The Lost City of Solomon and Sheba (28 page)

Unlike any of these African neighbours (with the notable exception of the old Nubians) Ethiopia has a long, classical and religious tradition which produced a monolithic stone-building culture. For the Europeans of the old world, Ethiopia was always an alluring and mysterious ‘lost civilisation' in the heart of Africa, a cultural oasis of an ancient Christian sect led by ‘Prester John'. The rumour was that this was the last resting place of the Ark of the Covenant and it could be said that our story begins with Prester John because it was a search for him by the intrepid Portuguese mariner, Batholomew Diaz, which would produce in time the first eye-witness accounts of our lost city deep in the African hinterland.

I join the road here, too. If, as I suspect, the proto-Karanga followed a path down Africa that a millennium later became roughly the route of the Great North Road, then that was the road my family would take south from Tanganyika in 1947. But, with Mr and Mrs Bent, we need to step back a pace or two before we can join that long walk of the Karanga migration.

There were two ways to find your way to Great Zimbabwe in ancient times. You could sail south aboard one of the new Phoenician ships, then walk inland, or you could trek down Africa. It is possible, indeed likely, that both methods were used at different times. How strong is the case for the first alien influence at Great Zimbabwe having been imported by explorer-merchants from ships? The earliest indications that a voyage rather than a march might have fuelled the evolution of the Zimbabwe culture are those famous biblical references. The King James version of the Bible gives chapter and verse on King Solomon's shopping lists to his Phoenician mariner-merchants. Top of that list is gold: ‘Now the weight of the gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred and three score and six talents of gold. . . . Beside [that which] chapmen and merchants bought. And all the kings of Arabia and the governors of the country bought gold and silver to Solomon . . . and King Solomon made two hundred targets [of] beaten gold; six hundred [shekels] of beaten gold went to one target.' There are fifteen references in II Chronicles 9 alone. The most specific records that every three years ‘the servants also of Hurram, and the servants of Solomon, which brought gold from Ophir, brought almug trees and precious stones'.

There has been considerable speculation about the three years it took Hiram's fleet to bring Solomon his gold from Ophir. One theory promotes a voyage to India, another that the Phoenician fleet took a year travelling to an east African port, a year trekking inland trading for gold and gathering, perhaps growing, sufficient food for the long return journey. Sea journeys of several years were not uncommon in those days and these maritime traders could easily have taken a year visiting the various settlements in the interior where gold, ivory and perhaps hardwoods were traded.

We know a good deal more about Solomon and Sheba than they did in Theodore Bent's day and this new information is quite revealing if we are indeed looking for a king whose fortune depended on colonial, or at least colonial trading, connections. Solomon's name means ‘sun' (although in no account I have read to date has this association been mentioned). Many Zimbabwe artefacts, including the birds and the stelae, carry sun-symbol discs. The early sun-gods of Solomon's homeland were hawk-headed and these self-same gods had responsibility for the protection of ancient mines. It surely does not go beyond the bounds of reasonable speculation to suggest that these birds (whose inscribed symbols have thus far not been translated), who were found guarding Great Zimbabwe's most sacred stone keep, are icons of a sun-god. To my mind the only question is: a sun-god to which cult?

No one has seriously suggested that Solomon had great ambitions outside his own borders but there are a number of stories confirming his skill as a diplomat and an adept of trading partnerships. Soon after Solomon became king he made an important political marriage – thus securing future diplomatic relations – to the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh. Her dowry is said to have included 1,000 musical instruments! But more relevant to this story, 80,000 Egyptian builders. Solomon has remained famous throughout history for his opulent palace and temple. The scriptures say he sent 10,000 workers a month to Lebanon to fell and transport over land and sea the tall cedars of Lebanon. It is this legend which so excited Carl Mauch when he found at Great Zimbabwe a wooden beam he thought was the same wood as the cedar of his pencil.

Stories as old as this must, however, be interpreted with caution. What we can reasonably conclude from the Scriptures is that Solomon was in the market for quality hardwood and that he possessed a skilled labour force that could build monumental stone temples and palaces. It is also not commonly acknowledged that Phoenician craftsmen were the architects of Solomon's palace and temple. The temple consisted of three large rooms of richly carved cedar, cyprus and marble with a huge bronze altar and bronze columns 40 feet high.

