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STONEHENGE AND OTHER BRITISH STONE MONUMENTS Astronomically Considered
Prometheus:
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PREFACE
IN continuation of my work on the astronomical uses of the Egyptian Temples, I have from time to time, when leisure has permitted, given attention to some of the stone circles and other stone monuments erected, as I believed, for similar uses in this country. One reason for doing so was that in consequence of the supineness of successive Governments, and the neglect and wanton destruction by individuals, the British monuments are rapidly disappearing.
Although, and indeed because, these inquiries are still incomplete, I now bring together some of the notes I have collected, as they may induce other inquirers to go on with the work. Some of the results already obtained have been communicated to the Royal Society, and others have appeared in articles published in Nature, but only a small percentage of the monuments available has so far been examined. Further observations are required in order that the hypothesis set forth in this book may be rejected or confirmed.
In the observations made at Stonehenge referred to in Chapter VII. I had the inestimable advantage of
vi PREFACE
the collaboration of the late Mr. Penrose. Our work there would not have been possible without the sympathetic assistance of Sir Edmund Antrobus, Bart.; Colonel Duncan A. Johnston, R.E., Director-General of the Ordnance Survey, also was good enough on several occasions to furnish us with much valuable information which is referred to in its place. Messrs. Howard Payn and Fowler skilfully and zealously helped in the observations and computations. To all these I am glad to take this opportunity of expressing my obligations.
With regard to the other monuments besides Stonehenge, I have to tender my thanks to the following gentlemen for most valuable local assistance:—
Brittany—Lieut, de Vaisseau Devoir.
Stenness—Mr. Spence.
Stanton Drew—Professor Lloyd Morgan, Mr. Morrow, and Mr. Dymond.
The Hurlers, and the Merry Maidens—the Right Hon. Viscount Falmouth, Capt. Henderson, Mr. Horton Bolitho and Mr. Wallis.
Tregaseal—Mr. Horton Bolitho and Mr. Thomas.
The Dartmoor Avenues—Mr. Worth.
The following have helped me in many ways, among them with advice and criticism :—Principal Rhys, Dr. Wallis Budge, Dr. J. G. Frazer, and Mr. A. L. Lewis.
Prometheus:
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
IN the book I published ten years ago, entitled “ The Dawn of Astronomy,” I gave a pretty full account of the principles and the methods of observation which enable us to trace the ideas which were in the minds of the ancient Egyptians when they set out the line of a temple they proposed to build.
Numerous references to the ceremonial of laying the foundation-stones of temples exist, and we learn from the works of Chabas, Brugsch, Diimicken1 and others, that the foundation of an Egyptian temple was associated with a series of ceremonies which are repeatedly described with great minuteness. Amongst these ceremonies, one especially refers to the fixing of the temple- axis ; it is called, technically, “ the stretching of the cord,” and is not only illustrated by inscriptions on the walls of the temples of Karnak, Denderah and Edfu— to mention the best-known cases—but is referred to elsewhere.
1 “ Baugeschichte des Dendera-Tempels.” 1877.
B
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During the ceremony the king proceeded to the site where the temple was to be built, accompanied mythically by the goddess Sesheta, who is styled “ the mistress of the laying of the foundation-stone.”
Each was armed with a stake. The two stakes were connected by a cord. Next the cord was aligned towards the sun on some day of the year, or a star, as the case might be; when the alignment was perfect the two stakes were driven into the ground by means of a wooden mallet. One boundary wall parallel to the main axis of the temple was built along the line marked out by this stretched cord.
If the moment of the rising or setting of the sun or star were chosen, as we have every reason to believe was the case, seeing that all the early observations were made on the horizon, it is obvious that the light from the body towards which the temple was thus aligned would penetrate the axis of the temple from one end to the other in the original direction of the cord.
We learn from Chabas that the Egyptian word which expresses the idea of founding or laying the foundation- stone of a temple is Senti—a word which still exists in Coptic. But in the old language another word Pet-ser, which no longer remains in Coptic, has been traced. It has been established that pet means to stretch, and ser means cord, so that that part of the ceremonial which consisted in stretching a cord in the direction of a star was considered of so great an importance that it gave its name to the whole ceremonial.
Dealing with the existing remains of Egyptian temples, it may be said that the most majestic among them was that of Amen-Ra at Karnak, dedicated to the Sun-God,
I
INTRODUCTORY
3
and oriented to catch the light of the sun setting at the summer solstice, the time of the year at which the all-important rise of the Nile began.
Although the sun is no longer worshipped in Egypt or Britain, sun-worship has not yet disappeared from the world. Professor Gowland has recently1 brought to notice a surviving form of sun-worship in Japan. I quote his statement:—
“ There on the seashore at Futa-mi-ga-ura (as will be seen in a. copy of a print which I obtained at that ancient place) the orientation of the shrine of adoration is given by two gigantic rocks which rise from the sea as natural pillars. The sun as it rises over the mountains of the distant shore is observed between them, and the customary prayers and offerings made in that direction (Fig. 1).
“ It is, too, specially worthy of note that the point from which the sun is revered is marked by a structure of the form of a trilithon, but made of wood, placed immediately behind the altar. This representative of the trilithon is of very remote date in Japan, and has been in use there from the earliest times in connection with the observances of the ancient Shinto cult in which the Sun-Goddess is the chief deity. One of its important uses, which still survives, was to indicate the direction of the position of some sacred place or object of veneration, in order that worshippers might make their prayers and oblations towards the proper quarter.”
The table of offerings must also be noted.
In the book to which I have referred, I also endeavoured to show that a knowledge of even elementary 1 “ Archseologia,” vol. lviii.
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astronomy may be of very great assistance to students of archaeology, history, folk-lore and all that learning which deals with man’s first attempts to grasp the
? \\ N\
meaning and phenomena of the universe in which he found himself before any scientific methods were available to him ; before he had any idea of the origins or the conditionings of the things around him.
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INTRODUCTORY
5
It may be well, however, in the present book to restate the underlying astronomical principles in the briefest possible manner; and this is the more easily done because, in the absence of measuring instruments, the horizon was the only circle which the ancient peoples could employ effectively, and we need only therefore consider it.
Indeed, whether we regard the Rig-Veda or the Egyptian monuments from an astronomical point of view, we are struck by the fact that the early worship
FIG. 2.—The celestial sphere, conditions at the North Pole. A parallel sphere. N.P., North celestial Pole; N, position of observer.
and all the early observations related to the horizon. This was true not only for the sun, but for all the stars which studded the general expanse of sky.
We have therefore chiefly to consider the relation of the horizon of any place to the apparent movements of celestial bodies at that place.
We now know that the earth rotates on its axis, but this idea was of course quite unknown to these early peoples. Since the earth rotates, with stars infinitely removed surrounding it on all sides, the apparent movements of the stars will depend very much upon
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the position we happen to occupy on the earth. An observer at the North Pole of the earth, for instance,
FIG. 3.—The celestial sphere, conditions at the Equator. A right sphere. Qy standpoint of observer ; PP, the celestial poles ; EW> east and west points.
would see the stars moving round in circles parallel to the horizon (Fig. 2). No star could therefore either rise
FIG. 4.—The celestial sphere, conditions in a middle latitude. An oblique sphere. In this woodcut DD' shows the apparent path of a circumpolar star; BB'B\ the path and rising and setting points of an equatorial star; CC'CT and AA'A”, those of stars of mid declination, one north and the other south ; 0, standpoint of observer.
or set—one half of the heavens would be always visible above his horizon, and the other half invisible. An observer at the South Pole would of course see that
INTRODUCTORY
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7
half of the stars invisible to the observer at the northern one.
If the observer be on the equator, the movements of the stars will appear to be as indicated in this diagram {Fig. 3)—that is, all the stars will rise and set, and each star will be, in turn, twelve hours above the horizon, and the same time below it. But if we consider the position of an observer in a middle latitude, say at Stonehenge, we find that some stars will always be above the horizon, some always below—that is, they will neither rise nor set. All other stars will both rise and set, but some of them will be above the horizon for a long time and below for a short time, whereas others will be a very short time above the horizon and a long time below it, each star completing a circle in a day (Fig. 4).
Wherever we are upon the earth we always imagine that we are on the top of it. The idea held by all the early peoples was that the surface of the earth near them was an extended plain: they imagined that the land that they knew and just the surrounding lands were really in the centre of the extended plain. Plato, for instance, was content to think the Mediterranean and Greece upon the top of a cube, and Anaximander placed the same region at the top of a cylinder.
By the use of a terrestrial globe we can best study the conditions of observation at the poles of the earth, the equator and some place in middle latitude. The wooden horizon of the globe is parallel to the horizon of a place at the top of the globe, which horizon we can represent by a wafer. By inclining the axis of the globe and watching the movement of the wafer as the
8
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CHAP.
globe is turned round, we can get a very concrete idea of the different relations of the observer’s horizon to the apparent paths of the stars in different latitudes.
We have next to deal with the astronomical relations of the horizon of any place, in connection with the observation of the sun and stars at the times of rising or setting, when of course they are on or near the horizon ; and in order to bring this matter nearer to the ancient monuments, we will study this question for both Thebes and Stonehenge. We may take the latitude of Thebes as 25°, Stonehenge as 51°, and we wdll begin with Thebes.
To consider an observer on the Nile at Thebes and to adjust things properly we must rectify a celestial globe to the latitude of 25° N., or, in other words, incline the axis of the globe at that angle to the wooden horizon.
