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Naxos [Bent’s Ch. 14: Sunday, 23 December 1883 – Monday, 7 January 1884]
The Naxos Mysteries: 1 – 4 (Vanessa Gordon, 2025).
Our third reading from Bent’s extended Naxos chapter taken from his classic 1885 Cyclades travelogue is provided by Vanessa Gordon, author of the six books in the series The Naxos Mysteries, all to do with ‘archaeology, mystery and murder on the beautiful Greek island of Naxos’, involving her lead character, the archaeologist Martin Day; all themes, not totally disconnected from Theodore Bent’s narrative.
The statue of Apollonas, Naxos. Mabel Bent writes in her diary: “We had a great deal of difficulty in the morning about starting to go and see an unfinished colossal statue said to be of Apollo, 1½ hour off near the sea… We had to leave the mules and climb with hands as well as feet to the quarry and on to the statue, which is enormous and very rough and weather worn.” (Wikipedia)
We should not be surprised, therefore, to find Theodore and Mabel making cameo appearances in two of Vanessa’s books – The Search for Artemis (2021, pp. 39-49, 129-30) and The House in Apíranthos (2024, p. 142) – this latter village featuring prominently in her reading here.
In this extract, Bent makes one of the earliest descriptions in English of the gigantic statue of ‘Apollo’ at Apollonas, and listen out, too, for references to the village of Komiaki (Koronida), where the Bents first encountered their mercurial dragoman Manthaios Simos, from neighbouring Anafi. As faithful as mercurial, Simos was instrumental in the rescue of the desperately ill Bents, east of Aden, in early 1897.
Area of Apíranthos, Naxos, Cyclades (Google Maps).
The Secrets of Stelida, Vanessa’s seventh title in her series is due in February 2026. She writes: ‘I love the mystery genre, which enables me to explore the magic of Greek antiquity, the wonderful landscape and the cuisine of Greece, and the rich complexities of human nature. In The Naxos Mysteries I try to appeal to both the mind and the heart of my reader, engaging them in the passions and tragedies of the characters in a context of discovery and exploration.’
“Mrs Bent was a middle aged lady, she wore a man’s helmet and a monocle and a short skirt and knee breeches and leather leggings.” Llewellyn Cambria Meredith (1866-1942), the Bents’ headman and wagonmaster on their 1891 Great Zimbabwe expedition. Quoted in R.H. Wood, Heritage of Zimbabwe 16(1997): 55-66. (The Bent Archive. Mabel Bent, a studio portrait, very possibly taken in Cape Town in 1891).
Irishwoman and celebrity explorer Mabel Bent (a.k.a. Mrs J. Theodore Bent) was, understandably, much in demand for media interviews; her exploits over twenty years fascinated readers internationally.
Although there was a cadre of notable solo women travellers at the turn of the 20th century, adventuring British husband-and-wife teams were rare.
Mabel is often credited as being the first Western woman to explore remote regions in the three areas of the world that interested the inseparable couple (married 1877) – the Eastern Mediterranean, Africa, and Arabia. For example, Mabel, a role model for Freya Stark in many ways, was trekking through the notorious Wadi Hadramawt (Yemen), three decades before the indomitable latter.
Here is a selection from the many interviews Mabel gave to newspapers and periodicals:
The kind William Pryor Binney (21 July 1839 – 12 March 1888), date unknown, presumably the 1870s, and perhaps wearing the medal of Chevalier from the King of Greece, or ‘the order of the Saviour and Order of the Iron Cross from the Emperor of Austria’. (From the ‘Genealogy of the Binney family in the United States’ 1886).
Wonderful to hear (3 Jan. 2026) that a team of volunteers has cleared up the charming but neglected Westerners’ Cemetery on Syros (Greek Cyclades), a small area that leads to the immaculately tended Commonwealth War Graves/Syra New British Cemetery, below Ano Syros. The original Westerners’ Cemetery site, including the memorial to William Pryor Binney, has been so badly maintained that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission even has a warning on its webpage, imploring those who want to visit to take great care: “Please remain within the pathway while accessing the CWGC plot due to danger of tripping on debris and being hit by falling stone from the damaged walls.” See the end of this article for photos.
People come and go; everyone travels; everyone leaves traces of their travels. You will find such a trace on a memorial in the rarely visited Westerners’ cemetery in Ermoupoli, on Cycladic Syros, near the junction of Taxiarchon and Katramadou, on the way to Ano Syros. The cross and monument of some grandeur is of fine Tinos marble; the inscription testifies to the trickiness of English lettering for Greek masons; it was expensive, and the deceased’s family wished to honour a significant man. There is no space for the word ‘kind’:
William Binney’s grave in the Westerners’ cemetery, Syros (detail) (The Bent Archive).
“To the Memory of William Pryor Binney, H.B.M. Consul, Divisional Manager Eastern Telegraph Company. Born in Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada, the 21th [sic] July 1839, died at Syra the 12th March 1888. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1, 21.”
“William Pryor Binney, son of Stephen and Emily (Pryor) Binney, of Moncton, N[ew] B[runswick], was born July 21, 1840; married Polexine [Polyxena/Πολυξένη] Pateraki, daughter of the late George Pateraki[s], of Constantinople. Mr. Binney is the general manager of the submarine telegraph cable in the kingdom of Greece and Turkey, has held the office for twenty-five years past, and in 1884, lived at Syra, Greece. He is H.B.M. consul at Syra. Had no children in 1873. He had the title of Chevalier from the King of Greece and decoration of the order of the Saviour and order of the Iron Cross, from the Emperor of Austria.”
Stephen Binney (1805–1872), William’s father (from ‘Genealogy of the Binney family in the United States’, 1886).
The first Binney to surface, one captain John, of Nottinghamshire, set sail with his wife Mercy in 1678 or 1679, for Hull, Massachusetts. There, with John now a ‘fisherman’ and ‘gentleman’, the couple (with their six children) became the ‘ancestors of almost all of the name’. In the 19th century one of their descendants, Stephen Binney (1805–1872), a merchant of Halifax, and later first mayor, married Emily Pryor (1808 and still living in 1884); the couple had seven children, one of whom was our William Pryor Binney and Mabel remembers him for posterity as ‘kind’. As Halifax mayor, in early 1842 Stephen made the long Atlantic crossing to London with a message of congratulations on behalf of the city to Queen Victoria on the birth of her son (later King Edward VII). During his extended absence his business affairs at home suffered and he sought new opportunities, buying property near Moncton (New Brunswick). From his new base, Stephen Binney set up a successful wharf and shipyard, making a new start as a wholesaler, trading in timber and agricultural produce. With its access to the Bay of Fundy, and William’s father thrived as a merchant ship-owner, with a vessel that bore his own name, the ‘Stephen Binney’.
Pryor-Binney House, 5178 Morris Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J, Canada (Heritage Division NS Dept. of Tourism, Culture and Heritage, 2005)
It was Stephen’s father (William’s grandfather), Hibbert Newton Binney, who forged links initially with the Pryors, when the two families cooperated on the building of a fine house in Halifax in 1831, and which H.N. Binney then bought outright in 1834. The ‘Pryor-Binney House’ still stands at 5178 Morris Street, Halifax.
One of William’s brothers was Moncton’s head of Customs, Irwine Whitty Binney (b. 1841). It was probably Irwine, as prosperous clan head, who supervised in some way William’s funeral in 1888, in the quiet Westerners’ cemetery on Syros. William’s widow, Πολυξένη, being Orthodox, probably rests in the Greek cemetery a few 100 metres away. We don’t know when the couple married (1860s?); Polyxena’s father, George Paterakis, was from Constantinople, and probably of some standing. The Binneys had had no children by 1873.
