techniques were transported, but not the material itself.’
There were no more ideas forthcoming and we could turn from theories to facts. At the end of six weeks Louren Sturvesant visited us for the first time. All digging and other work was suspended as for two days we held a seminar, with myself as chairman, in which we presented Louren with all our accomplishments and conclusions to date.
These were very impressive. To begin with, the list of artefacts, pottery sherds, and other relics filled 127 typewritten foolscap pages. Peter and Heather were responsible for most of these and they opened the seminar.
‘So far all excavation without the enclosure has been confined to the area north of it, and lying within 1,000 feet of the outer perimeter. In the main it seems to have been a complex of small rooms and buildings built from adobe clay and roofed with poles and thatch—’
Peter described the area in detail, giving the average size of the rooms and the exact position of each object discovered. Louren started thrashing around in his chair, and fiddling with his cigar. Peter is meticulous, almost old-maidish, in his approach to his work. Finally he reached his conclusions. ‘It seems, therefore, that this area was an extensive bazaar and market.’ And he led us through into the warehouse to examine the finds from this area. There were fragments of badly rusted iron, a bronze comb, the handle of a knife fashioned in the shape of a woman’s body, fourteen rosettes of bronze that we guessed had embossed a leather shield, twenty-five pounds’ weight of bronze discs, and stars and sun objects which were clearly ornaments, sixteen shaped and beaten bronze plates that we hoped might comprise part of a suit of body armour, a magnificent bronze dish twenty-four inches in diameter chased with a sun image and set around with an intricate border pattern, and another forty pounds’ weight of bronze scraps and fragments so badly battered and damaged as to be unidentifiable.
‘These are all the bronze objects so far recovered,’ Peter told Louren. ‘The workmanship is crude, but not recognizably Bantu in conception and execution. It would relate more closely to what we know of Phoenician craftsmanship. Unlike the Romans and Greeks, they placed little value on the arts. Their artefacts, like their buildings, were massive and roughly executed. One other fact that emerges is the veneration of the sun. It was clearly a generally polytheistic community but one in which sun-worship predominated. In this settlement, it appears that Baal, the Phoenician male deity, was personified by the sun.’
I thought Peter was verging on the mistake of special pleading but I let him continue without interruption. After discussing each item separately, Peter led us to the next row of tables that carried all the glass and pottery.
‘One hundred and twenty-five pounds’ weight of glass beads - the colours are predominantly blue and red. Phoenician colours, with greens and whites and yellows recovered only in Levels I and II. In other words, later than AD 50 which coincides approximately with the final phase of absorption of Phoenician civilization by the Romans in the Mediterranean area, and its gradual disappearance.’
I interrupted. ‘The Romans were so thorough in their absorption of Phoenicia and all her works, that we know very little of them…’
My attention wandered to Sally. She was in a sparkling mood, a complete change from the previous six weeks when she had been moody and withdrawn. She had washed her hair and it was shiny and springing with soft lights. Her skin also shone with golden hues where the sun had touched it, and she had coloured her lips and dramatized her eyes. Her beauty squeezed my heart. I forced my mind back to the row of tables.
‘… A case in point is this recovery of pottery,’ Peter was saying. He indicated the huge display of fragments, portions, and a very few complete pieces. ‘On all of this, with one exception, there is not a single inscription. This is the exception.’ He picked up a sherd which was set out in a place of honour, and passed it to Louren. Although we had all gloated over it before, we crowded around Louren as he examined it. There was a symbol cut into the baked clay.
‘A chip from the lip of a cup, or vase. The symbol could conceivably be a Punic T.’
Louren burst in impulsively, turning to me and laying a hand on my shoulder, ‘Conclusive, Ben. They must accept that, surely?’
‘By no means, Lo.’ I shook my head regretfully. ‘They will cry, “Imported”. The old trick of discrediting anything you can’t explain, or which doesn’t support your theories, by saying that it was brought in during the course of trade.’
‘Looks as though you can’t win, Ben,’ Louren sympathized, and I grinned.
‘At least we haven’t uncovered any fourteenth-century Nanking pottery - or a chamber pot with Queen Victoria’s portrait on it!’
Laughing we moved on to the next display of copper and copperware. There were bangles and brooches, green-encrusted and eaten away. Bales of copper wire and, significantly, ingots cast into the shape of a St Andrew’s Cross each weighing twelve pounds.
‘Those aren’t something new,’ Louren remarked.
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘They turn up all over central and southern Africa, And yet the shape is exactly that of the ingots taken from the tin mines of Cornwall by the Phoenicians - or the copper ingots from the ancient mines on Cyprus.’
‘Still not conclusive?’ Louren looked at me and I shook my head, leading him on to see the iron work we had recovered. All of it was so badly rusted and damaged that the original shape was a matter of conjecture and guesswork. There were hundreds of arrow-heads, mostly associated with Levels I and II, spear-heads and sword- blades, axe-heads and knives.
‘Judging by the quantities of weapons, or what we take to be weapons, the ancients were a warlike people. Alternatively they were a people fearful of attack and well armed against it,’ I suggested, and there was a general murmur of agreement. From the iron section we went on to a display of my photographs, showing each stage of the excavations, views of the lower city, the temple, the acropolis and the cavern.
‘Pretty good, Ben,’ Louren admitted. ‘Is that all you have for me?’
‘The best comes last.’ I couldn’t help a little showmanship in my presentation, and I had screened off the end of the warehouse. I led him beyond the first screen with all my team hovering anxiously to judge his reaction. It was gratifying.
‘Good God!’ Louren stopped short and stared at the phallic columns with their ornamental tops. ‘Zimbabwe birds!’
There were three of them. Although incomplete, they stood about five foot high, and were thirty inches in
