In a world without end, spinning endlessly in space, is there such a thing as an East or West and, if so, where does the one end and the other begin?

Cradle of Civilisation
Is the East-West division between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, the legendary home of the Garden of Eden and our so-called Cradle of Civilisation? Mesopotamia itself means “between rivers” and fits, some scholars claim, the biblical description of Paradise. Others believe the human species originated in Africa and dispersed via the Rift Valley corridor onto the Eurasian plains. However, the Fertile Crescent still remains the most accepted home for the birth of our first cities; that early building block of civilisation. If so, is it from Mesopotamia (today Iraq) that civilisation spread eastwards and westwards, towards the periphery?

Above right: oldest known world map, 6thC BCE, Babylonian clay tablet. Courtesy British Museum, London.

‘Nova totius Terrarum Orbis’ by Hendrik Hondius, Amsterdam 1630. A typical 17thC world map showing two halves of the globe. The East shows both Eurasia and Africa (including the newly sighted Australian coast) and the West the two recently colonised Americas.

Unlike the narrow Rift Valley gorge, Eurasia’s open plains and vast plateaus provided a favourable passage for migrating clans and their herds. So, was it on the Russian steppe or in the Iranian deserts that sweeping hordes and conquering armies first crossed from East to West? And if so, which horizon separated the lands of the rising sun from those over which the moon set?

Great Cities
Or, instead, did East and West meet along the Bosphorus where various cultures bumped into each other over several millennia? Here Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul saw all manner of Greeks, Romans, Latins and Turks step across the great divide. Or was it in Jerusalem, perhaps, where Jews and Christians and Muslims have rubbed shoulders for countless centuries? Jerusalem was, after all, the conceptual centre of the world. Or, was it perhaps in Berlin where, until only a few decades ago, capitalists and soviets faced each other across the Wall? During the Cold War, c.1946–1991, the wall symbolically divided East from West, separating what had once grown and belonged together.

But is it a river, a mountain, or a wall after all? Or is it, say, a crossroad, trade route or military frontier? Or a set of borders, like the state lines dividing Eastern America from the American West? Like most borders these lines arbitrarily divide natural, traditional and even seasonal territories.

Another ‘Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis’ world map by a 17thC Dutch cartographer, Claes Janszoon Visscher, showing the Tordesillas meridian that divided the non-Christian world into two halves: one part going to Portugal the other to Spain. This map was published in 1652, the year in which the Dutch took possession of the Cape of Good Hope.

Open Oceans
Or could it be out to sea, perhaps, somewhere in the Atlantic? Historically, the Pope divided the earth in two, pole to pole, along an imaginary line in the mid-Atlantic, giving Spain one half of the world and Portugal the rest. Excluding Europe, of course. On that day, 7 June 1494, the Western territories included a still unknown America and the Eastern hemisphere all of Africa—though its full extent still had to be discovered. Known as the Tordesillas meridian, the line of demarcation brushed the right shoulder of Brazil which, officially, would only be discovered in 1500.

That was then, but what about today? Perhaps it is the Greenwich prime meridian that determines where we are in the world today? It marks zero longitude and we use it to orientate ourselves spatially and to relativise our time on an East-West basis. Significantly, this places Europe in the East and pushes Africa towards the Orient—an orientation that suits China today!

For now, the question is not where but when did East and West meet? It’s a question that always vexes me because, as a westerner, I can’t step outside my own shoes. Questions of relativity require both feet on the ground and, simultaneously, a head above the rest. Nevertheless, the question does force us to rethink our histories.

The first separate map depicting the African continent, alone, from Sebastian Munster’s ‘Cosmography’, Basel 1545. It is full of fanciful details based on the work of Ptolemy and Herodotus, including a one-eyed giant called Monoculi, mythical guardian of the Cape of Storms. Despite the fact that the southern tip had been rounded a half century before, landmarks along the coast still remain unnamed. 

Cape of Good Hope
The East-West line has clearly shifted over time and, from a Western perspective, reflects the ebb and flow of Europe’s overseas expansion. For instance, during the Age of Exploration c.1400–1600, the southern tip of Africa became the new threshold between an ancient East and a modern West. The Cape of Good Hope was then the southernmost Portal to the Indies and one of the most dangerous known to man. Ironically, it’s known as the Fairest Cape today.

Towering above Cape Town, Table Mountain was once seen to personify the character of a Stormy Cape. The mountain was a wild and vindictive giant called Adamastor, a tormented figure derived from Greek mythology. Like the Titans, Adamastor dashed all hopes of passing mortals. The Cape was his forbidden portal, a threshold between the Atlantic and Indian oceans, beyond which neither ship nor sail should pass.

Artist’s impression of the giant Adamastor, showing the Portuguese fleet rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Courtesy Marina dos Santos Salgueirio Tomas Teixeira.

The long voyage East, amid raging storms and inner temptations, symbolized a journey of spiritual enlightenment. It was a concept that possessed Prince Henry and the explorers of Atlantic-Africa, a concept that also transformed the oceanic ‘Discoveries’ into a quest for individual spiritual enlightenment. Portugal’s exploration from West Africa to East Africa, from the shores of the Atlantic to the Indian seaboard, was thus more than a mere adventure in maritime geography. And thus, in 1488 a weatherworn Bartolomeu Dias first crossed this great divide, unknowingly, after being driven out to sea in a storm. For more images of Table Mountain, see Hoerikwaggo: Images of Table Mountain.

A decade later, on his historic outbound voyage to India in 1497, Vasco da Gama too clashed with Adamastor off the Cape. Their confrontation came to symbolise the conflict between modern man and the classical gods. For Luís de Camões, poet laureate of Portugal, the clash symbolised mankind’s inevitable triumph over the gods, a triumph of the Renaissance over the Medieval, of humanism over dogmatism.

Table Mountain has also been likened to the double-headed god Janus (Ianus) of Roman mythology. Looking forward and back, he was the awe inspiring Door- or Gate Keeper. Janus looks ahead and behind, knowing the future as well as the past. Likewise, Table Mountain watched over the African continent, protecting it from men sailing from the Atlantic into the Indian Ocean, West to East, from new to old, cold to warm. Or so it was until 1869, when the Suez Canal opened.

Before the Canal, the Cape of Good Hope had offered the most direct sea passage to the Indies. Like the once impassable Pillars of Hercules, Table Mountain helped to create a concept of an intermediary Africa. With northern and southern portals at Gibraltar and the Cape, respectively, Africa mediated between a fabulous East and a robust West. To this end the Portuguese also tried to reach the other side of Africa via the Congo River, but malaria thwarted their efforts (as it did during the building of the Panama Canal in the 1880s and 1900s). Be that as it may, the East was not to be found by transversing the continent. A fact White explorers would only discover for themselves centuries later.

A model of the known world according to the Greek geographer and ethnographer Herodotus, the so-called Father of History. His view of the inhabited world, spread out on an East-West axis, was to have a lasting influence on western historians.

Some alternatives
Traversing a continent along its East-West axis is not new, of course. Early long-distance migrations followed the same pattern, moving within compatible climatic zones. Moving laterally allowed caravans and armies to harness the same pack animals, gather the same food and, so far as was possible, to avoid new diseases. To the North lay ice and bitter cold. South the sand and scorching heat. For contemporary geographers the world was elliptical, or elongated, with an East-West to North-South ratio of 5:3 (see map above).