The former premises of the Eastern Telegraph Company, Syros, now the Merchant Marine Academy of Syros for Marine Deck Officers.
And of William’s career? And how he came to Syros? Follow the money. William, as part of a very well-to-do and successful extended family who made their livings from commerce, merchant-shipping and the sea, was clearly ambitious to compete and strike out on his own; and quite prepared to travel and leave traces of his own. By the mid 1880s maritime nations were being linked by the invention of undersea cable-telegraphy, and the needs of the British Empire provided a booming market for companies in this sector. One of these was the Eastern Telegraph Company, a consolidation, in 1872, of a dynamic group of telegraphy businesses, involving some 23,000 miles of cabling by the late 1880s. This enterprise, of course, morphed eventually into today’s Cable and Wireless plc. A pivotal routing and operations hub for the Eastern Mediterranean, and British interests East, was based on Syros, and its capital, Ermoupoli, the main ‘port’ for all (‘new’) Greece before the growth of Pireaus around 1900. It was plain commercial sense that the Eastern Telegraph Company’s regional cable station and depot should be built on a (then) disconnected rock (Νησάκι), a hop from Ermoupoli’s seafront. The solid building (which probably housed Binney’s consular office too) still stands and now houses the island’s Merchant Marine Academy.
Announcement of William Binney’s appointment as ‘Her Majesty’s Consul in the Islands in the Greek Archipelago’ (‘The London Gazette’, 24145/5113, Tuesday, October 27, 1874).
William Binney held the important post of general manager for ETC’s Syros hub by 1883 at least, if not earlier; it is recorded that he had already been an employee for 25 years by around that date. His skillset obviously included diplomacy, and in 1874 we learn that “the Queen has been graciously pleased to appoint William Pryor Binney, Esq., to be Her Majesty’s Consul in the Islands in the Greek Archipelago, to reside in the Island of Syra [Foreign Office, September 5, 1874. The London Gazette, 24145/5113, Tuesday, October 27, 1874, and ‘The Morning Post’ of Wednesday, October 28, 1874].
Presumably this appointment helped Binney acquire his gongs, i.e. “the title of Chevalier from the King of Greece and decoration of the order of the Saviour and order of the Iron Cross, from the Emperor of Austria.” His duties would have included looking after his country’s interests and personnel in the region and reporting on the activities of potential rivals. Copies of communications between William and the UK Foreign Office can be found in the FO Volumes of the British Consuls in Greece, in the National Archive, Kew (i.e. 1881 FO 32/534; 1882 FO 32/546; 1892 FO 32/644; 1893 FO 32/653).
And as well as all this, Mabel Bent refers to William as not only fastidious, but ‘kind’ (she adds ‘so’ and underlines it). Theodore Bent met Binney first in Athens, in late November 1883. He became a friend it seems as well as Consul, providing the Bents with information and letters of introduction to contacts in the Cyclades generally. Theodore at this time was not particularly influential and it seems that Binney was being helpful to a British citizen as part of his consular duties. One of the contact names he slipped into Theodore’s pocket was Robert M.W. Swan, a Scottish miner on Antiparos. Swan was later to be central to Bent’s expedition to ‘Great Zimbabwe’ for Cecil Rhodes in 1891. But by then Binney was dead.
Let’s leave the last paragraphs on kind William Pryor Binney to Mabel Bent, as recorded in the pages of her Greek ‘Chronicles’. The final reference to his fatal illness comes as a shock:
A watercolour of Syros in the mid 19th century by Edward Lear; ‘the old sparkly pile’ he called it (diary entry for Wednesday, 6 April 1864).
“[Saturday, 1 December 1883] We had a quick but very rough passage, starting at 7 and getting [to Syros] about 3.30 a.m. Wednesday [28 November]. The ‘Pelops’ was quite new and very clean and I should have slept well but for the fleas. We landed at Ermoupolis at 6.30 and sat on the balcony overlooking the port for 2 hours as there was no bedroom vacant, nor did we get one till 5 o’clock. Mr. John Quintana, H.B.M. Vice Consul on whom Theodore called, came and fetched us and we spent 2 hours at the Consulate in Mr. Binney, the Consul’s room, very large and nice and so tidy. Mr. Binney must be a most orderly man for everything was ticketed and docketed. Theodore called on him in Athens, says he is like a slight Greek, foreign accent and Greek wife.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, pages 7–8]
“[Tuesday, 18(?) December 1883]. Rode 1½ hour to the nearest point to Antiparos carrying only our night things and a card of introduction from Mr. Binney for Mr. R. Swan who has a calamine mine on this island.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 21]
“[Saturday, 22 March 1884] We fortunately got a room at the Hôtel d’Angleterre [Syros] and thoroughly enjoy ‘taking mine ease in mine inn’. We packed a box of our spoils for England and this afternoon I rode and the others walked to Ano or Upper Syra, a hideous place with a view over this barren island. We got very tired of Syra by Friday and as we found a kaïke of Kythnos or Thermiá we packed and prepared to start. But the strong Boreas would not permit ships to leave the port so after constant expectations up to Sunday morning the 23rd we gave up and went to church, a very poor little place and very ‘low’, according to the wishes of Mr. Binney the Consul. Afterwards we lunched with Mr. Binney, Mr. Quinney the parson, being there also. N.B. Mr. Binney’s clerk is Mr. Finney.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 54]
“[Thursday, 26 January 1888] We only got to Syra on Thursday. We landed
The Syra British Cemetery, Ermoupoli, near the junction of Taxiarchon and Katramadou, on the way to Ano Syros (photo: Alan King).
and found to our sorrow that our kind consul Mr. Binney was dreadfully ill.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 228]
“[Saturday, 25 February 1888] On Thursday… about 4 we left ‘The Town’ [Constantinople] in the ‘Alphée’ for Syra, picking up letters at the post on the way. We had no remarkable fellow passengers and reached Syra on Saturday morning about 4… We went to church on Sunday to a tidy little chapel, which they say will be closed if Mr. Binney is no longer there to keep it up.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 234]
William Binney’s grave in the Westerners’ cemetery, Syros (The Bent Archive).
Kind William Pryor Binney died 16 days after Mabel’s last reference to him, on 12 March 1888, of what she doesn’t say. (Appropriately, the new British Cemetery behind where he lies takes in the scattered Commonwealth war burials from the islands of the Cyclades.) He was not yet 50. Another William took over from him as Consul at Syros, W.H. Cottrell. People come and go; everyone travels; everyone leaves traces of their travels.
See also Alan King’s article on Binney and the Syra cemetery here.
[If you enjoyed reading about the likeable William Binney, you might enjoy a recent (2020) online article on him by Panagiotis Kouloumbis of Syros Today.]
The following three photographs (Jan. 2025) show the results of volunteers’ recent efforts “to clear the weeds, cut the bushes, throw the rubble and sweep”. The final resting place of Mabel Bent’s particular friend, William Pryor Binney (1839-1888), and the others buried there, is once again respected. Many thanks to all involved.