Solomon's abiding reputation for wisdom comes from the alleged conversation he had with God when, invited to name his heart's desires, instead of choosing riches and power, he said ‘Give thy servant therefore an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and evil.' Pleased with this request, God apparently also endowed him with more material gains. Although Israel was at this time a pocket-kingdom of some 30,000 square miles sandwiched between Assyria and Egypt, Solomon's much-vaunted wisdom and his ability to run the treasury attracted considerable interest, including that of his neighbour, the Queen of Sheba. By then he had already concluded a number of lucrative trading partnerships with neighbouring kings, most notably with the Phoenician King, Hiram of Tyre.

Solomon commissioned Hiram's large fleet, or was a major investor in the expedition which sailed from Esyon-Geber or Eilat on the Red Sea to unknown Ophir. But did they really sail off ‘into the blue' as the legend suggests? I find it hard to believe that the notoriously secretive Phoenicians would put in so huge an investment without some strong expectation of riches at the end of it.

Sheba may also have shared with Solomon some of the trade secrets of her successful entrepot kingdom when she made her fabled visit and, if one is to momentarily join the Romantic school, produced the royal house of the Ethiopians. Certainly the young Queen was attracted by Solomon's wisdom, affluence and good looks. He was reportedly dark-haired, tanned, lean and with a gracious smile and a lively spirit. He wore elegant tunics dyed royal purple, golden collars and chains and a golden circlet inset with sea-green stones.

Sheba was duly impressed with Solomon's palace which boasted ‘40,000 horse stalls and 1,400 chariots', which sounds excessive but the archaeologists have in fact since unearthed some 450 horse stalls and 150 sheds for chariots at Megiddo alone. There were vineyards, gardens, pools, singers, and musicians with exotic instruments. Solomon received the young Sheba seated on an ivory throne with gold armrests and golden embroidery. She was understandably seduced, but there is considerable documentation to support the idea that Solomon won Sheba's respect, love and an intimate partnership as much by intense, extended conversations on all manner of topics, as by his wealth. Sheba was, after all, a very wealthy young woman in her own right and it is unlikely that these two would not have talked about how it was to be made.

On this one trip she brought Solomon a tribute of ‘a hundred and twenty talents of gold [about 6 tons!], and spices in great abundance and precious stones'. One of the ancient Jewish encyclopaedias, the
Kebra Negast
, suggests that this really was a meeting of kindred spirits. Apparently the pair roamed Jerusalem together as she questioned Solomon and watched him at his work: ‘The Queen used to go to Solomon and return continually, and hearken unto his wisdom, and keep it in her heart. And Solomon used to go and visit her, and answer all the questions which she put to him . . . and he informed her concerning every matter that she wished to enquire about.'

Like where to go for gold?

Which brings us back to Ethiopia. Their ancient Christian church believes to this day that the union of Solomon and Sheba produced Menelik I, father of the Ethiopian Solomonic Dynasty whose last earthly representative was Ras Tafri or the Emperor, Haile Selassie. The worldwide Rastafarian cult still worships Ras Tafari, not least because his famous ancestor, Menelik, is also credited with rescuing the Ark of the Covenant from apostate Jerusalem. However, before getting lost in this labyrinth of religions and myths, we should review the evidence which could support the idea that Solomon's Phoenicians might have sailed down Africa, beached their ships somewhere and marched inland in search of the source of the alluvial gold being offered for sale at the coast.

It should perhaps be noted here that the best way of getting to India from the Red Sea ports in ships, which could only properly run before the wind, was to sail south before the north-east monsoon between November and May, land to reprovision and take on water, then ride the south-west monsoon across the Indian Ocean between May and November. The initial run south would need to be at least as far as the equator, but these ancient mariners would more likely have gone further south to more verdant coastlines where water and better food supplies would have been more readily available.

The Phoenicians confirmed that they had made such voyages when, in the 1920s, a French scholar, Ernest Renan, led an expedition to investigate the site of ancient Byblos. Renan was particularly interested in the linguistic history of Byblos, which is also the Greek word for papyrus, leading to ‘biblion' or book, and in turn, to bible.

