Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

Great Zimbabwe was constructed between the 11th and 14th centuries
over 722 hectares in the southern part of modern Zimbabwe. The whole
site is weaved with a centuries-old drainage system which still works,
funnelling water outside the houses and enclosures down into the valleys.
At its peak, an estimated 18,000 people lived in the capital of the
Kingdom of Zimbabwe. Only 200 to 300 members of the elite classes
are thought to have actually stayed inside its massive stone buildings,
watched over at night by guards standing on the walls, while the majority
lived some distance away.
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Today, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are a shell of the abandoned city
that Captain Pegado came across – due in no small part to the frenzied
plundering of the site at the turn of the 20th century by European
treasure-hunters, in search of artefacts that were eventually sent to
museums throughout Europe, America and South Africa.
It was said that Great Zimbabwe was an African replica of the Queen of
Sheba’s palace in Jerusalem. The idea was promoted by the German explorer
Karl Mauch, who visited in 1871 and refused to believe that indigenous
Africans could have built such an extensive network of monuments.
“I do not think that I am far wrong if I suppose that the ruin on the hill is
a copy of Solomon’s Temple on Mount Moriah,” Mauch declared, “and
the building in the plain a copy of the palace where the Queen of Sheba
lived during her visit to Solomon.” He further stated that only a “civilised
nation must once have lived there” – his racist implication unmistakeable.
Other European writers, also believing that Africans did not have the
capacity to build anything of the significance of Great Zimbabwe,
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15