Syros Westerners’ Cemetery, recently cleaned by a group of volunteers over three days (Jan 2026). The large memorial on the right is the reverse side of William Pryor Binney’s grave. Reproduced with permission.Syros Westerners’ Cemetery, recently cleaned by a group of volunteers over three days (Jan 2026). Reproduced with permission.Syros Westerners’ Cemetery, recently cleaned by a group of volunteers over three days (Jan 2026). The doorway leads to the Commonwealth War Graves section of the cemetery. Reproduced with permission.
The pottery incense-burner, intended for frankincense and other aromatic resins, that the Bents brought back from the Wadi Hadramaut in 1893/4. It remained in Mabel Bent’s personal collection until 1926, when it was donated to the British Museum with several others (As1926,0410.37-41).
The Bents at Christmas
For celebrity explorers, the Bents preferred to be homebirds come Christmas, swapping solar topees for deerstalkers, and quitting their London townhouse at 13 Great Cumberland Place for their country residence at Sutton Hall, Macclesfield (northern England), or Ireland (Mabel’s family home at Newtonbarry, Co. Wexford). Of their nearly 20 years of explorations (in the 1880s and ’90s), together, they were only out of Britain on December 25th, it seems, for the years 1882 (Chios, then a Turkish island), 1883 (Naxos, Greek Cyclades), 1891 (steaming home from Cape Town, South Africa), 1893 (Wadi Hadramaut, Yemen), 1894 (Dhofar, Oman), 1895 (Suez, Egypt), and 1896 (Sokotra island, Yemen). Theodore Bent never lived to celebrate another, he was to die in London in May 1897, aged just 45.
From Schoff’s ‘Periplus’ (1912), with its many references to the travels of the Bents (archive.org).
The Bents’ 1893-4 adventures around Christmas time took them to the fabled lands of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, all gifts associated with Theodore’s theories of trade links and contacts between the populations of Southern Arabia and the various regions around today’s Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. In particular, it was the famous trade in the fragrant gum that dribbles from several species of Boswellia trees (frankincense), and its trade routes – especially the branch that began in Dhofar, Oman – that fascinated the explorer; he wrote several articles on the subject, i.e. ‘Exploration of the Frankincense Country, Southern Arabia‘ for The Geographical Journal (Vol. 6 (2) (Aug), 109-33), and ‘The Land of Frankincense and Myrrh‘ for The Nineteenth Century (Vol. 38 (224) (Oct), 595-613). (It is quite possible that the Dhofar trail reached north up to Bethel (Beitin) in the modern West Bank, and that Mabel, as an offering to her dead partner, left there, in the early 1900s, the notorious pottery seal (now lost) from a sack of frankincense destined for western lamps. The couple had acquired the seal as their caravan moved east along the Wadi Hadramaut in 1893/4.)
Theodore’s above articles are well worth the read, but let’s let Mabel add some 1894 Christmas and New Year details from her diary, her ‘Chronicles‘ she calls them, written as the couple travel along coastal Dhofar:
“About 6 came, very smart with bourkas on their faces…” Mabel Bent’s doodle in her ‘Chronicle’ as she writes. (Hellenic Society Archive, London).
“Christmas Eve [Monday, 1894]. On waking, the smaller boy came to kiss my hand and before I was up the ladies said they were coming. I was afraid to put them off. First I sat up and put on a jacket, and finding time allowed, I put on a skirt and got up. Combed down my hair and feeling sure that stockings would not be missed, I sat with bare feet, refreshing my memory with civil speeches. About 6 came, very smart with bourkas on their faces a sort of square frame of gold braid and spangles, with a black stick down the middle. They had a great deal of coarse jewellery on with mock pearls and very bad turquoises.
Christmas Day [Tuesday, 1894]. We rose with the sun and walked off to a mass of ruins about a mile off. There was a great deal of vegetation and sheets of a most lovely creeper with a large flower, white when new, pink when older, and then there comes a red pear-shaped fruit, with hot seeds in it. The ruins are Himyaritic and reminded us of Adulis and Koloe in Abyssinia… returning we sat in a grove of coconut palms and drank much water from the nuts, which were showered from the trees in rather a terrific way. The men stuck their throwing sticks in the ground and by banging the nuts down on the points skinned them.
[Wednesday] December 26th [1894]. I was asked to go down to the harem early. The ladies had not so much finery on. They were most kind and gave me many things to eat, coffee, awfully sweet, and sherbet of orgeat, ditto, halweh and pahpa and nutmegs broken up and some seeds and some leaves called tamboul, and chunam, and things I did not eat for I do not want my teeth to become red… We had 2 more days of waiting and, at last, were told we should positively start on Saturday 28th and were expecting at least to start in the evening, but when at length all the camels were got together there were no ropes, sticks to tie the loads to, or any other thing, so we had to wait till next day.
Map showing the expeditions of Theodore & Mabel Bent, 1883-1897 (drawn by Glyn Griffiths; (c) The Bent Archive).
Leave Dhofar. Sunday 29th December [1894]. We set off at 12. There was the greatest confusion over the loading; neither men not beasts were accustomed to deal with anything but sacks of frankincense. The camels roared incessantly, got up before they were finished and shook off their loads, or would not kneel, or ran away loaded, and then there was a great deal of unloading and abandoning everything and shouting and quarrelling and much difficulty about making up saddles for us. Theodore and Imam Sheriff and Hassan and I each have a separate camel and 6 of the servants ride in pairs while one walks.
New Year’s Eve [Monday, 1894]. Did not get off till 10, though we breakfasted before sunrise… Theodore’s camel was a very horrid one and sat down occasionally and you first get a violent pitch forward, then an equally violent one back and a 2nd forward; this is not a pleasant thing to happen unexpectedly… We were all most dreadfully stiff and tired and again too late to do anything in the way of unpacking more than just enough for the night. The quantities of flowers Theodore has already got must, I think, already exceed all the 150 of last year [in the Wadi Hadramaut]. There are a great many lobàn trees, or rather shrubs (frankincense)…” (extracts from The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3, pages 249-50, Archaeopress 2010)
“… and yesterday T and I went a long distance and found some inscriptions on a smooth rock, also a little hamlet, very clean (Haida), as is Kalenzia.” ‘Kalenzia I. of Sokotra 1897’ (17.5 x 25 cm), Bent’s watercolour from early 1897 (undisclosed collection, reproduced with permission).
First an introduction by us (or skip directly to Professor Al-Jallad’s article).
The Bents’ final journey together (1896/7) sees the couple on the island of Soqotra in the Indian Ocean.
Mabel Bent’s diary for Monday, 21 December 1896 notes:
“We have not for years enjoyed such peace and safety. The people are most pleasant and do not worry us a bit by coming round our tents. We can walk about alone all over the place and yesterday T[heodore] and I went a long distance and found some inscriptions on a smooth rock, also a little hamlet, very clean (Haida), as is Kalenzia.” [our emphasis]
When the widowed Mabel Bent was writing up the event for her Southern Arabia (1900, p. 351) she says:
Map relating to the Bents’ 1896/7 visit to Soqotra, the arrow indicating the general location of the inscription under discussion (‘Southern Arabia’, 1900, opp. p.342).
“One day we two went some distance in the direction of the mountains, and came on a large upright rock with an inscription upon it, evidently late Himyaritic or Ethiopic, and copied as much of it as was distinguishable. Not far off was the tidy little hamlet of Haida.” [our emphasis]
Theodore Bent copied the inscriptions into his notebook on the spot, and Southern Arabia includes a copy of this (from an uncredited source, not Bent, as he died a few days after returning to London in May 1897). Mabel’s ‘smooth rock’ has not been found; the text is in Dhofari.