Since all the stars which pass between the North Pole and the horizon cannot set, all their apparent movements will take place above the horizon. All the stars between the horizon and the South Pole will never rise. Hence, stars within the distance of 25° from the North Pole will never set at Thebes, and those stars within 25° of the South Pole will never be visible there. At any place the latitude and the elevation of the pole are the same. It so happens that many of those places with which archaeologists have to do in studying the history of early peoples—Chaldaea, Egypt, Babylonia, &c.—are in low middle latitudes, therefore we have to deal with bodies in the skies which do set and bodies which do not, and the elevation of the pole is neither very great nor very small. But
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although in each different latitude the inclination of the equator to the horizon as well as the elevation of the pole will vary, there will be a strict relationship between the inclination of the equator at each place and the elevation of the pole. Except at the poles themselves the equator will cut the horizon due east and due west; therefore every celestial body to the north of the celestial equator which rises and sets will cut the horizon between the east and west point and the north point; those bodies which do not rise will of course not cut the horizon at all.
The stars near the equator, and the sun, in such a latitude as that of Thebes, will appear to rise or set at no very considerable angle from the vertical; but when we deal with stars very near to the north or south points of the horizon they will seem to skim along the horizon instead of rising directly.
We now pass on to Stonehenge. To represent the new condition the axis of the globe will now require to be inclined 51° to the horizon. The number of northern stars which do not set and of southern stars which do not rise will be much greater than at Thebes. The most northern and southern stars visible will in their movement hug the horizon more closely than wTas observed under the Thebes condition.
The sun, both at Thebes and Stonehenge, since it moves among the stars from 23^° N. to 23£° S. each year, will change its place of rising and setting at different times of the year.
Now it will at once be obvious that there must be a strict law connecting the position of a star with ita
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STONEHENGE
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place of rising or setting. Stars at the same distance from the celestial pole or equator will rise or set at the same point of the horizon, and if a star does not change its place in the heavens it will always rise or set in the same place.
The sun as it changes its position each day, in its swing N. and S. of the equator, will rise and set on any day in the same place as a star which permanently has the same distance from the equator as that temporarily occupied by the sun.
Here it will be convenient to introduce one or two technical terms: we generally define a star’s place by giving, as one ordinate, its distance in degrees from the equator : this distance is called its declination.
Further, we generally define points on the horizon by dividing its whole circumference into 360c, so that we can have azimuths up to 90° from the north and south points to the east and west points. We also have amplitudes from the east and west points towards the north and south points. We can say, then, that a star of a certain declination, or the sun when it occupies that declination, will rise or set at such an azimuth, or at such an amplitude. This will apply to both north and south declinations.
Then supposing the azimuth to be 39° in the N.E. quadrant, it is written N. 39° E. For the other quadrants we have N. 39° W., S. 39° E., and S. 39° W., respectively.
The following table gives the amplitudes of rising or setting (north or south) of celestial bodies having declinations from 0° to 64°, at Thebes and Stonehenge respectively.
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INTRODUCTORY
11
AMPLITUDES AT THEBES AND STONEHENGE.
Declina- Amplitude. Declina Amplitude.
tion. Thebes. Stonehenge. tion. Thebes. Stonehenge.
0° 0° 0' 0° 0' 33° 37°11' 59°56'
1 1 7 1 36 34 38 21 62 42
2 2 13 3 11 35 39 31 65 44
3 3 20 446 36 40 42 69 4
4 426 622 37 41 53 73 0
5 533 758 38 43 5 78 4
3 6 40 934 39 44 17 90 0
7 7 47 11 10 40 45 30
8 853 12 47 41 46 43
9 I 9 59 14 23 42 47 56
10 1 11 6 16 1 43 49 10
11 1 12 13 17 39 44 50 25
12 13 20 19 18 45 51 41
13 1 1 14 27 20 57 46 52 57
14 15 34 22 36 47 54 14
15 16 41 24 17 48 55 32
16 i I 17 49 25 58 49 56 51
17 18 56 27 45 50 58 12
18 ! ! 20 3 29 24 51 59 34
19 21 10 31 10 52 60 58
20 22 17 32 55 53 62 23
21 23 25 34 43 54 63 51
22 24 33 36 32 55 65 21
23 25 41 38 23 56 66 54
24 26 49 40 16 57 68 31
25 27 58 42 11 58 70 12
26 29 6 44 10 59 71 59
27 30 15 46 10 60 73 55
28 ; 3123 48 15 61 76 1
29 1 1 32 32 50 22 62 78 25
30 | | 33 41 52 36 63 81 19
31 1
32 1 34 51 36 1 54 55 57 21 64 85 42
The amplitude is always the complement of the azimuth, so that amplitude + azimuth = 90°. Later on I shall give amplitudes for latitudes higher than that of Stonehenge, so that still more northerly monuments can be considered.
CHAPTER II
THE ASTRONOMICAL DIVISIONS OF THE YEAR
IT is next important to deal with the yearly path of the sun, with a view of studying the relation of the various points of the horizon occupied by the sun at different times in the year. In the very early observations that were made in Egypt, Chaldaea and elsewhere, when the sun was considered to be a god who every morning got into his boat and floated across space, there was no particular reason for considering the amplitude at which the boat left, or came to, shore. But a few centuries showed that this rising or setting of the sun in widely varying amplitudes at different times of the year at the same place obeyed a very definite law.
In its northward passage it reaches the highest point at our summer solstice, and then goes down again till it reaches its greatest southern declination, as it does in our winter. At both these points the sun appears to stand still in its north or south movement, and the Latin word solstice exactly expresses that idea. The change of declination brought about by these movements will affect the place of the sun’s rising and setting ; this is why the sun sets most to the north in
CH.II ASTRONOMICAL DIVISIONS OF THE YEAR 13
summer and most to the south in winter. At the equinoxes the sun has always 0° Dccl., so it rises and sets due east and west all over the world. But at the solstices it has its greatest declination of 23^° N. or S.; it will rise and set therefore furthest from the east and west points; how far, will depend upon the latitude of the place, as will have been gathered from the preceding table (p. 11).
These solstices and their accompaniments are among the striking things in the natural world. In the winter solstice we have the depth of winter, in the summer solstice we have the height of summer, while at the equinoxes we have but transitional changes; in other words, while the solstices point out for us the conditions of greatest heat and greatest cold, the equinoxes point out for us those two times of the year at which the temperature conditions are very nearly equal, although of course in the one case we are saying good-bye to summer and in the other to winter.
Did the ancients know anything about these solstices and these equinoxes? Dealing with the monumental evidence in Egypt alone, the answer is absolutely overwhelming. Many thousand years ago the Egyptians were perfectly familiar with the solstices, and therefore with the yearly path of the sun.
This fundamental division of the sun’s apparent revolution and course which define our year into four nearly equal parts may be indicated as in Fig. 5, the highest point reached by the sun in our northern hemisphere being represented at the top.
In order better to consider the problem as it was presented to the early astronomers who built observatories
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CHAP.
(temples) to mark these points, we may deal with the bearings of the points occupied by the sun on the
Summer solstice. June.
Equinox.
March.
Dec.
Winter solstice.
FIG. 5.—The four Astronomical Divisions of the year.
horizon (either at rising or setting) at the times indicated. These points are defined, as we have seen, by
FIG. 6.—The various bearings of the sun risings and settings in a place with a N. latitude of 51°.
their “ amplitude ” or their distance in degrees from the E. or W. points of the horizon. In the diagram (Fig. 6)
ii ASTRONOMICAL DIVISIONS OF THE YEAR 15
I represent the conditions of our chief British sun-temple, Stonehenge, in latitude 51° N. approximately.
Taking the astronomical facts regarding the solstices and equinoxes for the first year (1901) of the present century, we find—
Sun enters Aries, Spring equinox, March 21.
„ „ Gemini, Summer solstice, 'June 21.
„ „ Libra, Autumn equinox, September 23.
„ „ Sagittarius, Winter solstice, December 23.
These points, then, are approximately ninety-one days apart (91 x 4 = 364).
In Fig. 6 I deal with the “ amplitudes ” at Stonehenge, that is, the angular distance along the horizon from the E. and W. points, at which the sunrise and sunset are seen at the solstices; at the equinoxes they are seen at the E. and W. points. But as these amplitudes vary with the latitude and therefore depend upon the place of observation, a more general treatment is possible if we deal with the declination of the sun itself, that is, its angular distance from the equator.
The maximum declination depends upon the obliquity of the ecliptic, that is, the angle between the plane of the ecliptic and that of the equator at the time of observation. When the Stonehenge Sarsen Stones were erected this angle was, as I shall show later on, 23° 54' 30'. Its mean value for the present year (1906) is 23° 27' 5*; it is decreasing very slowly.
It will be obvious from Fig. 6 that in temples built to observe the solstices or equinoxes, if they were open from end to end, looking in one direction we should see the sun rising at a solstice or equinox, and looking in the other we should see the sun setting at the
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CH. II
•opposite one. I shall show later on that this statement requires a slight modification.
But temples so built interfered with the ceremonial, which required that the light should illuminate a naos —that is, the Sanctuary or Holy of Holies, only entered by the High Priest, and generally kept dark. Usually, therefore, two temples were built back to back, with a common axis, as at Karnak.
And here a very important point comes in; which time of the year and day of the year are most easy to fix by astronomical observation ? As a matter of fact the summer solstice, the position of the sun on the longest day, is a point easily fixed. All we have to do is to observe the sun rising more and more to the north as the summer approaches, until at the very height of the summer we have the extreme north-easterly point of the horizon reached, and the sun stands still. We have the solstice. We can then put a row of stakes up, and so fix the solstitial line. Of course we find, as mankind has found generally, that the sun comes back next year to that same solstitial place of rising or setting. So that when we have once got such an alignment for the rising of the sun at midsummer, we can determine the length of the year in days, and therefore the beginning of each year as it comes round.
So much, then, for the chief points in what we may term the astronomical year, those at which the sun’s declination is greatest and least. We see that they are approximately ninety-one days apart—say three months.
