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

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“FUKO-YA-NEBANDGE,” THE MASHONALAND RELIC, DISCOVERED NEAR ZIMBABWE

(FIG. 5)

MODEL OF ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE, ZIMBABWE

(FIG. 6)

In the second place I find that Semitic students are gradually coming to the conclusion that the age of the South Arabian rock inscriptions has been greatly exaggerated, especially by Glaser, whose authority was at first naturally accepted almost without demur. The language is, no doubt, Himyaritic, that is to say, the oldest known form of Arabic. But that language survived for many centuries after the New Era in the Axumite empire, Abyssinia, where it is called Geez, and in Yemen till some time after the Mohammedan irruption, and is still current in the island of Sokotra, and in the Mahra district east of Hadramaut, where it is called Ehkili. Hence the language of the inscriptions is no test of their antiquity, though many afford intrinsic evidence that they date certainly from at least a few hundred years before the New Era. The subject is at present sub judice, and no more can be said until the full results are known of the extensive researches now in progress throughout Yemen. Here a large number of agents of the French Ministère de l’Instruction Publique have been at work since the year 1901, and thousands of impressions or rubbings have already (1903–4) been received in Paris. Some have even begun to appear in the Nouveaux Textes Yéménites, edited by M. Derenbourg, and several of the inscriptions are stated to be in a hitherto unknown alphabet quite different from that of the Himyaritic document which forms the frontispiece of the Gold of Ophir. Great revelations may therefore be pending; but, meanwhile, so much may, I think, be safely inferred, that the Himyarites who first arrived in Rhodesia, worked the mines, and built the monuments, some dating from apparently 2000 b.c., had little or no knowledge of letters, or at least had not yet begun to cover the rocks of their South Arabian homes with well-formed and carefully constructed inscriptions. Thus is also explained the absence of all such documents from their new homes in Rhodesia, where one may now almost venture to predict that none will ever be found. Nothing can be inferred from the vanished inscription over the Great Zimbabwe gateway, since the gold-workings appear to have been resumed for a time by the later (post-Mohammedan) Arabs, who were fond of decorating the façades of their mosques and other public buildings with the ornamental but relatively recent (eighth century) Cufic characters.