To our knowledge the inscriptions have never been interpreted. Dhofari expert Professor Ahmad Al-Jallad has very kindly prepared the following short article (November 2025) for the Bent Archive. As his commentary includes a variety of symbols and diacritics we offer it as a pdf (click on the image below to access).
‘Theodore Bent’s Dhofari 1 inscriptions, Qalansiyah, Soqotra’ by Prof. Ahmad Al-Jallad (Nov. 2025)
Copy of the Dhofari 1 inscriptions from Theodore Bent’s 1896/7 travel notebook, pp. 9-10 (Hellenic Society Archive/School of Advanced Study, University of London; CC).
Recommended background reading:
For a very valuable introduction, see J. Jansen van Rensburg (2018), Rock Art of Soqotra, Yemen: A Forgotten Heritage Revisited. Arts 7(4). See also D.B. Doe (1970), Socotra. An Archaeological Reconnaissance in 1967, Coconut Grove, Fla, Field Research Projects; V.V. Naumkin and A.V. Sedov (1993), Monuments of Socotra, Topoi, Orient-Occident 1993(3-2): 569-623.
Prof. Rebecca Sweetman, Director of the British School at Athens, has chosen Bent’s short, stormy visit to Sikinos for our ‘Reading The Cyclades’ project, marking the 140th (1885-2025) anniversary of Theodore Bent’s classic The Cyclades, or Life Among the InsularGreeks. If you want to join in, just Messenger us! (photo: BSA)
“Few remains in Greece are more perfect than this temple of Apollo …” Episkopi, Sikinos, before the recent restoration works (Rebecca Sweetman).
The Bents had a happy relationship with the British School (founded in 1886) and were frequent guests at 52 Souedias Street (in April 1896 Theodore was asked to take charge of a small dig near the Athens Olympieion). Rebecca’s reading ends with the Bents’ ride to Sikinos’ atmospheric Episkopi monument, very recently restored to great acclaim. (By the way, Mabel has her 38th birthday on this remote Cycladic island.)
Map and title page of Bent’s bestseller on the Cyclades (1885) (archive.org).
“The Islands of the Aegean Sea offer plenty of scope for the study of Hellenic archaeology, but they are more particularly rich in the preservation of manners and customs which have survived the lapse of years, and the result of a special study of both these points, made during two winters passed by my wife and myself amongst the islanders, in their distant hamlets, and in their towns by the sea-coast, I here place before the public.” (From Bent’s Preface, page v) note 1
“… Mr. Theodore Bent’s excellent book on the ‘Cyclades’, the only recent book which is really serviceable to teach ordinary readers the details of the subject.” (Prof. Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, Irish classicist, in Good Words, 1888: Vol. 29, 305 ff.)
Detail from a raised-relief map of Greece (Glyn Griffiths 2024).
Theodore Bent’s evergreen (ever-blue perhaps?) account of two winters happily spent island-hopping in the Greek Cyclades was published on 28 February 1885 in London by Longman, Green and Co. The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks was the first such travelogue to appear in English and to this day features regularly in the bibliographies of those writing about these iconic islands.
Reviews spanning the century:
“Mr. Bent’s book deserves all success, for it is the result of researches pursued in the most laudable manner. When an educated man selects for his field of observation an interesting and little-explored area of country, and, after learning the language, spends a considerable part of two winters there, living among all classes of people so as to familiarise himself with the details of their life, and to become intimately acquainted with their ideas and modes of thought, he deserves the title of an enthusiastic investigator.” Academy 27, Jan/June 1885, p. 322.
“It is the classic of Aegean travel in English and will never be superseded, for one good reason that Bent was lucky enough to visit the islands when they were still, as it were, intact and only just waking out of the sleep of centuries.” Ernle Bradford, The Companion Guide to the Greek Islands (1983, Collins, London, p. 156).
“James Theodore Bent (1852-1897), author of The Cyclades (London, 1885), much the most valuable book on the Aegean.” (Robert Liddell, Aegean Greece, London, 1954, p.107, n.1)
“Seriphos and Siphnos sound like Heavenly Twins, and are very similar in size and scope. Kimolos and Sikinos are hard to visit, and harder to escape from… frankly it is not worth the trouble to do so, unless you are as determined and thorough about your Aegean as old Theodore Bent – who wrote the real classic on the area.” (Lawrence Durrell, The Greek Islands, London, 1980, p.254)
Reading The Cyclades
As an audiobook of The Cyclades has yet to appear, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we have asked ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts from Bent’s guide for us.
The order of appearance is in accordance with how Bent sequenced them, not as the couple actually visited them – for this you need to see the diary of his wife, Mabel, for the winter of 1883/4. The dates given, where possible, of when they made their visits are from this diary – and not always reliable. The Bents’ first winter in the area, 1882/3, is unchronicled by Mabel, seeming to have been limited to a few Easter weeks, taking in Tinos and Amorgos. The diarist notes on their return to London in the Spring of 1884 that “though we like good food and beds and ease and comfort as well as others, we think the pleasure we have had quite pays for all the pains”. (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 61)
The tsabouna played by Yannis Pantazis of Santorini.
Most readings begin with a short melody on the island bagpipes (tsabouna) played by Yannis Pantazis of Santorini. The Bents would have been very familiar with this sound, even acquiring their own instrument (now in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford).
So, πάμε, click on an audio file below to transport yourself to the Bents’ Cyclades as they found them in 1883/4 (zoom out on the map below to slowly reveal the islands). Further reader contributions will be added, of course, as they sail in, σιγά-σιγά! note 2
(All rights remain with the individual readers, 2025-)
The Readings
Introduction and Bent’s Preface (pp. v-viii), dated November 1884
An introduction to ‘Reading “The Cyclades”‘, followed by Bent’s Preface to the first edition, providing a little background and his main objectives in visiting the islands over the course of two winters…
Serifos [Bent’s Ch. 1: Saturday 1st December – Tuesday 4th December 1883]
“The Church of St. Athanasius was worth seeing, being round with two little apses. It has a lovely iconostasis… carved in wood, with vine tendrils, and festoons, and niches for twenty eikons…” Metropolitan Church of Agios Athanasios, Ano Chora, Serifos (C. Messier, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0).
After a short stay on Syros, Siphnos was the first island the couple visited on their second winter tour, with Bent also choosing to begin his travelogue here. This ‘very pretty island’, as Mabel calls it, still makes the perfect overture to Bent’s Cycladic idyll, introducing us to all the themes that reappear throughout his work – ‘Zorba’-like characters, myths and legends, food and drink, custom and costume, antiquities, the ups and downs of travel, everyday life ‘among insular Greeks’ indeed… Our first reader is Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, author, inter alia, of The Aegean Islands Insight Pocket Guide: Mykonos and Santorini, publishing-editor of Weekly Hubris, and Cycladophile.
Melos [Bent’s Ch. 4: Saturday, 15th December – Friday, 21 December 1883]
View of the ancient theatre of Melos (330 x 558 mm, graphite, pen and ink, and watercolour) by James Skene, c. 1841 (CC Trustees of the British Museum (asset number 1280633001)).
Anafi [Bent’s Ch. 5: Wednesday, 9 January 1884 – Friday, January 11 1884 or Saturday, 12 January 1884]
A photo from the early 1940s giving some idea of what Anafi’s harbour jetty might have looked like 100 years after the Bents sailed from the island (Margaret Kenna).