The main East-West route ran from the Chinese capital of Chang’an (Xian today) via the Himalayan valleys and Afghan passes, and then across the Arabian Desert to the port-cities of the eastern Mediterranean. Exchange along this line of oases, once known as the Khurasan or “Old Silk Road”, prepared the ground for varied beliefs; blending cultures and promoting religious tolerance. All the great conquerors of Eurasia—Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane—used this route while criss-crossing the continent.

Modern copy of the ‘Tabula Rogeriana’ by Muhammad al-Idrisi, the Muslim geographer and traveller from Ceuta (opposite Gibraltar), for King Roger II of Sicily, 1154. 

The expanding Muslim empire had an East-West axis too, as well as a formidable array of Ottoman, Mamluk and Zamorin fleets that controlled the main trade routes from the Strait of Malacca to the Strait of Gibraltar. Their oceanic network had evolved as an alternative to the heavily taxed and bandit-ridden routes across the Eurasian continent and, of course, following disruptions caused by the great marauding warlords.

By 1500 the centre of this vast commercial network was the Middle East and not the Mediterranean. Venice was an exception, being a mercantile linchpin for Jews, Turks and Christians. The rest of Europe was of limited value, and Portugal merely peripheral. The West had no raw materials or manufactured goods to offer India, China or Japan—except imported gold and silver. And thus without Africa’s gold there would have been no grand sea-trade in the sixteenth century and, subsequently, no modern world economy.

Perched on Europe’s most south-westerly corner, Portugal was ideally positioned for its westward expansion. Pre-empting the discoveries of the 15thC, old Phoenicia had faced west too. Likewise the powers that would succeed Portugal—Holland and England—also faced the Atlantic. But it was not the open sea alone that gave them an advantage, it was the prevailing Westerlies that blew at their backs. As a result, the world opened up westward. In short, it was the East that first discovered the West and not the other way around. But this history is best told another day.

NASA satellite reconstruction of the oceans in motion. Courtesy of National Geographic, February 2013. White lines show the flow of currents in the Atlantic and Indian oceans while the swirling eddies indicate where these are disturbed by land and wind.

Conclusion
Perhaps when or where the two meet is not as important as why we need both to make us feel whole? For now I’m sure of only one thing, we orientate ourselves by facing three directions: the rising sun, the open sea and the way forward. This is the result of ceremonial, conceptual and navigational necessity. Seen from outer space, of course, our planet has neither a top nor a bottom, nor an East or a West. Thankfully.

Heart-shaped (cordiform) map projection by the French mathematician and cartographer Oronce Finé, 1534.

This article was first published in the United States by World Report: The Student Journal for International Affairs (Autumn 2011).

Nicolaas Vergunst

Patric Tariq Mellet: As the ‘Coloured’ or Camissa people we know a few things about ourselves with certainty. We are the children of old indigene societies; we are the descendants of uprooted slaves from Africa, India, Indonesia and China; and we are partly rooted in European and Arab societies. When we look at that part of our ancestry and heritage—from the first interactions between our ancestors to the last forced removals of our families—we have had one indelible and seminal moment to commemorate. This is the Goringhaiqua’s resistance to Almeida’s violation of their trust and their subsequent victory. You may choose to criticize our outlook, but it is a very real cultural and symbolic one in our community—and one that’s very fragile for a long subjugated people.

Our interest is thus not with the Portuguese and their Catholic intrigues back home. Our interest has simply been with the intrusion of Europeans (not only the Portuguese) in Africa and with our ancestors standing up boldly for themselves. This may not seem important to others, but it is of tremendous significance to surviving marginalized indigene groups in Cape Town. The conflict on the beach illustrates that the Khoe people were no pushover. It was our “Custer’s last stand”, gross as this might sound.

Your version of an assassination plot simply wrests a victory from our annals of history. As much as my version of a victorious battle may be inconvenient to you, so your story of a hidden plot is inconvenient to the version that I subscribe to. An assassination plot in the manner you would have it undermines our anti-colonial resistance story.

Nicolaas Vergunst: Let me interrupt here, please, if only to say that I don’t intend to diminish your finest hour in history; but simply wish to add that Almeida’s assassins took advantage of the situation by ritually piercing him through the throat with a lance of steel. According to my research, and its all at the beginning of Knot of Stone, it would appear that this was done as an order of execution only some time after the Portuguese had been defeated by the Khoena (I use ‘Quena’ in my book). The ceremonial execution, uncovered through corroborative clairaudient and psychic input spanning almost a century, 1924-2012, was done when Almeida already lay dead on the beach.

PTM: What difference does that make? We celebrate this unique event with pride because the most powerful General in Europe was defeated by a small and humble group of African herders. The latter had less sophisticated weaponry, but still outsmarted a man who had been the scourge of the Turks, Egyptians and Indians. Almeida certainly was the most ruthless and powerful military man of his day, with military history projecting him as undefeatable in his successive attacks of coastal towns in East Africa and West India. He was to Africa and India the Attila the Hun of his time.

NV: In fact, Almeida was denigrated by his contemporaries for his lack of aggression! His rival and successor, Afonso de Albuquerque, was hailed as The Terrible, Caesar of the East, Lion of the Seas and as The Portuguese Mars. He made Almeida look pathetic; calling him a coward and saying he lacked boldness, all because Almeida didn’t sack more port-cities under Muslim control. I also suspect Albuquerque had a hand in the assassination plot, but that’s in my book too, as is the historical Attila the Hun, so let’s not spoil the fun for our readers now. Instead, you were just saying something about military history?

PTM: Military historians evaluating this battle recognised the application of the Goringhaiqua battle leadership style—what’s now called the principles of war—which included their use of spearmen in infantry style together with oxen in modern armour style. This together with fighting at a time and place of their choosing, avoiding the beach, maintaining the element of surprise, utilising familiar terrain, attacking with maximum violence and speed, and not disengaging but keeping up the momentum of the attack, all combined to bring about Almeida’s defeat. In the words of one military historian, Almeida was “out generalled”.

NV: Ah, that’s quotable, as too your expert military analysis. So who’s this historical authority?  

PTM: Spar nicely, lol. Willem Steenkamp, military historian and well-known military commentator who evaluates the conflict involving the Almeida and the Khoena in his book Assegais, Drums and Dragoons (2012). His book was launched in Cape Town last week. We stand in opposite trenches and have many differences of opinion on this matter.

From what I can gather in your version, the Goringhaiqua were incidental bystanders and simply used as a diversion for the assassination of Almeida, in fulfillment of a prophecy? If so, Africans are once again stripped of being determiners of their own history. The European plot replaces the local narrative in favour of an unfolding struggle between different European forces. In one fell swoop we are robbed of an important point of reference in our anti-colonial resistance… one of the few handed down to us by European historians and, dare I say it again, the only one in which our forebears were victorious!

NV: We needn’t labour the point here: the Goringhaiqua thwarted the Portuguese, yes. They were neither bystanders nor extras in a scheme of diversion. I’d like to emphasize that I now believe the conspirators set up the ambush, quite unbeknown to the villagers, and made sure Almeida’s retreat would be cut off and that he and his loyal followers would be left exposed on the beach.

