This object, now in a musuem in Harare, Zumabwe, dates from 1300. Purely indigenous drum? Replica of the Ark of the Covenant? The ways we attach meaning to ancient objects tells us far more about the present than about the past.
The Ancient Romans often anthropomorphasized abstract ideas, and the notion of “Rumor” was one of the most concrete examples of this. In the Late Republic,…