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

30 страница из 98

COIN OF BYBLOS, PHŒNICIA, SHEWING CONICAL TOWER

(FIG. I)

WOODEN BOWL WITH SIGNS OF ZODIAC FOUND NEAR ZIMBABWE

(FIG. 2)

In The Gold of Ophir frequent reference is made to the relations, social and commercial, established between Palestine and Madagascar certainly as early as the time of Solomon, and possibly even during the reign of his father David. On this point I might have spoken even more confidently, for I have since received a communication from M. Alfred Grandidier, by far the greatest living authority on all things Malagasy, who calls my attention to the evidence supplied in his monumental work, Histoire Physique, Naturelle et Politique de Madagascar (1901), of intercourse between the Jews and the natives of Madagascar and neighbouring islands even in pre-Solomonic days. Documents are quoted to show that the Comoros, stepping-stones between Madagascar and Rhodesia, were peopled in the reign of Solomon “by Arabs or rather by Idumæan Jews from the Red Sea,” and that the people of the great island preserve many Israelitish rites, usages, and traditions, cherish the memory of Adam, Abraham, Lot, Moses, Gideon, but have no knowledge of any of the prophets after the time of David, “which seems to show that the Jewish immigrants left their home at a very remote date, since if the exodus had been recent they could not have forgotten the great names posterior to the time of David.” Hence he concludes that “there is nothing surprising in the presence of an Idumæan colony in Madagascar, for we know that from the very earliest times the Arabs of Yemen had frequented the East African seaboard at least as far as Sofala.” These words lend further support to my identification of Tharshish with Sofala, and in a note it is added that “the Jews and Arabian Semites were not the only peoples who had formerly commercial relations with the inhabitants of the African seaboard. From time immemorial these southern waters were navigated by the fleets of the Egyptians, probably even of the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phœnicians, Tyrians” (op. cit., p. 96). And again at p. 100: “From the earliest times the Indian Ocean was traversed by Chaldean, Egyptian, Jewish, Arab, Persian, Indian, and other vessels.”[6]