Bent’s entire chapter read by social anthropologist and Anafi specialist Margaret Kenna (Professor Emerita, Swansea University), who has spent 50 years researching in Greece, most of it focussed on the islanders and migrants of Anafi, spending a year on the island doing fieldwork for her doctorate in 1966 (Greek Island Life: Fieldwork on Anafi, Sean Kingston Publishing, 2017).
Santorini [Bent’s Ch. 6: Monday, 7th January – Wednesday, 23 January 1884]
Travel writer Jennifer Barclay reads the Bents on Santorini (photo = Ian smith).
Travel writer and Tilos resident Jennifer Barclay first got to know the Bents a few years back when they went with her some of the way on her breezy Dodecanese travelogue Wild Abandon (Bradt Guides 2020); she wrote an article for us about the adventure too (In the Footsteps of Theodore and Mabel). Needless to say, we’re now very happy she has agreed to sail a little west from Tilos into the Cyclades to read a few of her favourite extracts from Bent’s visit to Santorini (no introduction required there, of course), where she spent a summer in the early 1990s. And if you think you can hear cicadas in the background now and then, you can; Jennifer has her window open as she reads…
Ios [Bent’s Ch. 7: Wednesday, 23 January – Sunday, 27 January 1884]
P.M. Iannetta; Ios harbour in the 1930s (after Liddell 1954); Ekaterina Lorenziadis’ costume (National Historical Museum, Athens); Ios, the Chora today (Joshua Doubek: Wikipedia).
English language teacher and island-hopper P.M. Iannetta narrates the Bents’ landing on Ios – ‘Little Malta’ – and their first impressions of the main town. We meet mayor Lorenziadis and his family and are treated to a fashion show by his daughter Ekaterina – the dress she is modelling is now on display at the National Historical Museum, Athens.
Sikinos [Bent’s Ch. 8: Sunday, 27 January 1884 – Friday, 1 February 1884]
Prof. Rebecca Sweetman, Director, British School at Athens (BSA).
“Few remains in Greece are more perfect than this temple of Apollo …” Episkopi, Sikinos, before the recent restoration works (Rebecca Sweetman).
The Bents had a happy relationship with the British School (founded in 1886) and were frequent guests at 52 Souedias Street (in April 1896 Theodore was asked to take charge of a small dig near the Athens Olympieion). Rebecca’s reading ends with the Bents’ ride to Sikinos’ atmospheric Episkopi monument, very recently restored to great acclaim. (By the way, Mabel has her 38th birthday on this remote Cycladic island.)
Delos [from Bent’s Ch. 10, Mykonos (as ‘Note II – The Excavations at Delos’): Saturday, 1 March 1884]
Delos – bases and monuments north of Theophrastos’ Agora, the ‘Hypostyle Hall’, photographed in 1908, i.e. 25 years or so only after the Bents’ visit. The photographer is unknown (CC Archimage).
Rather like today’s tourists, the Bents spent a day on Delos, legendary birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, at the end of their visit to Mykonos. Then as now, excavations on this island, the heart of the Cyclades, are under the aegis of L’École Française D’Athènes in coordination with the Greek State. Bent, of course, finds the remains tantalising. His archaeological thoughts are read by Catherine Bouras, Secrétaire de rédaction pour La Chronique des fouilles en ligne, l’EFA.
Naxos 1 & 2 [Bent’s Ch. 14: Sunday, 23 December 1883 – Monday, 7 January 1884]
Portara, the large portal of the Sanctuary of Delian Apollo, Naxos (C. Messier, Wikipedia).
An early extract from Bent’s chapter on Naxos (‘The Town of Naxia’), where the couple spend Christmas, 1883. The passage – referencing the famous islet off the main town and its trademark temple remains that still salute every arrival by sea – is read by our friend the cartographer Glyn Griffiths, who has kindly provided many maps for our website and publications over the last twenty years, and for whose work we are most happy to thank here.
Revis Cruttenden, “Island Chapel” (detail, 2010, oil on board, 35.5 x 20.5).
A second extract from Bent’s Naxos chapter (‘In the Mountains of Naxos’) takes us inland and up into the mountains by paths still traceable among the picture-book villages of the interior region of Potamia. It is read by garden-designer/artist Revis Cruttenden, Cycladic traveller and erstwhile Mani resident. (Mabel’s diary gives the date of the rainy mule ride as 29 December 1883.)
Naxos 3 [Bent’s Ch. 14: Sunday, 23 December 1883 – Monday, 7 January 1884]
Vanessa Gordon
For our third reading from Bent’s extended Naxos chapter in his classic 1885 Cyclades travelogue, who better to ask than Vanessa Gordon, author of The Naxos Mysteries – her choice being Theodore and Mabel’s ride up into the north-east quarter of the island to see if the reputation of the villagers of Apiranthos can be as bad as it was made out, and then to scramble down to the coast to admire the famous unfinished statue at Apollonas.
The Naxos Mysteries: 1 – 4 (Vanessa Gordon, 2025).
Vanessa’s six books in her series The Naxos Mysteries are all to do with ‘archaeology, mystery and murder on the beautiful Greek island of Naxos’, involving her lead character, the archaeologist Martin Day; all themes, not totally disconnected from Theodore Bent’s narrative.
Kouros of Apollonas, Naxos. Mabel Bent writes in her diary: “We had a great deal of difficulty in the morning about starting to go and see an unfinished colossal statue said to be of Apollo, 1½ hour off near the sea… We had to leave the mules and climb with hands as well as feet to the quarry and on to the statue, which is enormous and very rough and weather worn.”(Wikipedia)
We should not be surprised, therefore, to find Theodore and Mabel making cameo appearances in two of Vanessa’s books – The Search for Artemis (2021, pp. 39-49, 129-30) and The House in Apíranthos (2024, p. 142) – this latter village featuring prominently in her reading here.
In this extract, Bent makes one of the earliest descriptions in English of the gigantic statue of ‘Apollo’ at Apollonas, and listen out, too, for references to the village of Komiaki (Koronida), where the Bents first encountered their mercurial dragoman Manthaios Simos, from neighbouring Anafi. As faithful as mercurial, Simos was instrumental in the rescue of the desperately ill Bents, east of Aden, in early 1897.
Area of Apíranthos, Naxos, Cyclades (Google Maps).
The Secrets of Stelida, Vanessa’s seventh title in her series is due in February 2026. She writes: ‘I love the mystery genre, which enables me to explore the magic of Greek antiquity, the wonderful landscape and the cuisine of Greece, and the rich complexities of human nature. In The Naxos Mysteries I try to appeal to both the mind and the heart of my reader, engaging them in the passions and tragedies of the characters in a context of discovery and exploration.’
Bonus Material
Travel-writer Marc Dubin’s dealings with the Bents (Marc Dubin/Bent Archive).
By way of ‘bonus material’, here is a modified reading of the Preface written by well-known travel-writer Marc Dubin for the Archaeopress edition of the Bents’ collected writings on the Dodecanese, in which he makes several references to Bent’s The Cyclades. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Marc, for it was his listing of Bent in a bibliography decades ago that indirectly gave rise to the Bent Archive some 40 years later. The reading is by Marc’s friend and Rhodes resident, Constance Rivemale.