CHAPTER III
THE AGRICULTURAL DIVISIONS OF THE YEAR
THE early peoples have been very much misrepresented, and held to have been uninstructed, by several writers who have not considered what they were really driving at. It was absolutely essential for early man, including the inhabitants of Britain as it was then— townless, uncivilised—that the people should know something about the proper time for performing their agricultural operations. We now go into a shop and for a penny buy an almanack which gives us everything we want to know about the year, the month and the day, and that is the reason why so few of us care about astronomy: we can get all we want from astronomy for a penny or twopence. But these poor people, unless they found out the time of the year and the month and the day for themselves, or got some one to tell them—and their priests were the men who knew, and they were priests because they knew—had absolutely no means of determining when their various agricultural operations should take place. So that we find all over the world temples erected in the very first flush of civilisation.
On this a point comes in of very considerable
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interest. If we study the civilisations in Egypt, we find that, so far as we know, one of the first peoples who used this principle of orientation for agricultural purposes was some tribe that came down the Nile about 6400 years B.c. They used the star Canopus, and their determination was that of the autumnal equinox, which practically was the time when the Nile began to go down, and when their sowing might begin. There was another race who, instead of being interested in the sun, and therefore in agriculture, at the time of the autumnal equinox, were interested in the year about the time of Easter as well. This race built the Pyramids about four thousand years B.c. There was an interval of about two or three thousand years between these races. As we shall see there were others, who at Thebes started the solstitial worship—that is to say, the worship of the sun at midsummer—and at Memphis in May, so as to enable them to go on with their agricultural operations with greater certainty. We must not forget that first of all the farmers tried to plough and sow by the moon. We can see how hopeless agriculture must have been under such conditions. The month, indeed, was the only unit of time employed, even of human life. We hear of people who lived 1200 years; that means 1200 months—there is no question whatever about that now.
When we study the history of our own country—when we come back from Egypt to Britain, leaving alone Greece and Rome—we find that in various times in our country we have had a year, a farmer’s year, beginning in the month of May; we have had another farmer’s
III AGRICULTURAL DIVISIONS OF THE YEAR 19
year beginning in the month of August; we have had another * farmer’s year beginning at the longest day; and it appears that the year beginning at the longest day was really the last year to be introduced. So that while we have in Stonehenge a solstitial temple—that is to say, a temple to make observations of the length of the year by observing the rise of the sun on the longest day of the year—in other parts of England there were other temples observing the sun, not on the 21st of June, but early in May and early in August.
Now, as I have indicated, the priest-astronomers in these temples could only have won and kept the respect of the agricultural population with whom alone they were surrounded in early times, and by whom they were supported, by being useful to them in some way or another. This could only have been in connection with what we may term generally the farming operations necessary at different times of the year, whether in the shape of preparing the ground or gathering the produce. For this they must have watched the stars.
A very large part of mythology has sprung out of the temple cults, prayer, sacrifices and thanksgiving connected with these farming operations in different lands and ages.
I wish to show next that by studying the orientation of temples erected to watch the stars and sunrise and sunset at times other than the solstices or equinoxes, an immense amount of information may be gained if we endeavour to find the way in which the problem must have been attacked before the year was thoroughly established, and when it was still a question of grass-
c 2
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CHAP.
or corn-kings or gods who had to be propitiated; and we may even be enabled to understand why the .particular divisions of the year were chosen.
In a solstitial temple the sun makes its appearance only once a year, when it reaches its greatest north or south declination; but in the temples dealing with lower declinations the sun appears twice, once on its journey from the summer to the winter solstice, and again on its return.
The first difficulty of the inquiry in the direction I have indicated arises from the fact that the products of different countries vary, and that identical farming operations have to be carried on at different times in these countries. We must, then, begin with some one country, and as the record is fullest for Greece I will begin with it.
The first thing we find is that the chief points in the farmer’s year in Greece are about as far from the fixed points in the astronomical year as they well can be.
In the Greek information so admirably collated by
M. Ruelle in the article on the calendar in Daremberg and Saglio’s monumental “ Dictionnaire des Antiquites Greques et Romanies,” the earlier Gregorian dates on which the seasons were reckoned to commence in ancient Greece were as follows :—
Summer... ... ... ... May 6.
Autumn vorrwpov)... ... August 11.
Winter ... ... ... ... November 10.
Spring ... ... ... ... February 7. I
I may also add from the same source that in the calendars of the Latins the dates become:—
HI AGRICULTURAL DIVISIONS OF THE YEAR 21
Summer ... Autumn ... Winter ... Spring
May 9. August 8. November 9. February 7.
Now we see at once that these dates are, roughly, half-way between the solstices and equinoxes.
Prometheus:
This, then, at once brings us back to the orientation problem, which was to fix by means of a temple in the ordinary way dates nearer to these turning-points in the local farmer’s years than those fixed by the solstitial and equinoctial temples.
It must be borne in mind that it is not merely a question of stately piles such as Karnak and the Parthenon in populous centres, but of the humblest dolmen or stone circle, in scattered agricultural communities, which was as certainly used for orientation purposes, that is, for recording the lapse of time at night or return of some season important to the tiller of the soil. The advent of the season thus determined could be announced to outlying districts by fire signals at night.
I have already pointed out that any temple, dolmen or cromlech oriented to a sunrise or sunset at any dates between the solstices will receive the sunlight twice a year.
If the temple is pointed nearly solstitially the two dates at which the sun appears in it will be near the solstice; similarly, for a temple pointed nearly equinoctially the dates will be near the equinox ; but if the ancients wished to divide the ninety-one days’ interval between the solstice and equinox, a convenient method of doing this would be to observe the sun at the half-time interval, such that the same temple would serve on both
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CHAP.
occasions. This could be done by orienting the temple to the sun’s place on the horizon when it had the declination 16° 20' on its upward and downward journey, or, in other words, was, in days, half-way between the equinox and solstice. Thus, for the 45 days
^ from March 22, we have in—
March 9
April 30
May 6
45
What, then, are the non-equinoctial, non-solstitial days of the year when the sun has this declination ?
They are, in the sun’s journey from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice and back again,
May 6 and August 8 Sun’s decl. N. 16° 20'.
Similarly, for the journey to the winter solstice and return we have
November 8 and February 4 ... Sun’s decl. S. 16° 20'.
We get, then, a year symmetrical with the astronomical year, which can be indicated with it as in Fig. 7; a year roughly halving the intervals between the chief dates of the astronomical year.
With regard to the dates shown I have already pointed out that fanning operations would not occur at the same time in different lands; that ploughing and seed time and harvest would vary with crops and latitudes; and I must now add that when we wish to
III AGRICULTURAL DIVISIONS OF THE YEAR 23
determine the exact days of the month we have to struggle with all the difficulties introduced by the various systems adopted by different ancient nations to bring together the reckoning of months by the moon and of years by the sun.
In more recent times there is an additional difficulty owing to the incomplete reconstruction of the calendar by Julius Caesar, who gave us the Julian year. Thus,
Summer solstice. June 21.
Dec. 2S.
Winter solstice.
FIG. 7.—The astronomical and vegetation divisions of the year.
while the spring equinox occurred on March 21 at the time of the Council of Nice, in 325 A.D., by the year 1751 the dating of the year on which it took place had slipped back to the 10th. Hence the Act 24 George II. c. 23, by which September 2, 1752, was followed by September 14 instead of by the 3rd, thus regaining the eleven days lost. This change from the so-called “ old style” to the “new style” is responsible for a great deal of confusion.
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STONEHENGE
CH. Ill
Another cause of trouble was the forsaking by the Jews of the solar year, with which they commenced, in favour of the Babylonian lunar year, which has been continued for the purposes of worship by Christians, giving us “ movable feasts ” to such an extent that Easter Day, which once invariably marked the spring equinox, may vary from March 22 to April 25, and Whit Sunday from May 10 to June 13. It is at once obvious that no fixed operations of Nature can lie indicated by such variable dates as these.
Hence in what follows I shall only deal with the months involved; these amply suffice for a general statement, but a discussion as to exact dates may come later.
To sum up, then, the astronomer-priests had (l) to watch the time at night by observing a star rising near the north point of the horizon. This star would act as a warner of sunrise at some time of the year.
(2) To watch for the rising or setting of other stars in various azimuths warning sunrise at the other critical times of the May or Solstitial years.
(3) To watch the sunrise and sunset.
(4) To mark all rising or setting places of the warning stars and sun by sight-lines from the circle.
CHAPTER IV
THE VARIOUS NEW-YEAR DAYS
WITH regard to the astronomical year it may be stated that each solstice and equinox has in turn in some country or another, and even in the same country at different times, been taken as the beginning of the year. •
We have, then, to begin with, the following which may be called astronomical years :—
Solstitial /June December June.
year. [December June December.
Equinoctial fMarch September March.
year. [September March September.
Next, if we treat the intermediate points we have found in the same way, we have the following vegetation years:—
Flower J May N ovember May.
year. /November May November.
Harvest /August February August.
year. /February August February.
It will have been gathered from Fig. 7 that the temples or cromlechs erected to watch the first sunrise of the May-November-May year could also perform the same office for the August-February-August year; and in a
26
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
stone circle the priests, by looking along the axis almost in an opposite direction, could note the sunsets marking the completion of the half of the sun’s yearly round in November and February.
Now to those who know anything of the important contributions of Grimm, Rh^s, Frazer, and many others we might name, to our knowledge of the mythology, worships, and customs in the Mediterranean basin and western Europe, an inspection of the first columns in the above tables will show that here we have a common meeting-ground for temple orientation, vegetation and customs depending on it, religious festivals, and mythology. From the Egyptian times at least to our own a generic sun-god has been specifically commemorated in each of the named months. Generic customs with specific differences are as easily traced in the same months; while generic vegetation with specific representatives proper to the season of the year has been so carefully regarded that even December, though without May flowers or August harvests, not to be outdone, brings forward its offering in the shape of the berries of the mistletoe and holly.
