Volume 1

Faiths of man : a cyclopædia of religions / by Major-General J. G. R. Forlong.

  • Forlong, James George Roche, -1904.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Faiths of man : a cyclopædia of religions / by Major-General J. G. R. Forlong. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    57/606 (page 25)
    It is evident that nature worship took place in the dark interior of the holy place. The construction, and masonry, are exactly similar to those of ruins described by Doughty in N.W. Arabia assigned by some to 1000 B.c. This is also asserted to correspond to the obliquity of the ecliptic (23° 52') indicated by a great gnomon stone at Zimbabwe (see the valuable illustrated paper by this writer, Rl. Geocj. Journal, April 1899). Dr Schlichter arrives at similar conclusions as to the equally interesting ruins of Mombo, a short distance N. of Bulawayo. The sculptures of the two “ great kraals ” at the Zimbabwe—so called by natives—and a zodiak said to be found a few miles away, denote the presence of a superior Arabo- Phcenician race ; and the sun is supposed to be placed beside Tauius, indicating an early date (see Aries). We see also that these ruins were centres for gold-miners, and masons like the builders of the ancient structures in Sardinia, Malta, and Phoenicia usually attri- buted to about the 7th and 8th centuries B.c. Such facts do not, however, contradict the conclusion we reached many years ago, that Ophir is connected with the Abir (Abhir) of the Indus. We still believe that the Indus delta was the first source of Arab gold (see Short Studies, p. 41), for Ptolemy speaks of Abiria (the Abhira of Sanskrit geography), and our arguments are upheld by Mr J. Kennedy {Rl. Asiatic Soc. Journal, April 1898, pp. 253-7), agreeing with papers that we wrote fifteen years earlier. [Others place Ophir in Arabia, near Sheba, see Gen. x, 28, 29. — Ed.] There is no mistaking the cult of the Zimbabwe gold-mining colonists: for they exhibit, as Mr Bent shows in his volume (p. 280), the worship of the solar, or heaven father (as among Greeks, Arabs, Latins, and over all the world), regarding him as giver of all increase, of family, fields, and flocks, adored with sacrifices and oblations. Therefore at the Zimbabwe, as in India, are seen phallic pillars surmounted by birds, which denote the divine soul (lingam) or spirit of the Creator. We gave a similar emblem, in miniature, twenty years ago (Rivers of Life, i, fig. 92), from a sacred box in a temple near Faizabad in Oudh. Before such the Sivaites worship, offering flowers and grains. The birds are usually the chattering love-birds or parakeets. Mr Bent says that the lingams, and sacrificial stones, at Zimbabwe, are both hewn and unhewn (see Ex. xx, 25). Compare also Rivers of Life (plates vii, viii, ix, and xvi). Mr Bent quotes Montfau<;on as saying that Arabs used to worship before towers like that at Zimbabwe. Maximus of Tyre wrote that “ Arabians honored as a great god a huge cut stone,” and Euthymius Zygabenus says “ this stone was the head of Aphrodite, called Bakka