The massacre of Viceroy Francisco d’Almeida in 1510 by Angus McBride, 1984. Courtesy of the Castle Military Museum. Curiously, the artist depicts the battlescene with consistent accuracy, not only in its location, but in showing how some men abandoned Almeida and fled down the beach to where the longboats awaited them.

PTM: It could certainly have been a natural progression of events that led to the final battle providing a perfect opportunity being made available to possible conspirators. A perfect storm, so as to say, where conspirators deviously arranged events to provoke an angry and full-scale retaliatory attack by the Khoe.

NV: Yes, that’s how I think it probably happened.

PTM: Well, I work in the Maritime environment and come from a seamanship family, so I know about the mischief caused by crew going ashore each time a ship enters port. However, such antics seldom involve the skippers or, as in this case, the admiralty and senior officers. And yet Almeida and eleven of his captains did just that—and were all killed? I just can’t see why he’d send such a large party ashore, let alone go so far inland himself? After all, there was nothing substantial to gain. This fact stands out as highly unusual and should perk up the detective in anyone. What spurred this party to go ashore? What prompted such an auspicious war party to go head to head with a people they regarded as primitive and inferior?

NV: I couldn’t have said it better myself, Patric. Yes, indeed, why did Almeida go ashore? And what did he personally need to do at the village? Remember, it lay a few hours walk from the shore and his men marched there before dawn. Some accounts say they set off one hour after midnight, and that Almeida was taken by longboat to the mouth of the inlet or lagoon, halving the distance the others had to walk. But then he was sixty years old, and not in good health. Anyway, for me one important question remains unanswered: was it really a punitive expedition, a war party?

PTM: All the records point to it being so.

NV: I know, but is it possible that Almeida stepped ashore to honour the Goringhaiqua leader with some proposal or league that had been envisaged for both their futures—or one that the Chief himself had requested? As you yourself say, the Goringhaiqua were hospitable and friendly by nature. Whatever scenario is considered, it must inescapably include some realistic reason for Almeida to feel the need to present himself in person, where even a second-in-command would not suffice. It was surely in Almeida’s interests to ensure that the next fleet would be well received when the Portuguese returned to barter. As you also know, a mariner’s survival depends on clean water and fresh produce to eat during a long voyage at sea. For any lesser reason, Almeida’s second-in-command would surely have been able to deal with the matter alone?

PTM: I’m not so sure about this, because the details provided in the different Portuguese versions don’t give us any lead in such a scenario. Even if Almeida was enticed to go ashore to support a punitive party, or whatever you wish to call it, it seems foolish of him not to have remained safely behind his own lines. Inexplicably too is the report that the longboats were pulled back beyond the breakers, rather than drawn onshore as was standard practice. The reasons given, citing foul weather and rising tide, are questionable. There is also no record of any deterrent canon fire from the ships. So I guess a simple twist of fate could, quite plausibly, have presented an opportune moment for a clever bit of manipulation when a retreat needed to be organized hastily.

NV: To my mind, the men who ran ahead of Almeida pre-empted the battle by attacking the village: ransacking huts, capturing hostages and driving off what cattle they could rustle. In the ensuing chaos one of the men killed his compatriot, Fernaõ Lanças. When news of this travesty reached Almeida, then still on his way, he called off the expedition and began to withdraw to the beach. These men—called “the ever bellicose fidalgoes” or quarrelsome minors elsewhere—created enough confusion to ensure that Almeida could be ambushed on his return without their strategy being detected. For the Goringhaiqua, as you say, they simply defended themselves against this treacherous betrayal and, understandably, retaliated by driving their cattle against the heels of their foe.

PTM: But the real battle awaited the Portuguese on Woodstock beach itself, near the mouth of the Salt River.

The old Salt River estuary looking towards Woodstock, with a cloud covered Table Mountain. Date unknown.

NV: Yes, though there seems to be some difference of opinion on the exact location.  This is partly due to the convergence of the Salt, Liesbeeck, Black and Diep river system into a common lagoon with a shared mouth. Furthermore, perennial tides and storms caused the sandbars and estuaries to shift seasonally, as shown in early maps. Despite the lack of detail in contemporary Portuguese records, we all agree that Almeida’s last stand was on a beach: a beach hemmed in between sand dunes, a river mouth, and the rising summer tide.

Reconstruction of the Salt River estuary (3) and the wetland/beach where Almeida was killed.

Two swords mark the presumed battle site on the left bank of the Liesbeeck-Salt River Canal.

PTM: In my opinion, the key to your version is the opportunity that arose in subtly manipulating events during the retreat. Anything more obvious would have had severe ramifications back home.

NV: Right. The instigators had to ensure their chances of getting away, back to the boats, and that no surviving compatriot should suspect any conspiracy. I believe it was for this reason that the survivors elected Jorge Barreto and not Almeida’s obvious successor, Jorge de Mello Pereira, to report on the event back in Lisbon.

Although my book describes how a metal spear was driven through Almeida’s throat—that is, after his death, when the Portuguese returned to bury their dead that same afternoon—this does in no way detract from the fact that he had been killed in the skirmish by a wooden spear which pierced his neck from the back, and protruded out in font. Almeida tried to pull it out, apparently, but collapsed before he could do so. It seems he died almost immediately. Having said this, I feel my scenario neither undermines the fortitude of your Khoena ancestors, nor detracts from their bravery and evident military skills.

PTM: I believe that nothing in the your plot changes the situation as seen by the indigenes or their descendants. With or without your so-called ritual assassination, even afterwards, the Goringhaiqua still come out tops that day.

NV: While Greg Dening says history was born on the beaches, on those marginal spaces between land and sea, our first footprints have long since disappeared with the rising tide of colonial history in South Africa. For this reason I believe, like you Patric, that we should tread carefully when retracing our early footsteps—or we may trample over the last prints left on our beaches. As I say in Knot of Stone, there’s no intertidal space where Africa’s past and Europe’s history do not intersect, no beach below Table Mountain where the footprints of both native and interloper haven’t overlapped, and no reconstruction of Almeida’s murder from which either party can now escape. It’s one event that binds us together.

PTM: Yes, I agree, it’s an event with hidden ties that bind us historically, but for those of us trying to find positive moments around which we can reconstruct a sense of who we are as ‘Coloured’ or Camissa people, free of any past overlays, it is one event that we want to rewrite ourselves.

This concludes the second part of our online discussion. Patric Mellet is the author of ‘Lenses on Cape Identities: exploring roots in South Africa’ and writes a regular blog for Cape Slavery Heritage. My warm thanks to him for his temperate participation.

Nicolaas Vergunst

Slide 2

Digging up the past is not easy...

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...when it’s buried under tons of landfill.

Slide 1

Read the new blog below:

The location of South Africa’s first recorded battle and earliest known war memorial was lost to history for five centuries. Already in 1512, a mere two years after the event, returning sailors were unable to identify the site. Thus, while researching Knot of Stone between 2004–2009, I could only imagine the setting: a disused railway yard where old tracks traced the former curve of Table Bay. Then, in 2012, the site was ‘rediscovered’ and found to resemble the book’s original description with uncanny accuracy.  Today, sadly, the location remains an unfitting memorial for the dead.