About the mistletoe there is this difficulty. Innumerable traditions associate it with worship and the oak tree. Undoubtedly the year in question was the solstitial year, so that so far as this goes the association is justified. But as a rule the mistletoe does not grow on oaks. This point has been frequently inquired into, especially by Dr. Henry Ball (Journal of Botany, vol. ii. p. 361, 1864) in relation to the growth of the plant in Herefordshire, and by a writer in the Quarterly Review (vol. cxiv.), who spoke of the mistletoe “deserting the oak ” in modern times and stated, “ it is now so rarely
IV
THE VARIOUS NEW-YEAR DAYS
27
found on that tree as to have led to the suggestion that we must look for the mistletoe of the Druids, not in the Viscum album of our own trees and orchards, but in the Loranthus Europaeus which is frequently found on oaks in the south of Europe.”
On this point 1 consulted two eminent botanical friends, Mr. Murray, of the British Museum, and Prof. Farmer, from whom I have learned that the distribution of V. album is in Europe universal except north of Norway and north of Russia; in India in the temperate Himalayas from Kashmir to Nepaul, altitude 3000 to 7000 feet.
The Viscum aureum, otherwise called Loranthus Europaeus, is a near relation of the familiar mistletoe, and in Italy grows on the oak almost exclusively. There are fifty species of Loranthus in the Indian flora, but L. Europaeus does not occur.
In the Viscum aureum we have the “ golden bough,” the oak-borne Aurum frondens and Ramus aureus of Virgil; and it can easily be imagined that when the Druids reached our shores from a country which had supplied them with the Viscum aureum, this would be replaced by the V. album growing chiefly on apple trees and not on oaks; indeed, Mr. Davies, in his “ Celtic Researches,” tells us that the apple was the next sacred tree to the oak, and that apple orchards were planted in the vicinity of the sacred groves. The transplanting of the mistletoe from the apple to the oak tree before the mystic ceremonies began was not beyond the resources of priestcraft.
It must not be forgotten that these ceremonies took place at both solstices—once in June, when the oak was
28
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
in full leaf, and again in December, when the parasitic plant was better visible in the light of the young moon. Mr. Frazer, in his “Golden Bough” (iii. p. 328), points ?out that at the summer solstice not only was mistletoe gathered, but many other “ magic plants, whose evanescent virtue can be secured at this mystic season alone.”
It is the ripening of the berries at the winter solstice which secured for the mistletoe the paramount importance the ceremonials connected with it possessed at that time, when the rest of the vegetable world was •dormant.
With regard especially to the particular time of the year chosen for sun-worship and the worship of the gods and solar heroes connected with the years to which I have referred, I may add that the vague year in Egyptian chronology makes it a very difficult matter to determine the exact Gregorian dates for the ancient Egyptian festivals, but, fortunately, there is another way of getting at them. Mr. Roland Mitchell, when compiling his valuable “Egyptian Calendar” (Luzac and Co., 1900), found that the Koptic calendar really presents to us the old Egyptian year, “ which has been in use for thousands of years, and has survived all the revolutions.”
Of the many festivals included in the calendar, the great Tanta fair, which is also a Mohammedan feast, ?“ is the most important of all held in Egypt. Religion, commerce, and pleasure offer combined attractions.” As many as 600,000 or 700,000 often attend this great fair, “ no doubt the survival of one of the ancient Egyptian national festivals.”
THE VARIOUS NEW-YEAR DAYS
IV
29
It is held so as to end on a Friday, and in 1901 the Friday was August 9!
This naturally suggests that we should look for a feast in the early part of May. We find the Festival of Al-Khidr, or Elias in the middle of the wheat harvest in Lower Egypt; of this we read :—
“ Al-Khidr is a mysterious personage, who, according to learned opinion, was a just man, or saint, the Visir of Dhu’l-Karnen (who was a great conqueror, contemporary with Ibrahim—Abraham—and identified in other legends with Alexander the Great, St. George, &e.). Al-Khidr, it is believed, still lives, and will live until the Day of Judgment. He is clad in green garments, whence probably the name. He is commonly identified with Elias (Elijah), and this confusion seems due to a confusion or similarity of some of the attributes that tradition assigns to both.”
“ The ‘ Festival of El-Khidr and of Elias,’ falling generally on May 6, marks the two-fold division of the year, in the Turkish and Armenian calendars, into the Ruz Kasim and the Ruz Khidr (of 179-80 and 185-6 days respectively.”
This last paragraph is important, as it points to ancient sun-worship, Helios being read for Elias ; and 179 days from May 6 bring us to November l. So we find that the modern Turks and Armenians have the old May-November year as well as the ancient Egyptians who celebrated it in the Temple of Menu at Thebes.
The traces of the Ptah worship are not so obvious. Finally, it may be stated that the second Tanta fair occurs at the spring equinox, so that the pyramid worship can still be traced in the modern Egyptian
30
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
calendar. The proof that this was an exotic1 is established, I think, by the fact that no important agricultural operations occur at this period in Egypt, while in May we have the harvest, in August and November sowing, going on.
A cursory examination of Prof. Rh^s’ book containing the Hibbert Lectures of 1886, in the light of these years, used as clues, suggests that in Ireland the sequence was May-November (Fomori and Fir Bolg), August-February (Lug and the Tuatha Danann), and, lastly, June-December (Ciichulainn). Should this be confirmed we see that the farmers’ years were the first to be established, and it is interesting to note that the agricultural rent year in many parts of Ireland still runs from May to November. It is well also to bear in mind, if it be established that the solstitial year did really arrive last, that the facts recorded by Mr. Frazer in his “ Golden Bough ” indicate that the custom of lighting fires on hills has been in historic times most prevalent at the summer solstice; evidently maps showing the geographical distribution of the May, June, and August fires would be of great value.
Some customs of the May and August years are common to the solstitial and equinoctial years. Each was ushered in by fires on hills and the like; flowers in May and the fruits of the earth in August are associated with them; there are also special customs in the case of November. In western Europe, however, it does not seem that such traditions exist over such a
1 In Babylonia the spring equinox was the critical time of the year because the Tigris and Euphrates then began to rise.
THE VARIOUS NEW-YEAR DAYS
IV
3i
large area as that over which the remnants of the solstitial practices have been traced.
I have pointed out that both the May and August years began when the sun had the same declination (16° N. or thereabouts); once, on its ascent from March to the summer solstice in June, again in its decline from the solstice to September. Hence it may be more difficult in this case to disentangle and follow the mythology, but the two years stand out here and there. With regard to August, Mr. Penrose’s orientation data for the Panathensea fix the 19th day (Gregorian) for the festival in the Hecatompedon; similar celebrations were not peculiar to western Europe and Greece, as a comparison of dates of worship will show.
Hecatompedon...
Older Erechtheum Temple of Diana, Ephesus „ Min, Thebes „ Ptah, Memphis
„ „ Annu
„ Solar Disc, Tell el-Amarna
April 28 and August 16. April 29 „ August 13. April 29 „ August 13. May 1 „ August 12. April 18 „ August 24. April 18 „ August 24. April 18 „ August 24.
In the above table I have given both the dates on which the sunlight (at rising or setting) entered the temple, but we do not know for certain, except in the case of the Hecatompedon, on which of the two days the temples were used; it is likely they were all used on both days, and that the variation from the dates proper to the sun’s declination of N. 16° indicates that they were very accurately oriented to fit the local vegetation conditions in the most important and extensive temple fields in the world.
STONEHENGE
CHAP-
31
This is the more probable because the Jews also, after they had left Egypt, established their feast of Pentecost fifty days after Easter = May 10, on which day loaves made of newly harvested corn formed the chief offering.
With regard to the equinoctial year, the most complete account of the temple arrangements is to be found in Josephus touching that at Jerusalem. The temple had to be so erected that at the spring equinox the sunrise light should fall on, and be reflected to, the worshippers by the sardonyx stones on the high priest’s garment. At this festival the first barley was laid upon the altar.
But this worship was in full swing in Egypt for thousands of years before we hear of it in connection with the Jews. It has left its temples at Ephesus, Athens, and other places, and with the opening of this year as well as of the solstitial one the custom of lighting fires is associated, not only on hills, but also in churches.
Here the sequence of cult cannot be mistaken. We begin with Isis and the young Sun-god Horus at the Pyramids, and we end with “ Lady Day,” a British legal date; while St. Peter’s at Rome is as truly oriented to the equinox as the Pyramids themselves, so that we have a distinct change of cult with no change of orientation.
If such considerations as these help us to connect Egyptian with British worships we may hope that they will be no less useful when we go further afield. I gather from a study of Mr. Maudslay’s admirable plans of Palenque and Chich^n-Itzd that the solstitial and
i
IV
THE VARIOUS NEW-YEAR DAYS
33
farmers’ years’ worships were provided for there. How did these worships and associated temples with naos and sphinxes 1 get from Egypt to Yucatan ? The more we know of ancient travel the more we are convinced that it was coastwise, that is, from one point t>f visible land to the next. Are the cults as old as differences in the coast-lines which would most easily explain their wide distribution ?
1 See Dawn of Astronomy, Plate facing p. 182, for the lines of sphinxes at Karnak.
D
\
CHAPTER V
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS AT STONEHENGE
AFTER Mr. Penrose, by his admirable observations in Greece, had shown that the orientation theory accounted as satisfactorily for the directions in which the chief temples in Greece had been built as I had shown it did for some in Egypt, it seemed important to apply the same methods of inquiry with all available accuracy to some example, at all events, of the various stone circles in Britain which have so far escaped destruction. Many attempts had been previously made to secure data, but the instruments and methods employed did not seem to be sufficient.
Much time has, indeed, been lost in the investigation of a great many of these circles, for the reason that in many cases the relations of the monuments to the chief points of the horizon have not been considered ; and when they were, the observations were made only with reference to the magnetic north, which is different at different places, and besides is always varying ; few indeed have tried to get at the astronomical conditions of the problem.
CH. v CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS 35
The first, I think, was Mr. Jonathan Otley, who in 1849 showed the “Orientation” of the Keswick Circle “according to the solar meridian,” giving true solar bearings throughout the year.
