The
ancient settlement of Great Zimbabwe has fascinated researchers for decades.
That much of it is so well preserved is testament to the strength of its
construction, but it also allows visitors to appreciate the lifestyle of the
community who called it home. Len Rix explains why Great Zimbabwe should be
included on every tourist’s itinerary.
With so much on offer in Zimbabwe, a journey to the
southerly town of Masvingo to view an ancient ruin — the “lost”
city of Great Zimbabwe — might seem hardly worth the effort. To believe
that, and to act upon it would be a pity. The site is more than beautiful. It
is awe-inspiring. It opens the eye to something too easily neglected in this
continent — its extraordinary past.
To the memory of Africa as the
land of huge skies, breathtaking sunsets and heart-stopping encounters with
game, is added another — an Africa of lost empires, ancient civilisations,
a legacy of noble artefacts and profound mysteries.
At its height,
Great Zimbabwe was a city of some 20,000 people, so the site is vast. But there
are two clear focal points, apparent even as you arrive — the Acropolis
(or Hill Complex) and the Great Enclosure, some 500 metres distant. Visitors
usually tackle the former first, as it involves a short climb in the heat of
the sun. It also gives magnificent views both of the site as a whole and the
surrounding area, with Lake Mutirikwi visible to the North — views, as
always in Africa, at their finest in the thick golden light of early morning or
late evening.
The ancient ascent takes you up a path skirting the
steep rock face. Every step brings into sharper focus what has already caught
your eye, towering above you — the elegant curving walls of free-standing
granite blocks that line the cliff edge, like the ramparts of a fort.
Seen from above, the site is a high oval table emerging dramatically out of the
plain. Its smooth sides are dizzily sheer. On top lies a chaos of huge tumbled
stones, forming two irregular circles and linked here and there by inner walls.
The elaborate outer walls are in fact decorative and peaceful, except at the
western end, where they create a fortified entrance. Seemingly impregnable, it
was not in fact a military construction but the seat of royal and spiritual
authority.
Reaching the top, you squeeze through the daunting narrow
gateway cut into the western wall, to enter the antechamber to the royal
enclosure. You are now standing on five metres of historically stratified soil.
The oldest layer beneath you is from 320 AD.
The workings currently
exposed mark the beginning of the city’s great period, 1270 to 1450 AD. At
this time it controlled a trade network from the Kalahari through to present
Mozambique with links extending to Arabia and as far afield as China, and held
sway over a land area of some 100,000 square miles. To have penetrated this far
into the complex, at that time, you would have first been rigorously screened
by priests, then escorted by a posse of musicians and dancers. Now you were
about to meet the king himself. The king never descended to the valley. After
death, his spirit acquired special powers of intercession with God. Royal
ancestor spirits could be seen, regularly soaring over the plain, in their
guise of chapungu, the Bateleur eagle — origin of the Zimbabwe Bird, the
symbol of the modern nation.
Immediately adjacent to the king’s
apartments were those of the Great Ancestress, the senior sister of the ruling
line and a potent voice in decisions of state. As you make your way through
the rooms along the southern wall, the eye returns compulsively to the plain
below and the distant Great Enclosure, where tall trees and curving walls
screen the mysterious Conical Tower.
This combination of distance,
remoteness and expectation sets the tone, if anything can, for the real power
centre of the Acropolis site — the Eastern Enclosure. Here the atmosphere
is positively Delphic. It is a natural altar, whose backdrop of huge boulders
frames a narrow fissure from which, it is believed, the oracular voice sounded.
Its sacredness is evidenced by the discovery, on a series of platforms, of six
Zimbabwe birds, the supreme symbol of the cult. The only other artefacts found
here were ceremonial items, such as bowls. Even today, the silence is
mesmeric.
Although the Hamlyn Historical Atlas (1981, p3) lists
Zimbabwe as a “major early state”, along with the Aztecs and Incas,
nothing first-hand was known of it in the West until the late nineteenth
century. Richly detailed descriptions of later Shona hill-top cities were made
by the Portuguese, who traded and raided into the country from around 1500 AD,
but Great Zimbabwe had already been abandoned by then.