Knot of Stone begins with the discovery of a centuries-old skeleton in an abandoned shunting yard which was imagined as follows: “Prof Mendle set off, Sonja by his side, between piles of sleepers and tracks choked with weeds. He led her past a disused warehouse with its derelict loading bay, and then on beyond a platform strewn with splintered packing crates and old pallets. Everything was broken, barricaded and abandoned…”. (KoS p.8)

A new discovery?
To commemorate the anniversary of Almeida’s death in 2012, I accompanied Dr Stewart Young, a polymath and gifted dowser, to an undisclosed site beyond the Castle of Good Hope—a site farther east of what I’d previously considered possible—until he halted me and then intuitively said: “We should be able to see where Almeida was killed from here”. However, barred by locks, chains and a razor-wire wall, we were unable to enter the industrial shed which, or so my companion alleged, covers the spot where Almeida lies buried. The following day, with permission to wander around, I discovered how well the location fits the historical record, including its proximity to the Liesbeeck/Salt River Canal, and that this ‘discovery’ could reveal the first recorded battle site and earliest known war memorial in South Africa’s history.

These two maps portray the changing curve of Table Bay as seen, firstly, two hundred and fifty years ago and, secondly, as it appears today. The first reveals the natural shoreline, the latter the land reclamation project of the intervening centuries. In both maps the Castle of Good Hope—here a star—establishes a fixed point of reference while the arrows point to the vicinity of Almeida’s death. The first arrow points to the area described in Knot of Stone, the second to a site since identified by Dr Young. In physical terms the two sites—or arrows—are about four kilometres apart and, like the Castle itself, lie a kilometre inland today.

Physical location
In a windswept wasteland between Table Mountain and the sea, near the Liesbeeck-Salt River Canal, lie the forgotten bones of Almeida and his sixty compatriots. The spot where they fell lies under a derelict railway yard—beneath a low, red bricked shed—surrounded by rusting wagons, old splintered crates and wooden pallets. Laid to rest five centuries ago, their bones have been lost to memory and long overlooked by subsequent historians. Drawing on the popular memory of his contemporaries, the poet laureate Camões wrote:

The Stormy Cape which keeps his memory  Along with his bones, will be unashamed  In dispatching from the world such a soul  Neither Egypt nor all India could control.                                  Camões, Lusíads, 1572.

Luís de Camões’s epic poem predicts that the Cape of Storms (Cabo Tormentoso) will preserve both Almeida’s memory and his bones. At that time, the Cape was seen as a Portal to the Indies: a threshold between the cold Atlantic and a warm Indian, and as “earth’s extremest end”. A century later, in 1652, under another flag, the Cape became the furthest south of all Holland’s colonies. Almeida’s bones thus rest at a cornerstone of colonial history.

Historical context
Hearing about the death in Lisbon, King Manuel announced a day of mourning and forbade his ships from calling at the Cape, again, unless in dire necessity, and thereby prevented Almeida’s bones from returning to Portugal. King Manuel was superstitious, believing the fallen sons of Lusus (Portugal) protected his realm and, allegedly, added: “as long as his bones are there, all is safe”.

“While Almeida’s bones lie at the Cape, all is safe.” Manuel I, 1510.

At the time, Manuel I (shown directly above) ruled over the first global empire and was then one of the most powerful men in the world. His decision against further landings along the Cape coast would ultimately delay European occupation for another 142 years.

The attack on Francisco d’Almeida at the Cape of Good Hope, 1510. From Pieter van der Aa’s Naauwkeurige verzameling der gedenkwaardigste zee- en landreysen naar Oost- en West-Indië, Leiden, 1707.

In 1512, two years after Almeida’s murder, a passing Portuguese ship touched at the Cape to collect fresh water. On board was the former master of Almeida’s boat and a relative of one of the deceased, Cristóvão de Brito, who asked to be taken ashore to see the grave. On finding the site “without a sign of those who lay there”, Brito had a wooden cross and cairn of stones erected to mark the spot. This ensemble became the first memorial built by white interlopers in South Africa.

Early illustrations
The only historical illustrations of Almeida’s murder—and of Brito’s subsequent visit—were made two centuries after the event, in 1707. These were published by Pieter van der Aa, a renown cartographer and printer from Leiden, Holland, in his collection of notable land and sea travels to the East. Printed as fold-out folios, the engravings were often removed by collectors and so not easily recognised or identified by later historians. The scene showing several seamen erecting a cross was only ‘rediscovered’ by Cape Archivist, Victor de Kock, in 1952.

Erecting a cross to mark the grave of Francisco d’Almeida, 1512. From Pieter van der Aa’s Naauwkeurige verzameling der gedenkwaardigste zee- en landreysen naar Oost- en West-Indië, Leiden, 1707.

Postmortem
In traditional African societies—unlike western Christendom—the bones of the ancestors are seen as sacred and kept close to the family hearth. As such, ancestral graves are integral to a healthy domestic-social life and the bones important for settling disputes, putting the deceased to rest, and for predicting the future. Bones are also used to call up the Ancestors, like witnesses to a trial, in order to see justice served. Seen in this context, Almeida had to die at the Cape of Torments.

At Almeida’s posthumous trial—that is, speaking metaphorically—the Ancestors came from the far-off shores of Kenya and Tanzania. And to this Camões adds that Almeida was killed for the plundering of Kilwa and Mombasa in 1505, five years earlier, on his outbound voyage, when his men brutally butchered the local Swahili and Arabs. His death was a retribution.

Cape Town’s history is thus as much part of East Africa as it is a part of South Asia: the geo-politics of each overlap. More so, Egypt and India had a knock-on effect all the way down the coast—from Melinde to Mombasa, from Kilwa to Sofala—ending at the Cape of Good Hope. And Almeida’s murder demonstrates this.

While the site may never be excavated nor his bones ever found, the ‘discovery’ raises a telling question: To whom do his bones belong? To his family, to his country, or to his old fraternity?

African Sacred Ibises over Cape Town’s forgotten shoreline, an alternative view of Table Mountain, 2011. Photograph courtesy of Mike Golby.

Future Developments
Cape Town’s proposed regeneration programme for the Voortrekker Road Corridor and “Salt Rivièra” renewal project will, I hope, include a new memorial for all the victims and descendants of the Almeida/Khoena conflict. There is currently no other memorial in South Africa or Portugal and, as far as I know, none were ever erected to commemorate this tragedy. Not one in five hundred years? Well, perhaps it is time to let Hope grow out of Torment as the Cape outgrows its Storms.

Bird’s eye view of the battle-burial site (encircled) and its proximity to the Salt River Canal, Voortrekker Road and Ysterplaat Station. The proposed urban and recreational development project, if successful, could offer unparalleled opportunities for the identification, excavation and commemoration of this long-lost battlefield, its graves and original stone cairn memorial.

Part Two of this post continues here.

Nicolaas Vergunst

Those following our posts will know that we have tracked the last days of Viceroy D’Almeida and may be as surprised as we are by the ‘rediscovery’ of his burial site. Here we present an overview of our latest research.