I wrote a good deal in Nature1 on sun and star temples in 1891, and Mr. Lewis the next year expressed the opinion that the British Stone Monuments, or some of them, were sun and star temples.
Mr. Magnus Spence of Deerness in Orkney published a pamphlet, “ Standing Stones and Maeshowe of Sten- ness,1 2” in 1894; it is a reprint of an article in the Scottish Review, Oct. 1893. Mr. Cursiter, F.S.A., of Kirkwall, in a letter to me dated 15 March 1894, a letter suggested by my Dawn of Astronomy which appeared .in that year and in which the articles which had appeared in Nature in 1891 had been expanded, drew my attention to the pamphlet; the observations had no pretension to scientific accuracy, and although some of the sight-lines were incorrectly shown in an accompanying map, May year and solstitial alignments were indicated.
So far as I know, there has never been a complete inquiry into the stone circles in Britain, but Mr. Lewis, who has paid great attention to these matters, has dealt in a general manner with them (Archaeological Journal, vol. xlix. p. 136), and has further described (Journal Anthropological Institute, n.s., iii., 1900) the observations made by him of stone circles in various parts of Scotland. From an examination of the latter he con-
1 See especially Nature, JxAy 2, 1891 p. 201.
2 Gardner, Paisley and London.
D 2
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
36
eludes that they may be divided into different types, each of which has its centre in a different locality. The types are—(1) the Western Scottish type, consisting of a rather irregular single ring or sometimes of two concentric rings; (2) the Inverness type, consisting of a more regular ring of better-shaped stones, surrounding a tumulus with a retaining wall, containing a built-up chamber and passage leading to it, or a kist without a passage; (3) the Aberdeen type, consisting of a similar ring with the addition of a so-called “ altar-stone ” and usually having traces of a tumulus and kist in the middle. In addition to these three types of circles, there are in Britain generally what Mr. Lewis calls sun and star circles, with their alignments of stones, and apparently proportioned measurements. He has shown that there is a great preponderance of outlying stones and hill-tops lying between the circles and the N.E. quarter of the horizon. From what has been stated in Chapter III with regard to the nightly observations of stars it will be gathered that these may have been used for this purpose.
The following list gives some of the bearings of outlying stones and other circles from the centres of the named circles :—
Roll-rich, Oxon.—Kingston© ... ... ... N. 27° E.
Stripple Stones, Cornwall—Bastion on bank ... N. 26 E.
Long Meg, Cumberland—Small circle... ... N. 27 E.
The Hurlers, Cornwall—Two outlying circles ... N. 13-16 E.
Trippet Stones—Leaze circle ... ... N. 11 E.
If these alignments mean anything they must of course refer to the rising of stars, as the position on the horizon is outside the sun’s path.
i
V
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS
37
The many circles in Cornwall have been dealt with by Mr. Lukis in a volume published by the Society of Antiquaries in 1895.1 A carefully prepared list of circles will be found in Mr. Windle’s recently published work entitled “ Remains of the Prehistoric Age in England.”
It may be useful here to state, with regard to mega- lithic remains generally, that they may be classed as follows; some details will be discussed later on.
(?) Circles. These may be single, double, or multiple, and either concentric or not.
(?) Menhirs, large single stones, used to mark sightlines from circles.
(c) Alignments, i.e., lines of stones in single, double, or in many parallel lines. If these alignments are short they are termed avenues.
(d) Holed-stones, doubtless used for observing sight- lines, sometimes over a circle.
(e) Coves. A term applied by Dr. Stukeley and others to what they considered shrines formed by three upright stones, thus leaving one side open. I take them to be partially protected observing places. There are well-marked examples at Avebury, Stanton Drew and Kit’s Coity House.
(f) Cromlechs. This term generally means a grouping of upright stones; it is applied to irregular circles in Brittany. It also applies to a stone or stones raised on the summits of three or more pillar stones forming the end and sides of an irregular vault generally open at one end (“ Dolmens of Ireland,” Borlase, p. 429).
1 “The Prehistoric Stone Monuments of the British Isles— Cornwall.”
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
38
The top stone is called in S.W. England a “quoit.” Cromlechs in most cases have been covered by barrows or cairns.
(g) Dolmens, from Dol Men, a table stone. These consist of stones, resting on two or more upright stones forming a more or less complete chamber, some of which are of great length. I note the following subdivisions: “ Dolmen h galerie ” having an entrance way of sufficient height, and “ Galgal,” similar but smaller. In the “ Dolmen h l’all^e couverte ” there is a covered passage way to the centre. It is a more elaborate cove. For the relation between cromlechs and dolmens, see Borlase (loc. cit. and p. 424 et seq.).
With regard to dolmens, I give the following quotation from Mr. Penrose {Nature, vol. lxiv., September 12, 1901):—
“ Near Locmariaquer in the estuary named Riviere d’Auray, there is an island named Gavr’ Inis, or Goat Island, which contains a good specimen of the kind of dolmen which has been named * Galgal.’
“ At the entrance our attention is at once arrested by the profusion of tracery which covers the walls. From the entrance to the wall facing us the distance is between 50 and 60 feet. The square chamber to which the gallery leads is composed of two huge slabs, the sides of the room and gallery being composed of upright stones, about a dozen on each side. The mystic lines and hieroglyphics similar to those above mentioned appear to have a decorative character.
“ An interesting feature of Gavr’ Inis is its remarkable resemblance to the New Grange tumulus at Meath.
V
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS
39
In construction there is again a strong resemblance to Maes-Howe, in the island of Orkney. There is also some resemblance in smaller details.”
While we generally have circles in Britain without, or with small, alignments; in Brittany we have alignments without circles, some of them being on an enormous scale;1 thus at Menec (the place of stones) we have eleven lines of menhirs, terminating towards the west in a cromlech, and, notwithstanding that great numbers have been converted to other uses, 1169 menhirs still remain, some reaching as much as 18 feet in height.
The alignments of Kermario (the place of the dead) contain 989 menhirs in ten lines. Those of Kerlescant (the place of burning), which beginning with eleven rows are afterwards increased to thirteen, contain altogether 579 stones and thirty-nine in the cromlech, with some additional stones. The adoration paid these stones yielded very slowly to Christianity. In the church history of Brittany the Cultus Lapidum was denounced in 658 A.D.
Many of the fallen menhirs in these alignments have been restored to their upright position by the French Government. Some of them may have been overturned in compliance with the decree of 658 A.D. above referred to. Several of the loftier menhirs are surmounted by crosses of stone or iron.
Both circles and alignments are associated with holidays and the lighting of fires on certain days of the
1 “ The French Stonehenge: An Account of the Principal Mega- lithic Remains in the Morbihan Archipelago.” By T. Cato Worsfold, F.R.Hist.S., F.R.S.l. (London: Bemrose and Sons, Ltd.)
4o
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
year. This custom has remained more general in Brittany than in Britain. At Mount St. Michael, near Carnac, the custom still prevails of lighting a large bonfire on its summit at the time of the summer solstice ; others, kindled on prominent eminences for a distance of twenty or thirty miles round, reply to it. These fires are locally called “ Tan Heol,” and also by a later use, Tan St. Jean. In Scotland there was a similar custom in the first week in May under the name of Bel Tan, or Baal’s Fire; the synonym for summer used by Sir Walter Scott in the “ Lady of the Lake”
Ours is no sapling chance-sown by the fountain,
Blooming at Beltane in winter to fade.
At Kerlescant the winter solstice is celebrated by a holiday, whilst Menec greets the summer solstice, and Kermario the equinoxes, with festivals. Concerning these fires and the associated customs Mr. Frazer’s “ Golden Bough ” is a perfect mine of information and should be consulted. It may simply be said here that the May and November, and June and December fires seem to be the most ancient. It is stated that the Balder bale fires on Mayday Eve were recognised by the primitive race, and I shall prove this in the sequel when British customs are referred to. On the introduction of Christianity the various customs were either transferred to or reorganised in association with church festivals; but as some of these, such as Easter, are movable feasts, it is difficult to follow the dates.
Regarding both circles and alignments in the light of the orientation theory, we may consider simple
V
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS
4i
circles with a central stone as a collection of sightlines from the central stone to one or more of the outer ones, or the interval between any two; indicating the place of the rise or setting of either the sun or a star on some particular day of the year, which day, in the case of the sun, will be a new year’s day.
Alignments, on the other hand, will play the same part as the sight-lines in the circles.
Sometimes the sight-line may be indicated by a menhir outside, and even at a considerable distance from, the circle ; later on tumuli replaced menhirs.
The dolmens have, I am convinced, been in many cases not graves originally, but darkened observing places whence to observe along a sight-line; this would be best done by means of an allee couverte, the predecessor of the darkened naos at Stonehenge, shielded by its covered trilithons.
In order to obtain some measurements to test the orientation theory in Britain, I found that Stonehenge is the ancient monument in this country which lends- itself to accurate theodolite work better than any other. Mr. Spence’s excellent work on astronomical lines at Stenness, where the stones, till some years ago- at all events, have been more respected than further south, suggested a beginning there, but the distance from London made it impossible.
Avebury and Stanton Drew are well known to a great many archaeologists; there are also other very wonderful stone circles near Keswick and in other parts of England ; but unfortunately it is very much more difficult to get astronomical data from these
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
42
ancient monuments than it is in the case of Stonehenge, one reason being that Stonehenge itself lies high, and the horizon round it in all directions is pretty nearly the same height, so that the important •question of the heights of the hills along the sight- line—a matter which is fundamental from an astronomical point of view, although it has been neglected, so far as I can make out, by most who have made observations on these ancient monuments—is quite a simple one at Stonehenge. Hence it was much easier to determine a date there than by working at any of the other ancient remains to which I have referred.