Notes
Note 1: In terms of contemporary English visitors (tourists) to the region, Bent would have found little in the way of popular literature. There exists a superficial, anonymous, article that he most probably would have read, written by a young male(?) traveller who decided to make a short sail from Athens in February 1880, ‘to woo the sea breezes among the Cyclades’. His tour takes in Syros, Tinos, Delos, Naxos, Paros, and Antiparos. On Tinos he makes reference to the famous annual pilgrimage – an event that draws Bent there in the spring of 1883. The article, barely recommendable, is A Cruise in Greek Waters (The St. James’s Magazine and United Empire Review, v.39 (12) JY-D (1880), pp.39-46). Curiously, its title is identical to the earlier (1870) travelogue by the affable maverick Frederick Trench Townshend. This is well worth the trouble of finding, although the Cyclades are not included. Return from Note 1
Note 2: More readings will be added as and when they appear. For details of how to participate, contact info[at]thebentarchive[dot]com Return from Note 2
Transcribed from the American periodical The Youth’s Companion, v. 81, No. 26, June 27, 1907: pp. 307-8.
Bent’s friend, celebrated novelist Sir Henry Rider Haggard KBE (1856-1925) (Wikipedia).
This extraordinary, in so many ways, piece, with its reference to Rider Haggard’s friend Theodore Bent, celebrity explorer of Great Zimbabwe in 1891, appeared in June 1907. The article is balanced exactly on the tipping point of the start of the shattering of the myth of Great Zimbabwe, so much based on Bent’s erroneous interpretation of the famous ruins, which, in turn, had not a little to do with Cecil Rhodes – indirectly one of the sponsors of the Bent expedition to the site in 1891.
This shattering began, it can be argued, with the head-on clash of two great studies – David Randall-MacIver’s Mediaeval Rhodesia (1906), in the vanguard of the ‘Africans-built-the-ruins’ movement, and R.N. Hall’s Great Zimbabwe (1905), fighting the rearguard ‘It-was-the-Phoenicians-or similar’ brigade, on whose side Haggard, as was to be expected, arrayed himself. note 1
In the UK, Haggard’s article was published in Cassell’s Magazine note 2 (1907, June-Nov, pp. 144-51) a month later, July 1907, than the American version, but we cannot be certain when Haggard submitted these articles or on what terms. The Cassell version varies in several sections and layout, i.e. in it Haggard (p. 144) inserts a moaning paragraph or two complaining that in America his King Solomon’s Mines has been ‘pirated by the million’. Understandably this pique has vanished from the American article. Also, The Youth’s Companion version is dramatically illustrated with lithographs of Great Zimbabwe (including the famous soapstone bird illustrated below), which were circulating at the time and resembling Mabel Bent’s photographs in Bent’s Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892), whereas the Cassell version has fictional illustrations by Russell Flint. Cassell’s first published Haggard’s bestseller in late 1885, the same year that Bent’s great travelogue ‘The Cyclades‘ appeared.
‘The Real “King Solomon’s Mines”, by H. Rider Haggard’
Over twenty years ago the spirit moved me to attempt a story of African adventure, and as a result I wrote a book called “King Soloman’s Mines”. Now one of those old Romans who had such an extraordinary art of summing up gathered wisdom in a single sentence has informed us that books, like men, have their appointed destinies. Certainly this is so. Thus for “King Solomon’s Mines” I never expected any particular success. It was only a tale of adventure, and there seemed to be no reason why I should feel especially hopeful.
Indeed, if I remember right, this pessimistic attitude was shared by sundry publishers, who turned up their experienced noses at what has proved to be a sound investment in the way of fiction, until by chance it fell into the hands of the late Mr. W.E. Henley, who recommended it to Messrs. Cassell. Even when the manuscript found a publisher, I recollect, so small was my faith that I nearly disposed of the work outright for a small sum of money.
Yet “King Solomon’s Mines” has proved curiously successful. Twenty years have gone by, and it still flourishes. Old ladies still buy it under the impression that it is a religious tale, and other people, young and old, because it amuses them. During my recent journey through America I met scarcely any one who did not take the opportunity of informing me that he [sic] had read “King Solomon’s Mines”.
When I was a lad and a public servant in Africa I met many men who have now long passed away – the pioneers of settlement and exploration, or those who had first become acquainted with certain of the great savage races of the interior, or who had helped to shape history when at last these races and the white man found themselves face to face. Being of an inquiring character, I collected from them information which afterward enabled me to produce such books as “Nada the Lily” or that which I am discussing.
Thus, although I think that Mr. Baines, one of the first wanderers in much of the country which is now Rhodesia died shortly after I reached Natal, and I do not recall ever having spoken to him, I knew his family, and doubtless heard something of the country from them and others, with the result that the idea must have become implanted in my mind that it had once been occupied by an ancient people.
The Things I Did Not Know
How I came to conclude that this people was Phoenician I have now no idea. Nor, to the best of my memory, did I ever at any time hear of the great ruin of Zimbabwe, or that the ancients has carried on a vast gold-mining enterprise in the part of Africa where it stands. Still less did I know that diamonds existed elsewhere than Kimberley; indeed, that fact has only been discovered within the last few years. I introduced them only because they were more picturesque and easier to handle than gold would have been.
When I wrote of King Solomon’s Road I never guessed that the old-world Road of God, as I think it is called, would be discovered in the Matoppos; when I imagined Sheba’s Breasts I was ignorant that so named and shaped they stand – vide the latest maps – not far from the Tokwe River, guarding the gate to Great Zimbabwe, near to which, in truth, or so I believe, Solomon had the mines that poured the gold of Ophir into his coffers.
I never knew of the ancient workings, whereof so many have since been found, or of the treasury with the swinging doors of stone which now is said to have an actual existence. All of these, so far as this and other books are concerned, were the fruit of imagination, conceived, I suppose, from chance words spoken long ago that lay dormant in the mind.
But of the Matabele, who in the tale are named the Kukuanas, I did know something even in those days. Indeed, I went very near to knowing too much, for when, in 1877, my dead friends, Captain Patterson and Mr. J. Sergeaunt, were sent by Sir Bartle Frere on an embassy to their king, Lobengula, I begged the government of the Transvaal, whose servant I was at that time, for leave to accompany them.
If I Had Gone On!
That was refused, as I could not be spared from my office. So I rode with them a few miles, and returned. Had I gone on, my fate doubtless would have been their fate, for Lobengula murdered them both very cruelly, also my two servants, whom I had lent them, and poor young Thomas, the missionary’s son. The names of those two servants, Khiva, the bastard Zulu, and Ventvogel, the Hottentot, I have tried to preserve in the pages of “King Solomon’s Mines”. In life they were such men as are there described.
So much for legends and romance. Now let us come to the facts.
If any reader will take the trouble to consult a modern map of central South Africa, he [sic] may see a vast block of territory bounded, roughly speaking, by the Zambezi on the north and the Transvaal on the south, by Barotseland and Bechuanaland on the west, and by Portuguese East Africa on the east, measuring perhaps six hundred miles square.
Scattered over all this huge expanse are found ancient ruins, whereof about five hundred are known to exist, while doubtless many more remain to be discovered. These ruins, in spite of certain late theories to the contrary, it would seem almost certain – or so, at least, my late friend, Theodore Bent, and other learned persons have concluded – were built by people of Semitic race, perhaps Phoenicians, or, to be more accurate, South Arabian Himyarites, a people rendered somewhat obscure by age. At any rate, they worshiped the sun, the moon, the planets, and took observations of the more distant stars. Also, in the intervals of these pious occupations, they were exceedingly keen business men. Business took them to South Africa, where they were not native, and business kept them there, until at last, while still engaged on business, or so it seems most probable, they were all of them slain.
