Excerpt From Chapter 12 "From Madagascar To Africa..."

Within the walls of the Great Zimbabwe there is an anomalous structure known as ‘The Conical Tower’ that has so far defied explanation, but which, like so much else in Zimbabwe, may find an explanation in Madagascar. The Zimbabwe archaeologist Peter Garlake has described the Conical Tower thus: “…a solid circular tower, 18ft in diameter and 30 ft high, decorated round the top with a dentelle-patterned frieze (now vanished), … built between the old wall and the new Outer Wall. Its beautifully regular coursing has the usual slight batter, giving the tower the shape of a slightly irregular and truncated cone, hence its name: the Conical Tower. Visually and technically, it forms t he most important single feature and the architectural focus of the building in its final form.”

    The Tower has been poked and probed by archaeologists since doomsday and found to consist of nothing but large flat stones. No skeletons or treasure have been found beneath it; only virgin soil and rock.     Many functions have been attributed to it by various ‘experts’ over the years.

Garlake himself surmised that it might be a ‘symbolic grain-bin’; the Rev Dornan thought it was ‘a grave super-structure; Schlicter, ‘a gnomon’; Randall MacIver, ‘a symbol of a chief’s power’; Leo Frobenius, ‘an emblem of a sacrificial ant-hill’; Schofield, ‘a tribal initiation structure’; two early Rhodesian enthusiasts, J.T. Bent and R.N. Hall said respectively that it was for ‘phallic worship’; or that it was simply a ‘a giant phallus.’

In archaeological circles there is a marked reluctance to call anything a ‘phallus’ unless it is incontrovertibly obvious. Therefore the mere fact that this 30-foot ‘thing’ sticks straight up in the air, and once had a sort of dentelle ‘glans’ around the top is not considered sufficient evidence that it ever had sexual connotation. Bent and Hall’s salacious suggestions have therefore been consigned to the bin by the establishment.

Hundreds of small cylindrical clay and soapstone objects have been found in numerous locations around the Great Zimbabwe. Dozens of these have been unearthed near the Conical Tower, and dozens more (together with small clay models of horned cattle identical to the widespread 'sanatry' connected with the Tromba cult in Madagascar) found randomly buried elsewhere in the vicinity. To the layman most of these objects, would be considered “phallic”; but they have been dismissively described by Garlake as “small cylinders carved from soapstone and 'formerly' described as ‘phalli’”.

Certainly ‘phallic’ worship has never been a big thing for the majority of Bantu people. But elsewhere in Africa that has not always been the case. In the late 1920’s, during five years of research in Gala and Konso country not far from lakes Abaya and Chamo in Ethiopia, two French archaeologists counted over 10,000 grave markers, stelae, monoliths and menhirs that were blatantly, undeniably, ‘phallic’. In fact the non-secular artwork of the Konso is the most brazenly phallic of any people in Africa. Their large wooden funerary monuments have exaggerated male organs on their foreheads; the priests wear similarly phallic regalia; and (coincidentally?) in their stone walled cult-sites where phallicism is all-pervasive, they erect ritually significant dry-stone conical towers, smaller, but in many respects similar to the conical tower of Zimbabwe.

Equally interesting are the vast numbers of granite monoliths scattered over hills and valleys in Gamu Gofa and Sidamo in Ethiopia’s southern highlands. They vary in height from a few feet to as much as 20 feet above ground, and though their meaning is lost on today’s people, the procreative power they exude as they thrust out of the earth is inescapable.

The normally cautious ethnographer, G.W.B. Huntingford, when discussing possible sources of these ‘phalli’, pointed out that:- “…it has long been recognised that Indonesian influence has been at work from quite early times on the eastern coast of Africa and in South Arabia. Moreover, parallels between hagioliths in Abyssinia and Assam, suggest something more than coincidence, and Neuville has in fact suggested that the Abyssinian hagioliths might be due to influence from South-east Asia which made itself felt, at an unspecified time (but before the establishment of the Kingdom of Aksum) … Such an origin is not impossible…. In Madagascar are found stone tombs, together with monoliths surmounted by ox-horns and squared wooden posts surmounted by human figures of wood. That Madagascar was colonised by Indonesians is an accepted fact. It is not therefore by any means impossible for Indonesian influence to have reached Abyssinia by way of Arabia, since Aden was probably an established Indonesian port of call.” Huntingford’s grounds for looking to Southeast Asia as the womb that nurtured the monolithic cultures fits well with Kent’s contention that the Anteimoro (-temur) astrologers and scribes in Madagascar dwelt for a long period in Ethiopia.