The prophecy
On leaving India in the closing months of 1509, a woman sorcerer (seer or diviner) warned the disgraced ex-Viceroy that he would not pass beyond the Cape of Good
Hope—this being the western limit of his realm. Portugal’s Estado da Índia then spanned an entire ocean, stretching from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa to the southern tip of India; Cape Comorin. According to the poet Luís de Camões, the sorcerers passed Almeida in a skiff as he boarded his ship, the Garça, which lay ready to leave Cochin the following day. Their prediction prompted him to rewrite his Will as soon as calmer seas permitted. Crossing the sea itself took four months (from 18 November to 20 February), and the rotting Garça sailed in stark contrast to the flagship with which he had arrived four years earlier. Unlike the twenty two that took him to Cochin—then the largest fleet ever to leave Lisbon—only two small boats now escorted him home. Rounding the Cape in fair weather, Almeida said to his attendants: “Now God be praised, the witches of Cochin are liars.” (KoS p.30)

“God be praised, the sorcerers are liars.” Francisco d’Almeida, 1510

After sailing a few leagues farther, Almeida’s ships entered a sheltered bay where, as a welcome break from their monotony at sea, he sent his men ashore to fetch clean water and dry firewood. Here they spent the next ten days replenishing their supplies, repairing their boats and befriending local herders from whom they hoped to obtain fresh meat. Whether he was aware of it or not, one of Almeida’s officers, António de Saldanha, had watered at the same stream several years before, after which it was called the Aguada de Saldanha or Watering Place of Saldanha. The local place name was Camissa, or Place of Sweet Water, after the springs that lay nestled in the crook of Table Mountain’s arm. The mountain itself was known as Hoerikwaggo (Mountain of the Sea).

Two depictions of Table Mountain c.1680-90 show the little stream from which Almeida and António de Saldanha drew water. When they called at the Cape, in 1503 and 1510 respectively, there were no man-made structures along the beach and no other ships in the bay. The Dutch and English only began calling at the Cape in the late 1590s.

The chronicles
According to Portugal’s royal chroniclers, several curious natives came down to the beach as soon as Almeida dropped anchor (probably near today’s V&A Waterfront). Later, while his men filled their caskets and collected wood, a few brave herdsmen befriended the interlopers hoping to learn the ways of the Strange Ones. During this period Almeida yielded to requests for a party to visit a nearby village, most likely that of a Goringhaiqua clan (in the vicinity below today’s University of Cape Town), where his men claimed it was possible to barter sheep or cattle for the long journey home. When the foraging party returned, allegedly bruised and bloody-faced after a quarrel, they demanded a punitive party be sent to teach the “unpredictable” locals a lesson before the next Portuguese ships called. Reluctantly and, while suspecting foul play, Almeida  agreed. (KoS p.46)

Looking with indigenous eyes, the Strange Ones were seen as coming from across the Great Water, from the nesting place of the sun. They came as birds with wings of white and swam ashore like fish with fins raised and flashing teeth. Reptile-like in scales of armour, they spat fire and attacked their prey with fierce claws of steel. They were the abeLungu.

Reconstruction of the estuary where Almeida was killed (left) and its approximate location today (right). The crossed battle swords (No.3, right) mark the site along the bank of the modern canalised Liesbeeck-Salt River.

Early reconstructions
Early the next morning the Portuguese marched on the Goringhaiqua village but, before Almeida could reach it himself, some of his men broke rank to run off ahead. Finding the village deserted, the belligerent men fell upon the huts and began to pillage without constraint. In the ensuing chaos, one of the men was killed by a passing compatriot who, having heard someone rummaging within a hut, stabbed his victim through the grass-matted wall. (KoS p.81) When news of the calamity reached Almeida, still on his way, he tried to call off the expedition—but by then it was too late as the Goringhaiqua had now herded their cattle together and began to drive them on the heels of the retreating Portuguese, many of whom fell under the stampede. Those who could reach the beach, including Almeida, found themselves trapped between the rising tide and the soft dunes. Here, at the estuary of the Salt/Liesbeeck River, Almeida and his compatriots were ambushed and killed. Those who had already abandoned him—or were intent on saving themselves and their loot—fled to where the longboats awaited them. (KoS p.48)

‘Massacre of Viceroy Francisco d’Almeida, 1510′ by Angus McBride, 1984. Courtesy Castle Military Museum.

Recent research
Despite various claims regarding the actual site—including locations in nearby Hout Bay or Saldanha Bay—the location most recently identified with the skirmish is shown below: across the Salt River Canal with Table Mountain in the background. However, since the course of the river has been redirected and tons of landfill covers the former curve of the beach, the exact site will be difficult to identify and excavate today.

While in Cape Town to commemorate the massacre of 1 March 1510, I had the rare opportunity of asking my friend Stewart Young, a polymath and gifted dowser, to help locate where Almeida met his death. With only the barest facts, Dr Young was able to detect that “the place lies under a building near an open field” and, dowsing in situ, led me from the mountain toward the shore. Unfamiliar with the terrain, we failed to see the Salt River Canal and nearby shunting yard—today covered in grass and weeds. We were also unaware of what lay behind a tall vibracrete wall that now crossed our path until, with a certain measure of surprise, Dr Young added: “Almeida fell here, and lies buried two metres beyond this wall”. Well, if that be the case, then this marks the first recorded battle site and earliest known memorial in South Africa’s history (the Portuguese erected a cairn and cross to mark the spot in 1512, two years after Almeida’s death). Hemmed in between Ysterplaat Station and Voortrekker Road today, the actual evidence lies under tons of brick and concrete. Any confirmation, albeit scientific or not, depends on further research at the site.

New publication
Like most locations in my book—from ancient springs to medieval towns—the portrayal of Almeida’s final resting place is the result of several research trips spanning twenty years. The description in Chapter 2 is based on my efforts to trace the shoreline in 2007 and not, of course, on any insights made after the book was published. Despite this, the ‘new’ site presents an uncanny resemblance to the one imagined while writing Knot of Stone:

Prof Mendle set off, Sonja by his side, between piles of sleepers and tracks choked with weeds. He led her past a disused warehouse with its derelict loading bay, and then on beyond a platform strewn with splintered packing crates and old pallets. Everything was broken, barricaded and abandoned… Behind him scraps of plastic fluttered in the stiffening breeze, like the flags of a forlorn sailing ship. Beyond the barbed fence lay the Old Grey Father, Table Mountain, the ever-silent witness to many a by-gone age. (KoS p.8 and p.12)

New research has also shown that Almeida was led into an ambush by his men and that they, subsequently, reported his murder as the tragic fulfillment of the witches’ prophecy. (KoS p.33) The reasons for Almeida’s assassination will be discussed in another post.

The burial site, then and now, 1512 and 2012. Unable to find the grave two years later, an ad hoc group of passing Portuguese sailors erected a stone cairn and wooden cross to mark the site. It was the first and only time that Almeida’s compatriots called again at the Cape. The engraving (left) is by Pieter van der Aa and produced for a travel book two hundred years after the event. The cross and cairn, now lost, constitutes the earliest war memorial in South Africa. The pool of water seen in the photo (right), recalls the former shoreline/intertidal zone which has also long since disappeared.

This concludes the post Earliest battle site rediscovered.

Nicolaas Vergunst

The African Century
For over one hundred years a restless Portuguese nation led Europe’s expansion into Africa. This era began with the capture of Moorish Ceuta in 1415, then the “key to the Mediterranean”, and drew to a close with the untimely death of Francisco d’Almeida in 1510. Almost a century apart, these two defining events occurred at opposite ends of the continent and illustrate a period of bold, brutal and bloody conquests under the influence of Mars, the Roman god of war.