Their occupation was gold-mining, perhaps with a little trading in “ivory, almug-trees, apes and peacocks – or ostriches – thrown in. They opened up hundreds of gold reefs, from which it is estimated that they extracted at least seventy-five million pounds’ worth of gold, and probably a great deal more. They built scores of forts to protect their line of communication with the coast. They erected vast stronghold temples, of which the Great Zimbabwe, that is situated practically in the center of the block of territory delimited above, is the largest yet discovered. They worshiped the sun and the moon, as I have said. They enslaved the local population by tens of thousands to labor in the mines and other public works, for gold-seeking was evidently their state monopoly.
They came, they dwelt, they vanished. That is all we know about them. What they were like, what were there domestic habits, what land they took ship from, to what land returned, how they spent their leisure, in what dwellings they abode, whither they carried their dead for burial – of all these things and many others we are utterly ignorant.
The thing is strange, almost terrifying to think of. We modern folk are very vain of ourselves. We can hardly conceive a state of affairs on this little planet in which we shall not fill a large part, except for some obscure traces of blood, our particular race, the Anglo-Saxon, the Teutonic, the Gallic, whatever it may be, has passed away and been forgotten. Imagine London, Paris, Berlin, Chicago, and those who built them, forgotten! Yet such things may well come about; indeed, there are forces at work in the world, although few folk give a thought to them, which seem likely to bring them about a great deal sooner than we anticipate.
As we think to-day, so doubtless these Phoenicians, or Himyarites, or whoever they may have been, thought in their day. Remember, it must have been a great people that without the aid of steam or firearms could have penetrated, not peacefully, we may be sure, into the dark heart of Africa, and there have established their dominion over its teeming millions of population.
Under the Conquerors
‘To and fro swayed the mass of struggling warriors.’ One of Flint’s illustrations in Chapter 8 of Cassell’s 1907 edition of ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ (Project Gutenberg).
Probably the struggle was long and fierce – how fierce their fortifications show, for evidently they lived the overlords, the taskmasters of hostile multitudes; yes, multitudes and multitudes, for there are great districts in Rhodesia where, for league after league, even the mountainsides are terraced by the patient, laborious toil of man, that every inch of soil might be made available for the growth of food. Yet these fierce Semitic traders broke their spirit and brought them under the yoke; forced them to dig in the dark mines for gold, to pound the quartz with stone hammers and bake it in crucibles; forced them to quarry the hard granite and ironstone to the shape and size of the bricks they were accustomed in their land of origin, and, generation by generation, to build up the mighty, immemorial mass of temple fortresses.
When did they do it? No one knows, but from the orientation of the ruins to the winter or summer solstice, or to the northern stars, scholars think that the earliest of them were built somewhere about two thousand years before Christ . And when did they cease from their labors, leaving nothing behind them but these dry-built walls – for, although they were proficient in the manufacture of cement, they used no mortar – and the hollow pits whence they had dug the gold, and the instruments with which they treated it? That no scholar can tell us, although many scholars have theories on the matter. They vanished, that is all. Probably the subject tribes, having learned their masters’ wisdom, rose up and massacred them to the last man; and in those days there was no historian to record it and no novelist to make a story of the thing.
Solemn, awe-inspiring, the great elliptical building of Zimbabwe still stands beneath the moon, which once doubtless was worshiped from its courts. In it are the altars and the sacred cone where once the priests made prayer, or perchance offered sacrifice of children to Baal and to Ashtaroth.
On the hill above, amidst the granite boulders, frowns the fortress, and all round stretch the foundation blocks of a dead city. Here the Makalanga, that is, the People of the Sun, descendants without doubt of the Semitic conquerors and the native races, still make offerings of black oxen to the spirits of their ancestors – or did so till within a few years gone. The temple, too, or so they hold, is still haunted by those spirits; none will enter it at night. But out of the beginning of it all these folk know nothing. If questioned, they say only that the place was built by white men “when stones were soft”; that is, countless ages ago.
Haggard’s ‘carven vultures’. Mabel Bent’s (presumably) photo of the famous soapstone birds the Bents removed from Great Zimbabwe in 1891 but which were reclaimed by Cecil Rhodes later. No originals remain in the UK , only a replica cast in the British Museum (not on display) (from “The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland”, 1892, p. 181).
What a place it must have been when the monoliths and the carven vultures, each upon its soapstone pillar, stood in their places upon the broad, flat tops of the walls, when the goldsmiths were at work and the merchants trafficked in the courts, when the processions wound their way through the narrow passages and the white-robed, tall-capped priests did sacrifice in the shrines!
Where did they bury their dead one wonders. For of these, as yet, no cemetery has been found. Perhaps they cremated them and cast their ashes to the winds. Perhaps they embalmed them, if they were individuals of consequences, and sent them back to Arabia or to Tyre, as the Chinese send their dead to-day, while humbler folk were cast out to the beasts and birds. Or perhaps they still lie in deep and hidden kloofs among the mountains.
This, at least, is evident, that during their long centuries of occupation, for all these ruins reveal various periods of building that must have been separated by great stretches of time, the dead were many. Indeed, a few have been found – not at the Great Zimbabwe, but at Mundie, at Chum and at Dhlo-dhlo. These were interred beneath the granite cement of the floors, perhaps under the dwelling of the deceased, who was laid on his side, with his head resting upon a stone or wooden pillow of the ancient Egyptian pattern, eathernware pots standing about him, his gold ornaments still upon his person, and cakes of gold within his pouch to pay the expenses of his last long journey. If he were a high official also, his gold-headed and gold-ferruled rod of office was laid in the tomb with him.
One of these departed, who dwelt, or, at any rate, was buried at Chum, was a giant. Messrs. Hall and Neal say that he was over seven feet high, his shin-bone being more than two feet in length. As much as seventy-two ounces of gold have been found buried with a single ancient, and at Dhlo-dhlo my friend, Major Burnham, D.S.O., found more than six hundred ounces of that metal, nearly all of it, I think, manufactured. Also he found skeletons, and within them barbed arrowheads, showing how they met their deaths, some of which arrowheads I still have, although whether these date from ancient or from medieval times I cannot say.
‘Golden Rhinoceros of Mapungubwe’, c. 11th century CE, gold foil, Monomotapa-Zimbabwe Culture, University of Pretoria Museums (Sian Tiley-Nel, Wikipedia).
Ages and ages after the ancients had been destroyed or left the country, there was another empire here, that of Monomotapa, and semi-savage kings, of whom Mr. Wilmot tells us in his book, held their courts in the Zimbabwes, The Portuguese used to fight with these people, and to send missionaries to make Christians of those who survived.
Thus from documents preserved in the Vatican it appears that in 1628 one Brother Louis, having defeated the emperor and his army of a hundred thousand men, went on to the Great Zimbabwe, “the court of the king, and there”, he says, “I built a little church and put up a crucifix I had brought with me and a statue of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary.”
Sixty or seventy years before this, also, Father Gonsalvo Silvera was murdered by the Emperor of Monomotapa under circumstances which would be well worth relating if I had the space. Two generations later Father Alphonsus, travelling up the Zambezi, into a tributary of which the body was thrown, alleges that he was shown a place where it still lay uncorrupted. He could not visit it, however, because – as the report went – it was carefully guarded by tigers!
But of these Zimbabwes, ancient and medieval, the legends are endless. Now they are the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race: and new dead, Maj. Allan Wilson and his companions, who fell fighting overwhelming odds on the banks of the Shangani, lie within the shadow of their walls, which still wrap the secrets of those who built them in time-worn stone and impenetrable silence.
