Great Zimbabwe, Mashonaland, Rhodesia

Great Zimbabwe, Mashonaland, Rhodesia - An account of two years' examination work in 1902-4 on behalf of the government of Rhodesia

AN archological work of absorbing interest, such as the volume here presented to the reader, needs no introduction. Nor are the following remarks meant to be taken in that sense, but only as a sort of missing link in the chain of evidence between past and present, between the Arabian Himyarites and the Rhodesian monuments, the forging of which the author has entrusted to me. In The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia, of which Great Zimbabwe is the inevitable outcome, Messrs. Hall and Neal did not discuss the problem of origins, speculation was distinctly eschewed, and although their personal views were, and are, in harmony with those of all competent observers, they made no dogmatic statement on the subject, leaving the main conclusion to be inferred from the great body of evidence which they patiently accumulated on the spot and embodied in their monumental work. In Great Zimbabwe, of which Mr. Hall is sole author, and the rich materials for which he has alone brought together, the same attitude of reserve is still maintained, perhaps even more severely, and therefore it is that he has now invited me to develop the argument by which, as he hopes and I believe, the wonderful prehistoric remains strewn over Southern Rhodesia, but centred chiefly in the Great Zimbabwe group, may be finally traced to their true source in South Arabia, Phnicia, and Palestine. In The Gold of Ophir, whence Brought and by Whom,[2] xxxiiwhere several chapters are devoted to this subject, I inferred, on plausible grounds, that the Havilah of Scripturethe whole land of Havilah where there is goldwas the mineralised region between the Zambesi and the Limpopo, and that the ancient gold-workings of this region were first opened and the associated monuments erected by the South Arabian Himyarites, followed in the time of Solomon by the Jews and Phnicians. I further endeavoured to show that all these Semitic treasure-seekers reached Havilah (the port of which was Tharshish, probably the present Sofala) through Madagascar, where they had settlements and maintained protracted commercial and social intercourse with the Malagasy natives; and lastly, that the produce of the mines was by them sent down to the coast and shipped at Tharshish for Ophir, the great Himyaritic emporium on the south coast of Arabia, whence it was distributed over the eastern world. It followed that the scriptural gold of Ophir did not mean the gold mined at Ophir, which was not, as hitherto supposed, an auriferous land, but a gold mart.[3] The expression meant the gold imported by the Jews and Phnicians from Havilah (Rhodesia), vi Tharshish, Ophir, and Ezion-geber in Iduma, at the head of the Red Sea. It is needless here to recapitulate in detail the arguments that I have advanced in support of this general thesis. But I should like to point out that if one or two of them have been invalidated by my critics, several have been greatly strengthened by the fresh evidence that has accumulated since the appearance of The Gold of Ophir. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 62501
Author: Hall, R. N. (Richard Nicklin)
Release Date: Jun 27, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English