians or Solomon and Sheba.
    Other ‘considered’ articles of the time were much more decided. Great Zimbabwe was: ‘A fortified camp or station, established, it had hardly to be doubted, to control the enslaved population which worked the gold mines, and to protect the abler but scanty people which coerced and directed them and took away, like the Spaniards in Peru, all transportable fruit of their labour. Who they were may remain uncertain but there is no reason which makes it peremptory that they should have been indigenous.’
    Of all the contenders for this title – and over the next few months the Hindus who conquered and held Java for generations, the Malays who conquered Madagascar, and the Arab people who founded the Sabaean kingdom were nominated – the outright favourite was the Phoenicians, given their history of long sea journeys in search of minerals.
    For a truly Romantic view of the lost city, however, one only had to turn, then as now, to the ‘tabloids’:
    Who were these soldier workmen of a vanished civilisation?
    At whose bidding did they force their way into this barbarous place to dig for gold?
    The country is dotted with the strange ancient relics of their work. The furnaces that they built to smelt the ore, the strong round keeps which they raised against the alarms of some besetting foe, the great stones on which they scored in indecipherable characters the record of their labours, perhaps the clue to their prize – these things remain and move the awe of the Matabele and his Mashona vassal.
    Today, then, the Englishman is in the land of Ophir, opening