An undated, cryptic letter from Bent to Rider Haggard, addressed from Sutton Hall the Bents’ country residence, outside Macclesfield, north-western England (Bent Archive).
Bent and Haggard were acquaintances, then friends, from the 1880s. In any list of likely candidates for the famous story-teller’s Alan Quartermain, Bent would be near the top.
In 1896, Theodore went on a bicycle tour with his friend Nigel Gresley to some English eastern counties and spent a day with Haggard and his wife. Gresley later published an account of the tour:
“From Beccles we hastened on [c. 8 miles], reaching Ditchingham about dusk. We had the pleasure of staying at Ditchingham House, where we were most kindly and agreeably entertained by Mr. Rider Haggard, the well-known and talented author of many leading Works of Fiction, notably, perhaps, the novels ‘She’, ‘King Solomon’s Mines’, and ‘Jess’. Mr. and Mrs. Rider Haggard are surrounded in their home by innumerable objects of art, carved oak, statuary, paintings illustrating scenes from his works, and many rare and valuable Curios picked up during their travels in Mexico, South Africa, and other parts of the world. We greatly enjoyed our 24 hours stay under their hospitable roof.” (A Week on Wheels in East Anglia… Touring in Norfolk and Suffolk with Theodore Bent… [1896, Witmore & Son, Dursley]).
Note 1: For a well-illustrated unpicking of the Ancient/Semitic v. Modern/African dispute that raged for decades, see ZimFieldGuide.com’s online post (undated). Return from Note 1
Delighted to add P.M. Iannetta’s choice of Ios for our ‘Reading The Cyclades’ project, marking the 140th (1885-2025) anniversary of Theodore Bent’s classic The Cyclades, or Life Among the InsularGreeks. If you want to join in, just Messenger us! (photo credits: see link)
Ios [Bent’s Ch. 7: Wednesday 23 January 1884 – Sunday 27 January 1884]
P.M. Iannetta; Ios harbour in the 1930s (after Liddell 1954); Ekaterina Lorenziadis’ costume (National Historical Museum, Athens); Ios, the Chora today (Joshua Doubek: Wikipedia).
English language teacher and island-hopper P.M. Iannetta narrates the Bents’ landing on Ios – ‘Little Malta’ – and their first impressions of the main town. We meet mayor Lorenziadis and his family and are treated to a fashion show by his daughter Ekaterina – the dress she is modelling is now on display at the National Historical Museum, Athens.
Map showing the expeditions of Theodore & Mabel Bent, 1883-1897 (drawn by Glyn Griffiths. (c) The Bent Archive)
Researches throw up Bent bits all the time – some don’t make it into articles or into our main pages. Nevertheless they are interesting (we think) and might perhaps be useful to some in their studies of mid-19th century travellers and their times.
After all, Theodore and Mabel were partial to the odd sidetrack (look at the map) and this Bent Miscellany might well lead you down some…
Snippets are added regularly, latest first, so return as often as you like. We include references and links wherever possible and if you want to cite www.tambent.com that would be appreciated.
Updated October 2025
Professor Ahmad Al-Jallad is conducting fascinating work (2025) on the Dhofari script – the conventional name for the undeciphered alphabet found in the hills of Dhofar (Ẓufār) and desert regions, stretching from Oman to Yemen’s al-Mahrah governorate and Socotra, where the Bents recorded several inscriptions.
The Paddington Times, Friday 2 August 1895: “Yet women are under a sex disqualification when a poor little squabble among men arises, whether or not one of them, like Mrs. Theodore Bent, the wife of the distinguished traveller of Mashonaland, who has done the work of a dozen explorers, has friends who expect that her additions to the scientific knowledge of the day will be acknowledged as they would be if she were of the other sex.”
The Paddington Times, Friday 16 September 1898: “The British Association this year met at Bristol for the third time, and has just concluded its business… In every section room last week ladies formed the majority of the audience. They were not of the butterfly class, rushing from place to place in search of novelty, but serious students from college classrooms and laboratories, who had travelled long distances to see and hear the great authorities of the scientific world. Many of the girls were themselves teachers, and keenly interested in scientific research. The papers by ladies were few in number, but noteworthy. The three great lady travellers of our time came to the front, modest, self-contained, accurate, and enthusiastic, each in her own domain – Mrs. Bishop, Mrs. Bent, and Miss Kingsley.”
Mid-Surrey Times, Saturday 15 May 1897: “Mr. Bent was always accompanied by his wife, one of whose functions was to look after the commissariat. Mr. Bent was a thorough believer in tea on his travels, and did not advise anyone to explore on spirits. The larder of the travellers usually included desiccated soups, corned beef and beef essence, potted meats, condensed milk, and, last but not least, some sackfuls of dry bread, for long experience taught Mr. and Mrs. Bent both what to avoid and what to add to there travelling impediments.”
In the article ‘The Real “King Solomon’s Mines”, by H. Rider Haggard’: ‘These ruins [Great Zimbabwe], in spite of certain late theories to the contrary, it would seem almost certain, – or so, at lease, my late friend, Theodore Bent, and other learned persons have concluded,- were built by people of Semitic race, perhaps Phoenicians, or, to be more accurate, South Arabian Himyarites, a people rendered somewhat obscure by age. At any rate, they worshiped the sun, the moon, the planets, and took observations of the more distant stars.’
‘Afraid of safety-pins. It is not easy to realize the bondage to fear under which barbarous people live on account of their superstitious ignorance. Mrs. Theodore Bent tells in her book, “Southern Arabia”, how she tried to make a present of a safety-pin to a native woman, and what a storm of indignation was occasioned by her act. On our arrival at our camping-ground and while we were waiting for our tents to be ready, I was surrounded by women all masked. They seemed highly astonished at a safety-pin which I was taking out, so I gave, or rather offered it, to an old woman near me. She wanted to take the pin, but several men rushed between us and roared at us both, and prevented my giving it to her. I stood there holding it out and she stretching out her hand, and one or two men then asked me for it for her. I put it down on a stone, and she took it away and seemed pleased; but a man soon brought it back to me on the end of a stick, saying they did know these things and were afraid of them.’ (credit: Digital Library@Villanova University)
in ‘Fireflies by J. Renwick Metheny’. ‘It does not pay robbers to get themselves or their horses shot. Like men of other occupations, they want to lose nothing. It is not from cowardice but from prudence that they resort to stratagem. Osman Oghlu, of whom Theodore Bent wrote so fascinatingly, fought with reckless courage against an overwhelming force of armed men; and at that he had no chance of escape… (credit: Digital Library@Villanova University)
In ‘The Breath of Allah in Six Chapters, Chapter 1’ by Charles Asbury Stephens (1844-1931). ‘”The English at Aden call it the Valley of the Hadramut”, replied the young engineer. “It lies eighty or a hundred miles inland from the barren south coast of Arabia, which stretches easterly from the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb to the Persian Gulf. In the days of King Solomon in the long centuries of the Roman Empire, the Vale of Hadramut was known as the country from which frankincense was brought, but since the era of Mohammed little has been heard of it. The fanaticism of the Moslem seyyids shut it up from the world till the year 1893, when an English traveler and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent, succeeded in so far winning the confidence of the sultans, or Arab princes, as to be permitted to enter the vale and reside there for a time.”‘ (credit: Digital Library@Villanova University)
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