Case file · Sacred site
Great Zimbabwe: the Sheba myth and the archaeology
When Karl Mauch reached the stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe in 1871 he declared them the palace of the Queen of Sheba; colonial writers clung to foreign builders for decades.
1871 CE · -20.27, 30.93 · status: explained
The account
Theodore Bent's 1891 dig also argued for outsiders. David Randall-MacIver in 1905 and Gertrude Caton-Thompson in 1929 showed the city was built by local Shona-speaking ancestors between about 1100 and 1450. The Rhodesian government nonetheless pressed museum staff to keep the origin vague until independence in 1980, when the new country took its name from the site.
The sceptical view
Archaeologists agree the builders were African; foreign-origin theories reflected colonial politics, not evidence.
Connections in the atlas
- The Zimbabwe Birds
- The golden rhino of Mapungubwe
- 'Adam's Calendar' at Blaauboschkraal
- The 'White Lady' of the Brandberg