There is a distinct thread of evidence running down the ancient Zanj coast linking the phallic menhirs of Ethiopia to areas as far south as Kilwa. It takes the form of square or rectangular Islamic tombs with tall pillars rising from them, many of which, like some of the minarets of the oldest mosques, are plainly ‘phallic’, reflecting a fusion of latter-day Islam with pre-Islamic (Zanj?) culture.

Across the water in Madagascar, menhirs and monoliths - sometimes cut in one huge piece from the granite hills - abound in many places, Betsileo and Antandroy particularly. Orimbato, vato mitsangana, tsangambato, tehezana, and fahatsiarovana: all are ‘upright stones’ that may have been erected in honour of dead parents; to commemorate people killed in war; to mark private agreements between individuals or clans; or simply for some event worthy of being remembered for future generations. Then there are vatolahy, literally ‘male stones.’ Though more often than not vatolahy serve the same purpose as other ‘upright stones’ and no longer have any sexual connotation, there is no doubt that sometimes they have real phallic significance, as dramatically noted in 1939 by a well known Malgachisant, Charles Poirier, when he chanced on two phallic cults in the Betsileo countryside, one of which he described in romantic terms thus (my translation):

“In the beauty of dawn, the melancholy of dusk, and the dazzling light of a warm noon”, wrote Poirier, “… in the crystal-clear night sky, caressed by the breezes filtering through the scattered bush and the murmuring of the Ranovao river; on the slopes of a gentle hill, two hours walk to the west of Alakamisy, near the village of Ampasampirafy, is the vatolahy celebrating the exploits of the sorcerer Rafirokana, son of the sorcerer Rafahitra…

“Rafirokana’s soul, incarnated in this monolith which is dedicated solely to sexual union and the strength of the male organ, receives the wishes – though rarely granting them – of those seeking renewal of their diminishing and faltering carnal urges; of the small and puny who are looking for enhancement of their senses, sharpening of their minds, and expansion of their horizons, in the hope of satisfying their unfulfilled aspirations.

“The conflict between make-belief and nature may occasionally be settled to the advantage of nature; but influenced by its great fame, fate brings to this shrine a large number of Betsileo and Merina men - and women - who, despite frequent disillusionment, continue, undiscouraged, to make the pilgrimage. Early in the 19th century Rafahitra used to prescribe a drink made from the powder of certain twigs, which was supposed to strengthen the sexual organs. When Rafahitra died, Rafirokana continued administering this concoction and became even more famous than his father. Rafirokana, nicknamed ‘King of the Assegais’, was a man of enormous stature, and before dying he wished to commemorate his ‘memories’ and his ‘triumphs’. Thus he came to erect his vatolahy.

“‘I erect this stone’, he proclaimed, according to oral sources, ‘for the personification of my soul. If you wish to obtain from me or my ancestors a healthy and strong body, come and pray at the base of this stone. Coat my vatolahy with fat from the skin of a vigourous bull, and ask of it the powers you wish to acquire. I will bless you, and your plans will be accomplished according to your desires.’

“Before the ceremony, a male supplicant will have made a life-sized wooden ‘maquette’ of the organ to which he would aspire. Similarly, a lady will have prepared, in cow-dung, the ‘feminine sexual charms’ she would enjoy offering. The ‘thought’ having thus become a reality, it is left at the bottom of the north-facing vatolahy. ‘Here I am at the bottom of your vatolahy, Rafirokana, to ask you to make me better developed. I beg you to allow me a mahalehi-lahy (or in the case of the lady a mahavehi-vavy) similar to the example I am placing at your feet."

The modelled phalli were left as ‘food’ for the vatolahy. The women were allowed to take theirs’ home, or protect them from the rain beneath a stone. Charles Poirier counted about 30 phalli at Rafirokana’s vatolahy, some ten of which “gave testimony to recent pilgrimages.”

In view of there being so many connections between Madagascar and Zimbabwe, it is not mere prurience to suggest that the hundreds of small penis-shaped cylinders ‘formerly described as phalli’ found in many parts of Zimbabwe - around the Conical Tower in particular - were offerings to a procreative cult common to both Madagascar and Central Africa, which had its origins on the other side of the Indian Ocean. Was not the Conical Tower – as suggested years ago by Bent and Hall – nothing more than a truly monumental phallus, the vatolahy of all vatolahy, the central symbol of once widespread fertility worship?