Renan found several stelae – granite slabs – covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics, and a bas relief of a goddess he believed to be Hathor, with a hawk's head. More extensive excavations latr produced a series of semi-intact royal tombs that yielded gold, silver and jewellery, and an elaborate sarcophagus, confirming that this was the last resting place of Ahiram (Hiram), King of Byblos and Solomon's business partner. Theodore Bent's suspicion that Great Zimbabwe was the product of Phoenician ancient influence was enhanced, you will recall, by a comparison he made between the lost city's conical tower and a tower pictured on a coin from Byblos. The inscribed tablets recorded that the Phoenicians were the descendants of two groups, the early Canaanites, who inhabited the coast of Lebanon, and the Sea People, who invaded Lebanon about 1200
BC
. Thus this new nation had an established maritime tradition which they enhanced by the development of ships with hulls fit to sail the open seas.

Along the coast of Lebanon they established a loose federation of city-states built on islands or rocky promontories that provided natural harbours for ship-building and trade. Byblos, Tyre, Sidon and Arqad became fabulously wealthy as the Phoenicians expanded their sphere of trade. In time it would encompass all of Europe and, almost certainly, much of Africa. The wrecks of two wooden ships believed to be Phoenician have been found on the Indian Ocean coast, one of which is thought to have circumnavigated the Cape.

At home the Phoenicians were literate, fine craftsmen who evolved an alphabet of twenty-two consonants, which is the foundation of the English alphabet and is the core of Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac script. They raised glass-making to a fine art and made delicate terracotta pots and votive statues. They worshipped Baal and a powerful mother-goddess, Astarte, both as earth-mother and heavenly mother. Cult statues of Astarte in many different forms, including clay and stone figurines, were left as votive offerings in shrines and sanctuaries as prayers for good harvest, for children, and for protection and tranquillity in the home. The figurines found at the lowest levels at Great Zimbabwe and at David Randall-MacIver's altar site near Umtali more closely resemble some of the Phoenician anthropomorphic votive offerings than any other artefact in the historical record.

The Phoenician gods were incorporated in varying degrees by their neighbours, and Baal and Astarte eventually took on the look of Greek gods. The Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar, sacked Tyre in 573
BC
and in 332
BC
Alexander the Great took over this and the remains of Phoenician culture, embodying it into the Hellenistic culture. But had hardy seeds from these ancient religions already been sown abroad by ‘ancient Moors'? The early Greeks, as we shall see in a moment, were seminally influential in ancient Ethiopia. The ancient Egyptians also knew of Ethiopia as the fabulously wealthy ‘Land of Punt'.

The weight of all this information from several sources, albeit mostly anecdotal, indicates that from time immemorial there was an established sea route down the Red Sea to the gateway to black Africa, Ethiopia. Moreover, modern Moors still ply the route in wooden dhows that closely resemble the sailing ships of yore. So it is inarguable that cultures who knew how to build in stone could, indeed did, make extended journeys south in search of gold, precious stones and other valuable trade goods, including all the items listed in the tribute the Queen of Sheba took to Solomon. The Phoenicians even left written records – stelae again – of journeys to exploit the riches of the lower Arabian peninsula, where mining colonies became so settled they had their own temples for hawk-headed gods.

The Egyptians were also on their way down Africa. Directly south of Egypt was the Negro kingdom of Nubia. Among other ties these Nubians worshipped Gods also found in Egypt, the most powerful of whom was Horus, representing the sun in the guise of a hawk. There is nothing to have prevented these early, cultured Nubians (Group A Nubians as they are called) influencing, through trade and conquest, societies to the south. Moreover, there is good archaeological evidence to indicate that Egyptian colonists, now backed by a mighty dynastic empire on the lower Nile, took over Nubia.

As the Egyptian tribes coalesced, their colonies became stronger, in particular the kingdom of Hierakapolis on the Upper Nile. The old gods metamorphosed into the winged deities we have already met. Hathor even took on special colonial duties as the god-protector of natural resources brought back to Egypt from far-off places. His enforcer was the hawk-god Eye of Ra.