In orientation generally—such orientation as has heen dealt with by Mr. Penrose and myself in Egypt and in Greece—the question frequently was a change in direction in the axis of a temple, or the laying down of the axis of a temple, by means of observations of stars. Unfortunately for us as archaeologists, not as astronomers, the changes of position of the stars, owing to certain causes, chiefly the precessional movement, are very considerable; so that if a temple pointed to a star in one year, in two or three hundred years it would no longer point to the same star, but to another.
These star observations were requisite in order to warn the priests about an hour before sunrise so that they might prepare for the morning sacrifice which -always took place at the first appearance of the sun. Hence the morning star to be visible in the dawn must be a bright one, and the further north or south •of the sum’s rising place it rose, the more easily it would be seen. Some stars so chosen rose not far
V
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS
43
from the north point of the horizon. The alignments with small azimuths referred to in the British circles {p. 36) I believe to be connected with the Egyptian and Greek practice.
Acting on a very old tradition, some people from Salisbury and other surrounding places go to observe the sunrise on the longest day of the year at Stonehenge. We therefore are perfectly justified in assuming that it was a solar temple used for observation in the height of midsummer. But at dawn in midsummer in these latitudes the sky is so bright that it is not easy to see stars even if we get up in the morning to look for them; stars, therefore, were not in question, so that some other principle had to be adopted, and that was to point the temple directly to the position on the horizon at which the sun rose on that particular day of the year, and no other.
Now, if there were no change in the position of the sun, that, of course, would go on for ever and ever; but, fortunately for archaeologists, there is a slight change in the position of the sun, as there is in the case of a star, but for a different reason; the planes of the ecliptic and of the equator undergo a slight change in the angle included between them. So far as we know, that angle has been gradually getting less for many thousands of years, so that, in the case of Stonehenge, if we wish to determine the date, having no stars to help us, the only thing that we can hope to get any information from is the very slow change of this angle; that, therefore, was the special point which Mr. Penrose and I were anxious to study at Stonehenge, for the reason that we seemed in a position
44
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
FIG. 8.—The original tooling of the stone protected from the action of the
weather.
to do it there more conveniently than anywhere else in Britain.
But while the astronomical conditions are better at
V
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS
45
Stonhenge than elsewhere, the ruined state of the monument makes accurate measurements very difficult.
Great age and the action of weather are responsible for much havoc, so that very many of the stones are now recumbent, as will be gathered from an article
FIG. 9.—View of Stonehenge from the west. A, stone which fell in 1900; BB, 8tones which fell in 1797. (Reproduced from an article on the fallen stones by Mr. Lewis in Man.)
by Mr. Lewis, who described the condition of the monument in 1901, in Man.
Professor Gowland in his excavations at Stonehenge, to which I shall refer in the sequel, found the original tooled surface near the bottom of one of the large sarsens which had been protected from the action of the weather by having been buried in the ground. It enables us to imagine the appearance of the monument as it left the hands of the builders (Fig. 8).
46
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
But the real destructive agent has l>een man himself ; savages could not have played more havoc with
FIG. 10.—Copy of Hoare's plan of 1810, showing the unbroken Vallum and its relation with the Avenue.
the monument than the English who have visited it at different times for different purposes. It is said the
V
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS
47
fall of one great stone was caused in 1620 by some excavations, but this has been doubted; the fall of another in 1797 was caused by gipsies digging a hole in which to shelter, and boil their kettle; many of the stones have been used for building walls and bridges; masses weighing from 56 lb. downwards have been broken off by hammers or cracked off as a result of fires lighted by excursionists.
It appears that the temenos wall or vallum, which is shown complete in Hoare’s plan of 1810, is now broken down in many places by vehicles indiscriminately driven over it. Indeed, its original importance has now become so obliterated that many do not notice it as part of the structure—that, in fact, it bears the same relation to the interior stone circle as the nave of St. Paul’s does to the Lady Chapel (Fig. 10).
It is within the knowledge of all interested in archaeology that not long ago Sir Edmund Antrobus, the owner of Stonehenge, advised by the famous Wiltshire local society, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and the Society of Antiquaries, enclosed the monument in order to preserve it from further wanton destruction, and—a first step in the way of restoration—with the skilled assistance of Prof. Gowland and Messrs. Carruthers, Detmar Blow and Stallybrass, set upright the most important menhir, which threatened to fall or else break off at one of the cracks. This menhir, the so-called “leaning stone,” once formed one of the uprights of the trilithon the fall of the other member of which is stated by Mr. Lewis to have occurred before 1574. The latter, broken in two pieces,
48 STONEHENGE CHAP.
1
FIG. 11.—The Leaning Stone in 1901.
and the supported impost, now lie prostrate across the altar stone.
This piece of work was carried out with consummate
V
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS
49
skill and care, and most important conclusions, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, were derived from the minute inquiry into the conditions revealed in the excavations which were necessary for the proper conduct of the work.
Let us hope that we have heard the last of the work of devastators, and even that, before long, some of the other larger stones, now inclined or prostrate, may be set upright.
Since Sir Edmund Antrobus, the present owner, has acted on the advice of the societies I have named to enclose the monument, with a view to guard it from destruction and desecration, he has been assailed on all sides. It is not a little surprising that the “un- climbable wire fence ” recommended by the societies in question (the Bishop of Bristol being the president of the Wiltshire society at the time) is by some regarded as a suggestion that the property is not national, the fact being that the nation has not bought the property, and that it has been private property for centuries, and treated in the way we have seen.
Let us hope also that before long the gaps in the vallum may be - filled up. These, as I have already stated, take away from the meaning of an important part of one of the most imposing monuments of the world. In the meantime, it is comforting to know that, thanks to what Sir Edmund Antrobus has done, no more stones will be stolen, or broken by sledge-hammers ; that fires; that excavations such as were apparently the prime cause of the disastrous fall of one of the majestic trilithons in 1797 ; that litter, broken bottles
E
5°
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
and the like, with which too many British sightseers mark their progress, besides much indecent desecration, are things of the past.
If Stonehenge had been built in Italy, or France, or Germany, it would have been in charge of the State long ago.
I now pass from the monument itself to a reference to some of the traditions and historical statements concerning it.
Those who are interested in these matters should thank the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, which is to be warmly congratulated on its persistent and admirable efforts to do all in its power to enable the whole nation to learn about the venerable monuments of antiquity which it has practically taken under its scientific charge. It has published two most important volumes1 dealing specially with Stonehenge, including both its traditions and history.
With regard to Mr. Long’s memoir, it may be stated that it includes important extracts from notices of Stonehenge from the time of Henry of Huntingdon (twelfth century) to Hoare (1812), and that all extant information is given touching on the questions by whom the stones were erected, whence they came, and what was the object of the structure.
From Mr. Harrison’s more recently published bibliography, no reference to Stonehenge by any ancient author, no letter to the Times for the last twenty
1 The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine: “ Stonehenge and its Barrows.” By William Long, M.A., F.S.A. 1876. The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine : “ Stonehenge Bibliography Number.” By W. Jerome Harrison. 1902.
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS
v
51
years dealing with any question touching the monuments, seems to be omitted.
It is very sad to read, both in Mr. Long’s volume and the bibliography, of the devastation which has been allowed to go on for so many years. and of the various forms it has taken.
As almost the whole of the notes which follow deal with the assumption of Stonehenge having been a solar temple, a short reference to the earliest statements concerning this view is desirable; and, again, as the approximate date arrived at by Mr. Penrose and myself in 1901 is an early one, a few words may be added indicating the presence in Britain at that time of a race of men capable of designing and executing such work. I quote from the paper communicated by Mr. Penrose and myself to the Royal Society :—
“ As to the first point, Diodorus Siculus (ii., 47, ed. Didot, p. 116) has preserved a statement of Hecatseus in which Stonehenge alone can by any probability be referred to.
“ ‘ We think that no one will consider it foreign to our subject to say a word respecting the Hyperboreans.
“ ‘ Amongst the writers who have occupied themselves with the mythology of the ancients, Hecatseus and some others tell us that opposite the land of the Celts [ev rois dvriirepav rrjs KSXTCKIJS T6irois\ there exists in the Ocean an island not smaller than Sicily, and which, situated under the constellation of The Bear, is inhabited by the Hyperboreans; so called because they live beyond the point from which the North wind blows. ... If one may believe the same mythology, Latona was born in
£ 2
52
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
this island, and for that reason the inhabitants honour Apollo more than any other deity. A sacred enclosure [vfjaov] is dedicated to him in the island, as well as a magnificent circular temple adorned with many rich offerings. . . . The Hyperboreans are in general very friendly to the Greeks.’ ”
“ The Hecatseus above referred to was probably Hecatseus of Abdera, in Thrace, fourth century B.c. ; a friend of Alexander the Great. This Hecatseus is said to have written a history of the Hyperboreans: that it was Hecatseus of Miletus, an historian of the sixth century B.C., is less likely.
“As to the second point, although we cannot go so far back in evidence of the power and civilisation of the Britons, there is an argument of some value to be drawn from the fine character of the coinage issued by British kings early in the second century B.C., and from the statement of Julius Csesar (‘ De Bello Gallico,’ vi., c. 14) that in the schools of the Druids the subjects taught included the movements of the stars, the size of the earth, and the nature of things (multa praeterea de sideribus et eorum motu, de mundi magnitudine, de rerum natura, de deorum immortalium vi ac potes- tate disputant et juventuti tradunt).
“Studies of such a character seem quite consistent with, and to demand, a long antecedent period of civilisation.”
Henry of Huntingdon is the first English writer to refer to Stonehenge, which he calls Stanenges. Geoffrey of Monmouth (1138) and Giraldus Cambrensis come next.
