The Sunday News
Phathisa Nyathi
OUR physical and symbolic journey has taken us to the Great Enclosure and we have already figured out some critical messages and expressed meanings from what we have looked at so far.
The aim is to see whether we have some overarching single pervasive theme that we may derive. As said at the beginning, it is not our wish or intention to get into the emotive and subjective issues of authorship of the cultural edifice.
Rather, let us dwell more on the art and its cultural expressions resident at Great Zimbabwe through architecture and sculpture, for behold, the cultural edifice speaketh and does so through the rock of ages.
Let us begin by gazing up the eastern section of the Great Enclosure where we find the chevron patterns comprising two lines, one above the other. Before we seek to offer some interpretation of the chevron motif we need to observe that the two lines of chevron patterns do not stretch the entire circumference of the Great Enclosure.
Was this accidental or deliberate? We posit that the builders of the cultural edifice possessed high technological expertise and were au fait with human anatomy. May we suggest that those who are close to Great Zimbabwe carry out some basic measurements. Let them measure the entire circumference of the Great Enclosure.
After getting that measurement, let them measure the length of the Great Enclosure that is covered by the two lines of chevron design. Finally, let them calculate the percentage of the wall that has chevron patterns, as a percentage of the entire wall.
Having got the percentage, let the same people carry out similar measurements with regard to a woman’s waist. Let them get a figure that represents the length of her entire girdle or waist. Next, find out the length of that part of her waist where there are no bones — that is the length between the two ends of the pelvic girdle. Express the latter as a percentage of the former.
I am curious to hear the result that they come up with. One hopes archaeologists have already done this realising they are dealing with an exact science. One may be wondering why pattern is inspired by and reflects the body of a woman, that part of her where the womb is located.
The boneless part between the two ends of the pelvic girdle are equivalent to the part of the Great Enclosure where chevron patterns were located on the stone wall. It just can’t be that the builders ran out of building stones, nor can it be explained in terms of them getting tired and abandoning the more challenging and skilled work of coming up with chevron patterns on rock.
A famous archaeologist, Professor Tom Huffman has interpreted the zigzag chevron pattern as symbolic of a snake. Surely, he must have arrived at the conclusion after looking at the long zigzag line as one continuous object.
This is where he missed an otherwise good guess brought on board some appreciation of resident symbolism. We only need to move two steps to arrive at the symbolism resident in a chevron motif or unit.
Firstly, we must see a unit in the long structure which we may be tempted to say it represents and expresses symbolism behind a snake. We are back to the part of a woman which houses the womb, the boneless part of her waist. The part is an open V or triangle, with its apex pointing down, ending at the vaginal aperture.
Remember the Star of David and the Zimbabwean flag. We are dealing with a single unit of critical importance in the expression of continuity, eternity, endlessness, fertility and immortality.
The second step is to refer to expressions of African Aesthetics. A single chevron unit does not carry beauty or aesthetics. To attain beauty, repetition is instituted. We need not belabour the point here as nature is full of numerous examples of repetition such as the seasons of the year, day and night, walking (left and right), sleep-wake, lunar phases and attended tides, and indeed, the eternal cycle of life as understood by Africans.
African dances are characterised by repetition which we may perceive as rhythm, predictability, regularity, seasonality and periodicity. What is important is to realise that repetition, which implies regular movement, lies at the root of continuing life. Rhythm is unimaginable in the absence of movement.
Just imagine seasons were to cease immediately. That would mark certain end of life on the planet. One side of the earth would freeze while the opposite one melts. Summer-winter rhythm makes life possible as does day and night. The important rhythmic contrast is heat-cold and planet earth itself encompasses that contrast heat-cold contrast. The interior of our planet is molten rock (magma) and the cold is represented by the frozen icebergs. Change, constant change, is important for continued existence of life.
Africans did not invent rhythm, which is regular change. You only need to check the term or word for menstruation to see that they gleaned it from the cosmos and reflected it in their culture. As above, so below.
Did they not see some resemblance, in terms of periodicity, with the periodicity resident in lunar movement? The same word for the two phenomena is the same in many African languages, inyanga, in iSiNdebele and mwedzi in Tjikalanga and Shona.
What we are giving emphasis to here is that the chevron pattern consists of several individual units, the open Vs or triangles. Each V or triangle is inspired by the body of woman. In fact, it is easy when looking at a chevron pattern as distinct from a chevron unit to discern that there is symmetry, equilibrium, movement and rhythm.
However, we should be circumspect here. In reality the chevron does not exist as it is merely a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional reality. Essentially, a single chevron unit is a cone which has three dimensions, length width and height. A woman’s body, indeed bodies of all animals, are three dimensional. That leads us to the fact that the one basic building unit/ block in the entire universe, including the very genesis of life, is a circle. In this world, there is no better teacher than nature when given an enquiring mind.
Let’s bring to a close our argument about the interpretation of a chevron motif and why it can’t be a snake. The one positive aspect in the snake theory is that a snake moults its skin as it grows and, by that fact, it represents renewal or regeneration, as happens with the lunar cycle/movement. Once again, let’s resort to measurement of the angle in a chevron, using a compass.
After doing that, proceed and measure the pubic angle in a human being. Are you not coming up with the same or closely similar angles? The chevrons we produce in our graphic designs get the cue from the pubic angle which is acute. Where the angle tends to move towards an obtuse angle, we miss the essence of a chevron.
Humans have the correct angle in their anatomy. What snake, with a backbone of bones (vertebrae) can bend its body and produce the acute angle and live? Besides, artists attained desired accuracy in their artistic renditions. Why is that in all cases where chevron patterns are depicted there are no heads? Indeed, a chevron motif, and by extension, the chevron pattern, has no head. It is anatomical accuracy, if one appreciates the inspiration behind a chevron motif.
Next week we shall move on with the story of the chevron motif and see whether there is something we can deduce concerning the universal message in such a colossal monument as the Great Enclosure.
The chevron motif, if we seek to understand its expressions and representations, holds an important key in understanding the primary message within the Great Enclosure, a message we shall find repeated in the artistically and anatomically manipulated Zimbabwe Bird, the same message resident in the national flags of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
