ZIMBABWE, a Bantu name, probably derived from the two words zimba ("houses") and mabgi ("stones"), given to certain ruins in south-east Africa. The mediaeval Portuguese applied it as a generic term for the capital of any considerable chief and to several distinct places. From about 1550 onwards the Zimbabwe generally referred to by Portuguese writers was at a spot a little north of the Afur district, not far from the Zambezi. Before this the capital of the Monomotapa was situated much farther south, and it may plausibly be identified with the extensive ruins near Victoria (Mashonaland), now generally called Zimbabwe.
These ruins, discovered by Adam Renders in 1868 and explored by Karl Mauch in 1871, became well known to English readers from J. T. Bent's account of the Ruined Cities of Mashonaland. The explorations conducted in 1905 proved that the mediaeval objects were necessarily contemporaneous with the foundation of the buildings, and that there was no super-position of periods of any date whatsoever. The plan and construction of Zimbabwe are by no means unique, and this site only differs from others in Rhodesia in respect of the great dimensions and the massiveness of its individual buildings. It may therefore be dated to a period not earlier than the 14th or 15th century A.D., and attributed to the same Bantu people the remains of whose stone-fenced kraals are found between the Limpopo and the Zambezi.
The three distinct, though connected, groups of ruins at Zim babwe are commonly known as the "elliptical temple," the "acropolis," and the "valley ruins." The first is doubly mis named ; it is not a temple and its contour is too unsymmetrical to be described properly as elliptical. It is an irregular enclosure over 800ft. in circumference, with a maximum length of 292ft.
and a maximum breadth of 22oft., surrounded by a dry-built wall of extraordinary massiveness. This wall is in places, over 3oft. high and 14f t. wide, but is erratic in outline and variable in thickness. On the south and south-east, the wall is decorated by a row of granite monoliths beneath which runs a double line of chevron ornament. The interior has been much destroyed by the ravages of gold-seekers and amateur excavators. The scheme was a combination of such a stone kraal as that at Nanatali with the plan of a fort like those found about Inyanga. The only unique feature is the occurrence of a large and a small conical tower at the southern end.
The "Acropolis" is a hill rising goof t. to 3ooft. above the valley, fortified with the minutest care and with extraordinary ingenuity.
The principles of construction, the use of stone and cement, are the same as in the "elliptical" kraal; there is no definite plan, the shape and arrangement of the enclosures being determined solely by the natural features of the ground. Between this and the "elliptical" kraal are the "valley ruins," consisting of smaller buildings, perhaps the dwellings of traders who bartered the gold brought in from distant mines. Zimbabwe was probably the dis tributing centre for the gold traffic carried on in the middle ages between the Monomotapa and the Mohammedans of the coast.
See ARCHAEOLOGY ; AFRICA (Central and South) ; MONOMOTAPA ; D. Mediaeval Rhodesia (1906) ; Journal of Anthrop.
Inst., vol. xxxv.; Geog. Journal (1906). See also Mauch's report in Ausland (1872), which is of bibliographical interest; Bent's Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892) ; R. N. Hall, Great Zimbabwe (1905) ; Prehistoric Rhodesia (1909).