In 1771, Dr. John Smith, in a work entitled “Choir Gawr, the Grand Orrery of the Ancient Druids, called
V
CONDITIONS AND TRADITIONS
S3
Stonehenge, Astronomically Explained, and proved to be a Temple for Observing the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies,” wrote as follows:—
“ From many and repeated visits, I conceived it to be an astronomical temple; and from what I could recollect to have read of it, no author had as yet investigated its uses. Without an instrument or any assistance whatever, but White’s ‘Ephemeris,’ I began my survey. I suspected the stone called The Friar’s Heel to be the index that would disclose the uses of this structure; nor was I deceived. This stone stands in a right line with the centre of the temple, pointing to the north-east. I first drew a circle round the
vallum of the ditch and divided it into 360 equal parts; and then a right line through the body of the temple to the Friar’s Heel; at the intersection of these lines 1 reckoned the sun’s greatest amplitude at the summer solstice, in this latitude, to be about 60 degrees, and fixed the eastern points accordingly. Pursuing this plan, I soon discovered the uses of all the detached stones, as well as those that formed the body of the temple.”
With regard to this “ Choir Gawr,” translated Chorea Gigantum, Leland’s opinion is quoted (Long, p. 51) that we should read Choir vawr, the equivalent of which is Chorea nobilis or magna.1
In spite of Inigo Jones’s (1600) dictum that Stonehenge was of Roman origin, Stukeley came to the conclusion in 1723 that the Druids were responsible for
1 Mr. Morien Morgan informs me that Cor y Gawres is correct, and means Choir of the Giantess Cariadwen, the Welsh Neith, Nyth (Nydd).
54
STONEHENGE
CH. V
its building; and Halley, who visited it in 1720— probably with Stukeley—concluded from the weatherin of the stones that it was at least 3000 years old ; he only had taken his theodolite with him, how much his interest in the monument would have been increased 1
ft; oo
CHAPTER VI
GENERAL ARCHITECTURE OF STONEHENGE
ALTHOUGH I have before hinted that the astronomical use of the Egyptian temples and British circles was the same, there is at first sight a vast difference in the general plan of structure.
This has chiefly depended upon the fact that the riches and population of ancient Egypt were so great that that people could afford to build a temple to a particular star, or to the sun’s position on any particular .day of the year. The temple axis along the line pointing to the celestial body involved, then became the chief feature, and tens of years were spent in lengthening, constricting and embellishing it.
From one end of an Egyptian temple to the other we find the axis marked out by narrow apertures in the various. pylons, and many walls with doors crossing the axis. There are seventeen or eighteen of these apertures in the solar temple of Amen-Ra at Karnak, limiting the light which falls into the Holy of Holies or Sanctuary. This construction gives one a very definite impression that every part of the temple was built to subserve a special object, viz., to limit the sunlight which fell on its front into a narrow beam,
STONEHENGE
CH. VI
56
FIG. 12.—The axis of the Temple of Karnak, looking south-east, from outside the north-west pylon (from a photograph by the author).
and to carry it to the other extremity of the temple —into the sanctuary, where the high priest performed
FIG. 13.— Plan of the Temple of Rainses II. in the Memnonia at Thebes (from *Lepsius), showing the pylon at the open end, the various doors along the: axis, the sanctuary at the closed end, and the temple at right angles.
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
58
his functions. The sanctuary was always blocked. There is no case in which the beam of light can pass absolutely through a temple (Figs. 12 and 13).
In Britain the case was different, there was neither skill nor workers sufficient to erect such stately piles, and as a consequence one structure had to do the work of several and it had to be done in the most economical way. Hence the circle with the observer at the centre and practically a temple axis in every direction among which could be chosen the chief directions required, each alignment being defined by stones, more or less distant, or openings in the circle itself.
Now for some particulars with regard to those parts of Stonehenge which lend themselves to the inquiry.
The main architecture of Stonehenge consisted of an external circle of about 100 feet in diameter, composed of thirty large upright stones, named sarsens, connected by continuous lintels. The upright stones formerly stood 14 feet above the surface of the ground. They have nobs or tenons on the top which fit into mortice holes in the lintels. Within this peristyle there was originally an inner structure of ten still larger upright stones, arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, formed by five isolated trilithons which rose progressively from N.E. to S.W., the loftiest stones being 25 feet above the ground. About one-half of these uprights have fallen, and a still greater number of the imposts which they originally carried.
There is also another circle of smaller upright stones, respecting which the only point requiring notice now is that none of them would have interrupted the line of the axis of the avenue. The circular temple was also
VI
GENERAL ARCHITECTURE
59
surrounded by the earthen bank, shown in Fig. 15, of about 300 feet in diameter, interrupted towards the
north-east by receiving into itself the banks forming the avenue before mentioned, which is about 50 feet across.
FIG. 14.—One of the remaining Trilithons.
6o
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
Within this avenue, no doubt an old via sacra, and looking north-east from the centre of the temple, at about 250 feet distance and considerably to the right hand of the axis, stands an isolated stone, which from a mediaeval legend has been named the Friar’s Heel.
s
FIG. 15.—General plan; the outer circle, naos and avenue of Stonehenge.
F.H. = Friar’s Heel.
The axis passes very nearly centrally through an intercolumniation (so to call it) between two uprights of the external circle and between the uprights of the westernmost trilithon as it originally stood. Of this trilithon the southernmost upright with the lintel stone fell in 1620, but the companion survived as the
VI
GENERAL ARCHITECTURE
61
leaning stone which formed a conspicuous and picturesque object for many years, but happily now restored to its original more dignified and safer condition of verticality. The inclination of this stone, however, took place in the direction of the axis of the avenue, and as the. distance between it and its original companion is known both by the analogy of the two perfect tri- lithons and by the measure of the mortice holes on the lintel they formerly supported, we obtain by bisection the distance, 11 inches, from its edge, of a point in the continuation of the central axis of the avenue and temple.
The banks which form the avenue have suffered much degradation. It appears from Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s account that at the beginning of the last century they were distinguishable for a much greater distance than at present, but they are still discernible, especially on the northern side, for more than 1900 feet from the centre of the temple, and particularly the line of the bottom of the ditch from which the earth was taken to form the bank, and which runs parallel to it.
CHAPTER VII
ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS AT STONEHENGE IN 1901 1
AN investigation was undertaken by Mr. Penrose and myself in the spring of 1901, as a sequel to analogous work in Egypt and Greece, with a view to determine whether the orientation theory could throw any light upon the date of the foundation of Stonehenge, concerning which authorities vary in their estimates by some thousands of years. Ours was not the first attempt to obtain the date of Stonehenge by means of astronomical considerations. In Mr. Godfrey Higgins’ work 2 he refers to a method of attack connected with precession. This furnished him with the date 4000 B.c.
More recently, Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie,3 whose plan of the stones is a valuable contribution to the study of Stonehenge, was led by his measures of the orientation to a date very greatly in the opposite direction, but, owing to an error in his application of the change of obliquity, clearly a mistaken one.
The chief astronomical evidence in favour of the
1 This chapter and the end of the previous one are mainly based on the paper communicated by Mr. Penrose and myself to the Royal
Society (see Proceedings, Royal Society, vol. 69, p. 137 seq.).
2 The Celtic Druids. 4to. London. 1827.
3 Stonehenge, &c. 1880.
CH.VII ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 63
solar temple theory lies in the fact that the •“ avenue,” as it is called, formed by two ancient earthen banks, extends for a considerable distance from the structure, in the general direction of the sunrise at the summer solstice, precisely in the same way as in Egypt a long avenue of sphinxes indicates the principal outlook of a temple.
These earthen banks defining the avenue do not exist alone. As will be seen from the sketch plan (Fig. 15), there is a general common line of direction for the avenue and the principal axis of the structure; and the general design of the building, together with the position and shape of the naos, indicates a close connection of the whole temple structure with the direction of the avenue. There may have been other pylon and screen equivalents as in other ancient temples, which have disappeared, the object being to confine the illumination to a small part of the naos. There can be little doubt,, also, that the temple was originally roofed in, and that the sun’s first ray, suddenly shining into the darkness, formed a fundamental part of the cultus.
With regard to the question of the roof, however, the above suggestion, I now find, is not new, the view having been held by no less an authority than Dr. Thurnham, who apparently was led to it by the representations of the Scandinavian temples as covered and enclosed structures.
Since the actual observation of sunrise was doubtless made within the sanctuary itself, we seem justified in taking the orientation of the axis to be the same as that of the avenue, and since in the present state of the S.W. trilithon the direction of the avenue can
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
*4
probably be determined with greater accuracy than that of the temple axis itself, the estimate of date must be based upon the orientation of the avenue. Further evidence will be given, however, to show that the direction of the axis of the temple, so far as it can now be determined, is sufficiently accordant with the direction of the avenue.
The orientation of this avenue may be examined upon the same principles that have been found successful in the case of Greek and Egyptian temples—that is, on the assumption that Stonehenge was a solar temple, and that the greatest function took place at sunrise on the longest day of the year. This not only had a religious motive; it had also the economic value of marking officially and distinctly that time of the year and the beginning of an annual period.
It is, indeed, possible that the present structure may have had other capabilities, such as being connected with the May year, the equinoxes or the winter solstice ; but it is with its uses at the summer solstice alone that we now deal.
There is a difference in treatment between the observations required for Stonehenge and those which are available for Greek or Egyptian solar temples. In the case of the latter, the effect of the precession of the equinoxes upon the stars, which as warning clock stars were almost invariably connected with .those temples, offers the best measure of the dates of foundation ; but in Britain, owing to the brightness of the dawn at the summer solstice, such a star could not have been employed, so that we can rely only on the secular change of the obliquity as affecting the azimuth of the
VII ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 65
point of sunrise. This requires the measurements to be taken with very great precision, and as the azimuth of the place of sunrise varies with the latitude, and as a datum point on the horizon in a known position was also required, Colonel Johnston, R.E., the Director- General of the Ordnance Survey, was asked for and obligingly supplied the following particulars :
The real point was to determine the direction of the so-called avenue. Measurements taken from the line of the bottom of the ditch assisted materially those taken from the crown of the bank itself. With this help and by using the southern bank and ditch when- , ever it admitted of recognition, a fair estimate of the central line could be arrived at. To verify this, two pegs were placed at points 140 feet apart along the line near the commencement of the avenue, and four others at distances averaging 100 feet apart nearer the further recognisable extremity, and their directions were measured with the theodolite, independently by two observers, the reference point being Salisbury Spire, of which the exact bearing had been communicated by Colonel Johnston.