In a war waged against the Arabs and the Turks—from the river plains around Lisbon to the walls of Jerusalem—Portugal’s best ally was thought to be that of Prester John, or Preste João, a priest-king who’s legendary realm lay somewhere south of the Sahara, that is, beyond the source of the Nile. Cut off from the rest of the world, his Lost Kingdom contained the oldest blend of Christianity known outside Europe. Here too, or so Christians believed, a pure and unspoilt faith still existed. As modern neo-Templar knights, Prince Henry’s navigators sailed in hope of finding this faith on the far-side of East Africa. And so a legend became history.

“Below the belt of Islam, Henry had predicted, an alliance with Prester John would reunite East and West.” KoS p.165

The Legend and the Letter
Much of the legend surrounding Prester John appeared in the late twelfth century when knightly orders and chivalrous virtues were at their height and Rome over-reached itself. This was largely due to a letter purportedly written by Prester John and addressed to Emperor Maximilian, dated 1165, which circulated throughout the Holy Roman Empire. For whatever reason, be it fantasy or escapism, the story inspired adventurers, explorers and scholars. They all hoped to find the realm of Prester John and thus, during the next two centuries, such stories were fervently recorded all over Europe. With the invention of the printing press in the 1440s, the letter became Europe’s first best-seller and appeared with ever more embellishments in the centuries to follow. (KoS pp.180–183)

Prince Henry the Navigator
Portugal’s Prince Henry was quick to recognise that an alliance with Prester John could reunite East and West, both militarily and spiritually, while furthering the exchange of knowledge from diverse corners of the world. As part of a courageous three-pronged approach, his successor João II tried reaching Prester John via the Congo River. It was at Portugal’s trade depot in Benin, today Nigeria, that the explorers first came to hear of an emperor who inaugurated his lords by bestowing on them a helmet, a sceptre and a cross—all symbols of a Christian priest-king—and yet no local ever claimed to have seen him. Emperor Ogané, they said, was always screened by colourful silks, patterned bark-cloth, and presented only a foot during an audience. While such fabulous stories served to rekindle the legend, explorer Diago Cão sailed up the Zaïre River in search of the Black Potentate within the Old Kingdom of Kongo, now northern Angola. On reaching the Yellala cataract 180kms upstream, his captains chiseled their names into the rockface and continued on foot.

Determined to succeed, Cão’s men persisted overland by dragging their longboats behind them, until it dawned on them that this Black Potentate was not the same as the one of Christian legend. (KoS p.96) Be that as it may, the East was not to be found by transversing the continent—a fact White explorers would only discover centuries later.

Since Ptolemy claimed that the Terrestrial Paradise lay below the branches of the Nile, medieval scholars were quick to assume it included Prester John’s realm and that this was accessible from East Africa’s Barbaria Coast. The old trade route started out from Massawa and Mombasa but, in time, shifted to Zanzibar and Sofala. Most coastal towns were under Muslim control—an alarming prospect for Christians still fighting an African Crusade in the 15thC.

Bartolomeu Dias
To this end Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in search of the Presbyter’s realm, then thought to be somewhere in the Indies, that is, on or around the Indian Ocean rim. In the year that Dias left, 1487, his compatriot Pedro da Covilhã also set off to find Prester John’s realm. While Dias opened up a new route in the Atlantic, Covilhã travelled via the age-old caravan routes across the Sahara. Years later, long after Dias had returned, Covilhã reached the court of Emperor Eskender in Yeha, near Aksum, in Ethiopia, whereupon he was detained for the next thirty years: never to see his wife in Lisbon again, nor the child she was carrying thirty years before. Together Dias and Covilhã made the most important joint-venture in the history of pioneer exploration. It was also the year in which the Cape of Good Hope became entangled with the quest for Prester John. (KoS p.79, 133, pp.156–157) Or, to put it differently, the Cape was discovered on the way to find Prester John. (KoS p.188)

The stone-carved Church of St George (Bete Giyorgis) in Lalibela, Ethiopia, also known as an “Eighth Wonder of the World”. According to some scholars the church bears the Templar cross on its roof. (KoS p.189) Photograph by Paolo Pagni. Watch his video ‘Ethiopia: Nelle Case di Cristo’. Courtesy of www.reporterlive.it

Vasco da Gama
A mere decade later, when Vasco da Gama sailed for India in 1497, the dream of Prester John’s Terrestrial Paradise had been overun by the desire for material wealth: for the silks, spices and jewels of the Orient. It was in Mozambique (Moçobiquy) that Gama heard about Prester John and the coastal towns of White Christians who had fought the Moors. These were probably descendants of former Chinese seafarers or local Hindu traders.

The stories surrounding the fabulous figure of Prester John are linked to the legends of Parsifal and King Arthur; to the quest for the Holy Grail and its Lost Paradise. According to Wolfram von Eschenbach, the Grail’s final resting place was in the East where Prester John served as its last guardian. Not only was he the Last Guardian of the Grail, but both he and the cup were to be found in Africa. In short, Prester John became for Africa what King Arthur has been for Britain. (KoS pp.185-6)

Francisco d’Almeida
Francisco d’Almeida was among the last of his generation—described by Camões as the “Marvellous Generation”—who strove to unite East with West, cosmopolitan societies with universal values. Sadly, after Almeida’s death the Templar ideal of a singular, unified spirituality also died. To this end, the story behind Knot of Stone endeavours to renew this impulse, as demonstrated by this startling revelation concerning Preste João:

“The Realm of Prester John was an esoteric legend or device designed to manage schismatic Christianity and the renewed drive toward a unified age of spirituality during the medieval Crusades—setting a precedent for the European Renaissance. At the epicentre was the Rosicrucian flame of Gnosis burning in the lamp of Nestorian Christianity in the Eastern world, a flame seeking to transmit itself westward again. For several centuries the esoteric Orders used the legend of Prester John as a ploy to influence the turn of historic events—especially the political interplay between East and West—and to maintain a balance of power conducive for the cosmopolitan culture of the Renaissance with its hybrid philosophy, art and spirituality. Ultimately, Prester John represented the elusive Platonic ideal of the philosopher-king held by the Christian world as the representative of a kingdom to be sought within, firstly, before it could be realised outwardly.” 

Clairaudient message cited in KOS p.188

‘Keepers of the Faith’ cover, a photographic tribute to Ethiopia by Paola Viesi, c.2011. Courtesy of the Artist.

Nicolaas Vergunst

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, addresses the Biannual Conference of Tibetan religious leaders on 24 September 2011 in Dharamsala, India. He spoke about his own reincarnation, past and future lives, and how rebirth takes place.

Recent developments around the Dalai Lama have prompted this post. The first is the pending visit of His Holiness to South Africa for the 80th birthday celebrations of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The second is the Dalai Lama’s own statements about his reincarnation. While the former was well covered by the Mail&Guardian (28 August), it is the introspective article in the Daily Maverick (20 September) that drew my interest. Here Guy Lieberman asks the question we’ve all wondered about:

“What’s behind the friendship between Tutu, Mandela and the Dalai Lama—beside them all being Noble Prize laureates?”