The first
on-site, written report came from a German, Carl Mauch, in 1871. Soon, the
place was being regularly “excavated” in the nineteenth century
manner — (i.e.) thoroughly plundered, with the most archaeologically
sensitive layers of earth and “rubbish” wantonly destroyed. By 1902
British settlers had taken control of the land.
Unwilling to imagine
that the local Africans could have produced such a feat of architectural
engineering, most preferred to revive Portuguese myths linking it with the
Queen of Sheba. But at least the site was now protected and serious work on the
ruins began.
Real understanding of its nature and function came much
more recently, however, when researchers such as Peter Garlake and Thomas
Huffman began to draw on wider sources: early Portuguese writings, information
from related sites both north and south of the Limpopo river, and insights
gleaned from study of successor Bantu cultures in the area. It became clear
that the people who controlled Great Zimbabwe had earlier operated from a base
at Mapungubwe, further south, and that, after the present site was abandoned
(around 1450) the power-base shifted to Khami, Naletale, Thulamela and
elsewhere.
Though none of these related sites ever reached the scale,
or the splendour, of Great Zimbabwe itself, the cross-light they shed has
proved invaluable. Romantic myth has thus yielded to an understanding which,
however scientifically based, is far more satisfying to the imagination.
Down on the plain, the Great Enclosure, though very different, is in its
own way as remarkable as the Acropolis. The huge free-stone wall, sensuously
curved and decorated with patterns of chevron, consumed nearly a million pieces
of stone, each piece individually shaped from spars of granite.
It
runs in a great irregular circle for some 250 metres, rising to 11 metres at
its highest. Its 15,000 tonnes of material make it the largest ancient
structure in Africa south of the Sahara.
For a substantial stretch it
becomes a double wall. To reach the fabled Conical Tower you walk single-file
at the base of a ten-metre high, one-metre-wide, curving corridor, the eerily
solemn nature of which brings you in suitable mood to the Tower itself.
Whatever its function, this was clearly the focus of the complex.
Its
impact is further reinforced by the shade-giving presence of two overhanging
trees, and by the vibrant hum of bees, traditionally sacred protectors of holy
places and here maintaining a balance of sanctity and terror. As on the
Acropolis, one can only stand and gaze and wonder.
Naturally, the
nature of this structure and its purpose have been the object of fierce debate.
Currently the most interesting account is to be found in Huffman’s 1987
pamphlet, Symbols in Stone. For him the first clue lies in its closeness to the
houses of the royal wives, indicating their key role. The clear designation of
male and female symbols — horns, grain-bins, clefts — at opposing
entrances, and other signs of a division into two halves, point to private and
sacred mysteries being enacted here.
Huffman suggests there were
extended initiation rites, indeed a premarital initiation school, which young
men and women from a wide area would attend under the direction of the royal
wives, as a preparation for citizenship in general and marriage in particular.
Given the importance of male-female balance in many Bantu cultures, and the
continuing existence of such schools among the post-Zimbabwe Venda people in
neighbouring Gauteng province, this rings true.
Ideally, it needs a
full day to take everything in, to study, for example, the skilful restoration
work currently in hand. And the longer one spends, the more the unity and
harmony of the place assert themselves. Everywhere there is symbolism. The
ubiquitous chevron motif, a recurring W-shape modelled into the tops of walls
and found as a refrain on Zimbabwe birds, forms part of this complex pattern.
Crucially, it signifies maleness and royalty, the terrible power of the
crocodile and the fertility of the snake, directly balancing the spiritual
dimension of the bird itself. With a host of other shapes and images, it is
part of an elaborate set of meanings which may never be fully understood.
And that serves only to deepen the appeal of this miraculous place.
However brilliant the theories of archaeologists and scholars, mystery will
always remain. Just to stand among these graceful ruins is a profoundly awesome
experience. No other site offers such a potent sense of the African past. Even
with the usual scattering of visitors, it is a place of vibrant silence, in
which the eye can travel, like the mind, seemingly forever.
An author with a
special interest in African writers and history, Len Rix is a former lecturer
at the University of Zimbabwe. He is now a senior master at Manchester Grammar
School.
