Journey to Great Zimbabwe: Conical turrets on top of the stone walls-testes or phallus

STRUCTURES of whatever design, purpose and magnitude created out of whatever type of materials are built for a purpose, whether physical or aesthetic.

Some have a spiritual function, while others are storage facilities. Royalty will sometimes make use of structures that are in line with social, political and economic perceptions of royalty as the elite in that society. Sociopolitical and economic differentiation is captured in structural differentiation.

Sometimes material structures are defensive, especially when accommodating the person of king or queen who epitomises that particular society.

The demise of a king or queen translates to the demise of that society. Consequently, the king or queen must be protected and preserved for continued existence of the society of which he/ she is the epitome, embodiment and personification. Form, shape, design, function and size all have a bearing on the structure whose created spaces meet desired functions.

It may be difficult to decipher underlying meaning, representation and expressions embedded in structures particularly when they are monumental and gigantic. Past historical experiences associate such structures with certain functions such as worship (temples, synagogues and church buildings), parliamentary buildings, demoralisation, royal residences, inter alia. Hardly are such structures associated with seemingly inauspicious functions such as initiation, circumcision and death.

Admittedly, societies attach different value, meaning and importance to structures. This is also true of artefacts and crafts. Artefacts and crafts that were looted before and during colonisation suffered devaluation when they were taken out of their cultural context, worldview and cosmology.

Africans do attach contextual value to structures, built environment and artefacts beyond their physical or material aspects. Embedded ICH is considered important and may go a long way towards rendering meaning, value and spirituality to structures and artefacts. However, where experts come from a predominantly material-based society and become gatekeepers for scholarship, including interpretation of African phenomena, problems ensue.

They will inevitably fail to perceive beyond the physical and material boundaries and render interpretations informed by their own world — a material world where physical structures are a critical component of their cultures. Where is the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Where is the Taj Mahal? Where is the Eiffel Tower? Where is the Statue of Liberty?

It is not so with the African world where there is a whole world beyond the material and the physical. Meaningful analysis and hence interpretation have to be Afro-centric and bring on board African ideas, values, morality, ethics, cosmology, beliefs, philosophy and world-view.

The mind that created a structure should always be identified, understood and applied in interpreting its creations. As we have often said, the mind creates intangibles, be they ideas and, in the final analysis, material structures. In any case, what the mind creates translates to values and ideas, all intangible. Hands then translate intangibles to tangibles which enjoy a putative link with the former.

The tangibles are thus representative and expressive of the more fundamental intangible ideas, ideals and values which the mind creates.

As we watch the Zimbabwe Bird fly away we pose to think what African ideas and expressions it is taking away with its form, structure and design.

However, for us the focus is on the conical structures or conical turrets which were built at the top of stone walls. In our last installment we focused on the monoliths which tower above the conical turrets and deciphered them as material objects which are part and parcel of expressions of fertility which pervades the Great Enclosure.

We identified them as part of the female genitalia; clitoris to be more specific. We indicated that the clitoris was central in female sexual mutilation within the broader cultural process of circumcision.

The question now is, what are the stone towers (conical turrets) at the top of the stone walls? Do we really need to reinvent the wheel? Have we not seen similar, though smaller structures, within the Great Enclosure?

There are two similar structures on both sides of the Conical Tower within the Great Enclosure. We need to stand guided by human anatomy where human anatomical parts have been artistically represented in and by stone. Normally, the phallus faces or dangles down.

The stone testes flanking the phallus are equally facing up though in human anatomy they dangle down. One would have to turn the structures through 180 degrees to get to anatomical reality and accuracy.

The same challenge is faced by builders of the mini towers which, in our view, are representative and expressive of testes. This is in agreement with the overarching theme, that of fertility as expressed in several ways ranging from figurines to the circular Great Enclosure which encapsulates a human womb which, in artistic terms, is represented by the chevron pattern.

Initiates who have reached puberty are on the verge of extending human blood lines. That takes place within the womb of woman. As said before, the chevron motif is female, representing and expressing that part of woman within which is found the womb.

We could thus say the womb is represented on top of the stone wall by the clitoris-as its ambassador. And yet we do know that the process of extending blood lines will not ensue in the absence of agency of testes, the physiological site where sperms are formed and transmitted through the phallus during coitus.

The small conical turrets are thus likely representing either phalli or testes. Whatever the case may be, it is a representation and expression of the male sexual element and either of the two will fulfil that role. Testes or phallus, the difference is the same.

The challenge that we face in taking a definitive position either way is that the conical turrets are not rounded off at the top to reflect the design of testes. At the same time, their comicality does not complete their representation as phalli.

We know the Conical Tower was tampered with by Karl Mauch. The glans section of the phallus was removed although it still passes the test as a phallus. The conical turrets on top of the wall are not sufficiently conical. Readers are at liberty to come up with their own interpretation as long as it is in line with the expressed overarching theme — that of fertility. If the conical turrets are male, they represent the opposite and complementary element represented and expressed by the clitoris.

Apparently, the two structures here interpreted as belonging to male and female genitalia are found not only on one wall within the Great Zimbabwe Monument. The structures exist at the top of a wall on the Hill Complex. Undoubtedly, where these occur, their meaning remains the same. What they represent and express is the same and has to be in line with the resident theme, namely fertility or sexuality. That inevitably identifies the entire structure with its artistic traits as associated with initiation and accompanying circumcision.

Transformation is evident and embedded within the performance of a rite of passage, from childhood to adulthood. Biologically mature individuals were being culturally prepared to play a role in ensuring continuity of the human species.

Sexuality plays a critical role in that. It is a stage which is celebrated and the celebration is symbolically expressed through construction of grandiose structures and complementing crafts and artefacts.

Behind a built environment and its associated artefacts and crafts lie deep-seated messages which may be accessed through recourse to the underpinning intangible cultural heritage (ICH).

This demands that the cultural lenses that researchers and interpreters wear during the process of analysis and interpretation are those of minds that created the structures. To try something different runs the risk of coming up with exotic interpretations that fail to pass the Afro-centric test.

What Africa built has to be understood by centralising the African Mind!