First Encounters
Reporting on the Dalai Lama’s first-ever meeting with Nelson Mandela in South Africa, back in August 1996, Lieberman says: “I asked the Dalai Lama if he would comment on that encounter. He was silent for a few moments, considering the question, and then responded by saying that he had had the good fortune to meet some of the world’s greatest leaders; kings, spiritual notables, presidents, social icons, his fellow Nobel Peace Laureates, luminaries from the sciences, as well as captains of industry and human rights activists. In preparing to meet with all of these people, he would study their stories in-depth and take into account the nature of their reputations.”

To which the Dalai Lama himself concluded: “In most cases, the reputation of that leader would always be very large. However, every time I would meet the individual, I noted that the reputation was always far bigger than the person. Now, as I was preparing to meet Nelson Mandela, I considered that his reputation was in fact larger than anyone else’s. But in only this case, was the individual much larger than his reputation.”

For Lieberman, the wisdom of His Holiness is too close in form and character to that of Tata Madiba for us to ignore: “We have to allow ourselves to see this obvious comparison, and all the related associations regarding the freedom struggles of both Tibet and South Africa.” Yes, this is both obvious and true: when they first met Madiba was an African leader with a moral code, a state president who expressed an intrinsically African integrity and political will.

New insights
But this was not their first meeting, at least not the first in their eternal past. According to their karmic biographies, Tenzin Gyatso and Nelson Mandela were among four feuding brothers in thirteenth-century China, being known to history as Kublai and Mongka—heirs of the notorious Genghis Khan, then their grandfather. Together they expanded the Mongol empire, politically and culturally, until Mongka (Mandela) died campaining with Kublai (Gyatsa) in China. Readers can pick up the karmic thread for themselves.

The extraordinary relationship between these great men has been eloquently described in Knot of Stone, wherein Kublai Khan (Gyatsa) says of Mongka (Mandela):

“It is not of these conquests that I, Kublai Khan, now speak, but of our contrasting temperaments and differing ideologies. Mongka believed that his destiny was to keep the Mongolian Empire united under his rule and to bring the world under one dispensation. He believed law and order was the way to create political conditions necessary to unite all peoples under a common welfare of peace and prosperity. He practised no racial or religious discrimination… He believed in one God, but in no particular form of worship. He attended religious ceremonies of all the great faiths—Buddhist, Christian and Muslim equally—and religious freedom was well tolerated by him. But he never could tolerate dissension and was ruthless with those who pitted themselves against him.”

Clairaudient message cited in KoS, pp.423-424.

Left to Right: His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

As for the two other brothers—Boka and Hulagu—these are allegedly Thabo Mbeki and Mangosuthu Buthelezi today. Desmond Tutu, it seems, was with then them too. So, seen from a karmic perspective, any visit to South Africa by the Dalai Lama is an auspicious affair. Looking at the matter realistically, his proposed visit next month is unlikely to be sanctioned.

Future scenarios
However, today Jacob Zuma plays a pivotal role, as he did in the thirteenth-century under the name of Ahmed Uzma—then a misplaced minister at court. As a corrupt court official renowned for his many wives, Uzma was charged for capitalizing on arms-deals during Kublai-Boka’s civil war. And herein lies the real test of integrity for South Africa.

For more background to Nelson Mandela’s past lives, please see General Horemheb and Mongka Khan. For more on Jacob Zuma’s past lives, see Jacob Msimbiti.

Whatever happens, I believe we need not despair over South Africa’s future as we all have to prove ourselves again in other lives.

Nicolaas Vergunst

Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United Nations, photographed in 1959. This picture appeared in the Guardian on 19 September 1961, the day after his fatal plane accident. Courtesy of MPI/Getty Images.

“Around a man who has been pushed into the limelight, a legend begins to grow as it does around a dead man. But a dead man is in no danger of yielding to the temptation to nourish his legend, or accept its picture as reality. I pity the man who falls in love with his image as it is drawn by public opinion during the honeymoon of publicity.”
                                                                   Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, 1963.

No honeymoon lasts half a century. Now, fifty years later, Dag Hammarskjöld is still the focus of publicity, albeit as the victim of a Cold War conspiracy. Nevertheless, he survives in our memory and is remembered today, 18 September, by countless people around the world. It is as if we can’t let go of the event or, more importantly, of the man himself. However, most people are preoccupied by his death rather than with his life; by his grim murder rather than his greatness as a modern, forward-looking individual.

Marcus Aurelius
Death comes to us all, Hammarskjöld knew, but not necessarily at the time of our own choosing: “Do not seek death. Death will find you,” he reflected in his still unpublished diary, Markings. Two thousand years earlier, Rome’s wisest emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote virtually the same lines in his Meditations: “It is not death that a man should fear. You will meet it.”

Both leaders were men of action and contemplation and kept a diary for their own self-improvement, addressing it ‘To Myself’. Both works are monuments to the principles of civil service and duty, and were published posthumously. Both men shared one desire: to be a wise and just philosopher-king. Both men shared a common greatness.

Marcus Aurelius c.180CE and Dag Hammarskjöld 1959. Courtesy Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Venezia and UN Photo Archives.

As we have seen in Knot of Stone (KoS pp.308-312), great men course through history like an ocean wave toward some as yet unknown shore. Some men seem not to find their way, like Alexander on the endless Asian steppe. Others get lost, as did Columbus on the unknown Atlantic. But truly great men give momentum and direction to an entire epoch.

Dag Hammarskjöld was one such great man. Following his death, John F Kennedy said apologetically: “I realise now that in comparison to him, I am a small man. He was the greatest statesman of our century.” Hammarskjöld had set a benchmark for great leaders. With the publication of Susan Williams and Göran Björkdahl’s new-found evidence (Guardian, 17 August 2011), there may yet be more to say about his death.

But let’s not dwell on Hammarskjöld’s plane crash—whether by accident or design—or give any credit to allegations that he was shot by Theunis Swanepoel, aka Rooi Rus (Red Russian), a former South African sabotage squad member. Archbishop Desmond Tutu put this tragic matter to rest during his media briefing for the SA Truth and Reconciliation Commission on 19 August 1998. Perhaps we should let sleeping dogs lie. At least for now.

In the final analysis it doesn’t matter who gave the order or who shot the fatal bullet. Instead we should ask what Hammarskjöld achieved with his life and what he managed to fulfill before he died? Just before his death he’d written to himself: “Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.”

Hammarskjöld wanted Africa to have its second chance after colonisation. He wanted Africans to shape their own destiny, eventually. Europe had been through this process itself, three-or-four times before, ever since Attila the Hun came storming through.

He wanted to give Africa its heart back or, rather, to prevent Congo from being plucked in two. By 1960 the continent had become the great rift valley of the world, divided on the one hand by America and Russia, and on the other by the British, French and Belgians. Sometimes by them all. More than anything else, Hammarskjöld wanted stability, security, and freedom from fear, as well as an end to the Cold War in Africa. In short, world peace and universal order. Plus more silence and time to meditate himself.

But the ocean swell had picked him up and so he rose with it. Already in the 1950s, Hammarskjöld had intervened to settle conflicts around the Suez Canal, then a faultline between the West and the East. He also tried to stabilise matters between Israel and the Arab states.

A decade earlier, around 1947–48, Hammarskjöld played his part in the recovery of post-war Europe, helping the Marshall Plan keep capitalism and communism on separate sides of the Iron Curtain. The West brewed coffee, the East boiled tea while Hammarskjöld drank both, often alone, sadly.

Gustavus Adolphus
John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev shared a dislike for Hammarskjöld’s initiatives; for his ability to shape events beyond their reach. This was not new, of course, as world powers have never liked a Swede with attitude. Remember what happened to Gustavus Adolphus, the celebrated king of Sweden during the Thirty Years War? He resisted the Habsburgs and the conquering Catholics in Europe—and was eventually killed doing so. (KoS p.312) As Adolphus treated Vienna and Rome, so Hammarskjöld handled Moscow and Washington. He wouldn’t bow to either.

Curiously, Adolphus and Hammarskjöld share many attributes, both in life and death. They both died with the grass in their hands and, allegedly, a wound to the head. If these allegations are proven true, then both men may have been executed.

Portraits of Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961), Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632) and Charlemagne (c.742-814).

However, beside their remarkable physical likeness, these two men saw themselves as representing the interests of both the nation and the individual; of the ruling elite as well as the common man: “I am born to live and die for the common good and well-being of my people. My destiny is knotted into theirs.” (Adolphus, Coronation speech, 1617).

Charlemagne
Hammarskjöld too was a man who bound rulers to their citizens and, like Charlemagne, wove their desitiny into a single inseparable knot. Charlemagne not only united the isolated peoples of Europe, albeit brutally, but also stabilised East-West relations in a medieval world. Likewise, Hammarskjöld strove for this in a modern context and today his legacy survives through the Council of Europe. Uncannily, legend has it that both men were found seated after death and in possession of a book. Moreover, by some unusual coincidence, Dag Hammarskjöld’s three middle names are phonetically similar to that of Charlemagne = Carl Hjalmar Agne.

Be that as it may, on 24 August 1961, a mere three weeks before his death, Hammarskjöld made his last entry in Markings. As usual, it was a poem. The first stanza reads:

Is this a new land,
in a different reality
from today’s?
Or have I lived there,
before this day?

However brief, Hammarskjöld’s final words echo those immortalised by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Sudden Light, 1863:

I have been here before
But when or how I cannot tell;
I know the grass beyond my door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sight, the sound, the lights around the shore.

As a man of action and contemplation, Hammarskjöld pursued the Platonist ideal of a wise and just philosopher-king. He may not have been a ruler, or even “the greatest statesman of our century”, but he was essentially a leader and a philosopher. A great man, nevertheless. (KoS p.344)

Why mention him on this blog? Firstly, Hammarskjöld died 50 years ago, Almeida 500 years further back in history. Both deaths are shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Moreover, both men play an important role in unravelling Knot of Stone. 

Nicolaas Vergunst

Ironically, the Portuguese themselves propagated this tragedy as an act of retribution: “The Cape of Storms shall be his hasty, final tomb. Those killed by him will measure out his just doom.”⁵

Whichever way one wants to frame it, one fact remains: Portugal never colonised the Cape. “This brush with the Hottentots in 1510 decided the fate of South Africa, which would probably [certainly?] have been a Portuguese colony. As it was, thereafter, the Portuguese avoided the Cape and refuelled on the west or east coast, settling at Angola and Mozambique instead.”⁶

Portugal could thus have controlled the entire African sub-continent, from the mouth of the Congo River to the Mozambique Channel, and for the next four hundred and fifty years—that is, until the mid-1970s, making of southern Africa a second Brazil. Potentially.

I have no doubt that the history of South Africa and the destiny of its inhabitants would have followed a different course—but for this tragic event. We need only glance back to see how different the circumstances were after South Africa submitted to the influence of pragmatic Dutch Protestants, displaced French Huguenots (themselves anti-Catholic) and entrepreneurial English industrialists. The sudden discovery of diamonds and gold in the late 1800s helped to consolidate Britain’s colonial possessions and was used to bolster the British Commonwealth. Had it, instead, been a Portuguese colony, all its wealth would have been drained curbing a crisis of mass emigration and bankruptcy in Lisbon.

The origin of the name Brazil remains uncertain and could mean either “land of the palm trees” or, after the brazilwood, “red like an ember”. Neither of which grew at the Cape.

The knot on the book cover comes from the same period and can still be seen at Belem Tower—a fort protecting the old entrance to Lisbon harbour. Over two centuries, while the Portuguese expanded their empire in East Africa and South Asia, outbound ships sailed passed this symbolic knot. I chose this knot because it represents relationships between East and West, mysticism and rationalism, and between an Old World and the New.

Manueline knots (so named for King Manuel I) reveal Portugal’s desire to follow in the footsteps of the Knights Templar. These knots represent a unity among military Orders—from as far afield as Tomar, Windsor, Bruges, Santiago de Compostela and Jerusalem—and the unbroken continuity between crusaders and seafarers, soldiers and explorers, and between the first defenders of the faith and those willing to explore new ideas.

To my mind the knot symbolises a long-standing relationship, as between couples in a marriage. One tied in stone reveals an enduring bond—a relationship made to outlast the living. A stone knot is made to survive long into the future. Knot of Stone relates the story of those who share such an enduring bond, interwoven through time, and how their lives changed the political balance of power and the course of world history.

Nicolaas Vergunst

Walk in the footsteps of the book’s two main characters, Sonja Haas and Jason Tomas, as they search for a long-lost Aristotelian manuscript in France (see under Synopsis/France). It is in the Vosges, on the Odilienberg itself, that they seek a woman supposedly killed for smuggling the text out of Catholic Spain, or so hearsay has it. And then there’s the legend of five Knights from the court of Charlemagne, their Camel, and a Holy Blood relic from Jerusalem.

Intrigued? If so, join us on Sunday as we unravel the origins of the Romanesque carvings and crypt in Andlau, its sacred spring, and the mountain-top sanctuary of Le Mont Sainte-Odile. We shall then descend via the ruins of the Abbaye de Niedermunster and its adjoining Saint-Nicolas Chapelle  (the camel may have gone, but the folklore lingers on). From there we’ll drive on to Obernai, birthplace of Odilia, for traditional Alsatian lunch. Please contact me at unravelling@knotofstone.com if you need practical information. Private transport essential, sensible shoes optional.

Le Mont Sainte-Odile in winter, with the lights of Strasbourg on the horizon.  Photograph by Jean Isenmann.

Le Mont Sainte-Odile (founded c.690) is a medieval mountain sanctuary that served as an independent centre of learning for nuns, including women of nobility, until fire destroyed the monastery (1546) and its hospice (1572). Hearsay has it that a visiting woman was murdered in the hospice crypt (also known as the Niedermünster) for her part in smuggling an Aristotelian manuscript out of Spain. Like those who conspired to kill Francisco d’Almeida, her assassins shared an allegiance to the Knights of Santiago de Compostela, the same fraternity by which he first obtained this manuscript. These two murders—one at the Cape of Good Hope, the other in Alsace—bind the narrative behind Knot of Stone.

Ruins of Abbaye de Niedermunster. The crypt has long since disappeared. Photograph by Martine and Ralph.

An artist’s impression of the ‘Way of the Camel’. The legend is shown in three episodes with Le Mont Sainte-Odile (centre, atop the mountain) and the Abbaye de Niedermünster (to the far left). Note the depiction of romantised chevaliers instead of knights. Click to view the painting under a magnifying glass. 

Nicolaas Vergunst