This bearing was also measured locally by observations of the Sun and of Polaris, the mean of which differed by less than 20" from the Ordnance value. The resulting observations gave for the axis of the avenue nearest the commencement an azimuth of 49° 38' 48", and for that of the more distant part
Centre of stone circle, Stonehenge
Centre of spire, Salisbury Cathedral
F
66
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
49° 32' 54*. The mean of these two lines drawn from the central interval of the great trilithon, already referred to, passes between two of the sarsens of the exterior circle, which have an opening of about 4 feet, within a few inches of their middle point, the deviation being northwards. This may be considered to prove the close coincidence of the original axis of the temple with the direction of the avenue.
This value of the azimuth, the mean of which is 49° 35' 51", is confirmed by the information, also supplied from the Ordnance Survey, that from the centre of the temple, the bearing to the N.E. of the principal bench mark on a hill, about 8 miles distant, the bench mark being very near a well-known ancient fortified British encampment named Silbury or Sidbury, is 49° 34' 18"; and that the same line continued through Stonehenge, to the south-west, strikes another ancient fortification, namely, Grovely Castle, about 6 miles distant, and at practically the same azimuth, viz., 49° 35' 51". For the above reasons 49° 34' 18" has been adopted for the azimuth of the avenue.
The summer solstice sunrise in 1901 was also watched for by Mr. Howard Payn on five successive mornings, viz., June 21 to 25, and was successfully observed on the last occasion. As soon as the Sun’s limb was sufficiently above the horizon for its bisection to be well measured, it was found to be 8' 40" northwards of the peak of the Friar’s Heel, which was used as the reference point; the altitude of the horizon being 35' 48". The azimuth of this peak from the point of observation had been previously ascertained to be 50° 39' 5", giving for that of the Sun when measured, 50°
VII ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 67
30' 25"; by calculation that of the Sun, with the limb 2' above the horizon, should be 50° 30' 54". This observation was therefore completely in accordance with the results which had been obtained otherwise.
The time which would elapse between geometrical sunrise, that is, with the upper limb tangential with the horizon, and that which is here supposed, would be about 17 seconds, and the difference of azimuth would be 3' 15".
The remaining point was to find what value should be given to the Sun’s declination when it appeared showing itself 2' above the horizon, the azimuth being 49° 34' 18".
The data obtained for the determination of the required epoch were as follows:—
(1.) The elevation of the local horizon at the sunrise point seen by a man standing between the uprights of the great trilithon (a distance of about 8000 feet) is about 35' 30", and 2' additional for Sun’s upper limb makes 37' 30".
(2.) — Refraction + parallax, 27' 20".
(3.) Sun’s semi-diameter, allowance being made for greater eccentricity than at present, 15' 45".
(4.) Sun’s azimuth, 49° 34' 18", and N. latitude, 51° 10' 42".
From the above data the Sun’s declination works out 23° 54' 30" N., and by Stockwell’s tables of the obliquity, which are based upon modern determinations of the elements of the solar system,1 the date is found to be 1680 B.c.
It is to be understood that on account of the slight uncertainty as to the original line of observation and the
1 Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. xviii. No. 232, table 9. Washington. 1873. For curve, see page 130.
F 2
68
STONEHENGE
CH. VII
very slow rate of change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, the date thus derived may possibly be in error by 200 years more or less; this gives us a date of construction lying between say 1900 and 1500 B.c.
In this investigation the so-called Friar’s Heel was used only as a convenient point for reference and verification in measurement, and no theory was formed as to its purpose. It is placed at some distance, as before mentioned, to the south of the axis of the avenue, so that at the date arrived at for the erection of the temple the Sun must have completely risen before it was vertically over the summit of the stone. It may be remarked, further, that more than 500 years must yet elapse before such a coincidence can take place at the beginning of sunrise.
In an Appendix certain details of the observations are given.
In the next chapter I propose to show that an independent archaeological inquiry carried out, in a most complete and admirable way, just after Mr. Penrose and myself had obtained our conclusion, entirely corroborates the date at which we had arrived.
CHAPTER VIII
ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS AT STONEHENGE, 1901
SOON after Mr. Penrose and myself had made our astronomical survey of Stonehenge in 1901, some archaeological results of the highest importance were obtained by Professor Gowland. The operations which secured them were designed and carried out in order to re-erect the leaning stone which threatened to fall, a piece of work recommended to Sir Edmund Antrobus by the Society of Antiquaries of London and other learned bodies, and conducted at his desire and expense.
They were necessarily on a large scale, for the great monolith, “ the leaning stone,” is the largest in England, the Rudston monolith excepted. It stood behind the altar stone, over which it leant at an angle of 65 degrees, resting at one point against a small stone of syenite. Halfway up it had a fracture one-third across it; the weight of stone above this fracture was a dangerous strain on it, so that both powerful machinery and great care and precautions had to be used. Professor Gowland was charged by the Society of Antiquaries with the conduct of the excavations necessary in the work. The engineering operations were planned by Mr. Carruthers, and Mr. Detmar Blow was responsible for the local super-
Prometheus:
STONEHENGE CHAP.
VIII ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 71
FIG. 17.—The cradle and supports, looking west.
intendence. Mr. Blow thus describes the arrangements (1Journal Institute of British Architects, 3rd series, ix., January, 1902):—
72
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
“A strong cradle of 12-inch square baulks of timber was bolted round the stone, with packing and felt, to prevent any marking of the stone. To the cradle were fixed two 1-inch steel eyebolts to receive the blocks for two six-folds of 6-inch ropes. These were secured, and wound on to two strong winches fifty feet away, with four men at each winch. When the ropes were thoroughly tight, the first excavation was made as the stone was raised on its west side.”
The method employed by Professor Gowland in the excavation should be a model for all future work of the kind.
Above each space to be excavated was placed a frame of wood, bearing on its long sides the letters A to H, and on its short sides the letters R M L, each letter l>eing on a line one foot distant from the next. By this means the area to be excavated was divided into squares each having the dimension of a square foot. ' A long rod divided into 6-inch spaces, numbered from 1 to 16, was also provided for indicating the depth from the datum line of anything found. In this way a letter on the long sides of the frame, together with one on the short sides, and a number on the vertical rod, indicated the position of any object found in any part of the excavation.
Excavations were necessary because to secure the stone for the future the whole of the adjacent soil had to be removed down to the rock level, so that it could be replaced by concrete.
All results were registered by Professor Gowland in relation to a datum line 337‘4 feet above sea level. The material was removed in buckets, and carefully sifted through a series of sieves 1-inch, ^-inch, ^-incli, and
1
VIII ARCHEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 73
l
FIG. 18.—The frame used to locate the finds.
74 STONEHENGE CHAP.
£-inch mesh, in order that the smallest object might not be overlooked.
From the exhaustive account of his work given by Professor Gowland to the Society of Antiquaries (Archaeo- logia, lviii.), I gather three results of the highest importance from the point of view I am considering. These were, first, the finding of an enormous number of implements ; secondly, the disposition and relative quantities of the chippings of the sarsen and blue stones; and thirdly, the discovery of the method by which the stones were originally erected.
I will take the implements first. This, in a condensed form, is what Professor Gowland says about them:—
More than a hundred flint implements were found, and the greater number occurred in the stratum of chalk rubble which either directly overlaid or was on a level with the bed rock. They may all be arranged generally in the following classes :—
Class I.—Axes roughly chipped and of rude forms, but having well-defined, more or less sharp cutting edges.
Class II.—Hammerstones, with more or less well- chipped, sharp curved edges. Most may be correctly termed hammer-axes. They are chipped to an edge at one end, but at the other are broad and thick, and in many examples terminated there by a more or less flat surface. In some the natural coating of the flint is left- untouched at the thick end.
Class III.—Hammerstones, more or less rounded. Some specimens appear to have once had distinct working edges, but they are now much blunted and battered by use.
VIII ARCHEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 75
In addition to the above flint implements were found about thirty hammerstones, consisting of large pebbles or small boulders of the hard quartzite variety of sarsen. Some have been roughly broken into convenient forms for holding in the hand, whilst a few have been rudely trimmed into more regular shapes. They vary in weight from about a pound up to six and a half pounds. To these we have to add mauls, a more remarkable kind of hammerstone than those just enumerated. They are ponderous boulders of the quartzite variety of sarsen with their broadest sides more or less flat. Their weights range from about 40 lb. to 64 lb.
How came these flints and stones where they were found ? Prof. Gowland gives an answer which everybody will accept. The implements must be regarded as the discarded tools of the builders of Stonehenge, dumped down into the holes as they became unfit for use, and, in fact, used to pack the monoliths as they were erected. We read :—“ Dealing with the cavity occupied by No. 55 before its fall, the mauls were found wedged in below the front of its base to act together with the large blocks of sarsen as supports" (p. 54). Nearly all bear evidence of extremely rough usage, their edges being jagged and broken, just as we should expect to find after such rough employment. We evidently have to deal with builders doing their work in the Stone and not in the Bronze age. But was the age Palaeolithic or Neolithic ?
Prof. Gowland writes :—
“ Perhaps the most striking features of the flint implements is their extreme rudeness, and that there
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
76
is not a single ground or polished specimen among them. This, at first sight and without due consideration, might be taken to indicate an extremely remote age. But in this connection it must be borne in mind that in the building of such a stupendous structure as Stonehenge, the tools required must have been numbered by thousands. The work, too, was of the •roughest character, and for such only rude tools were required. The highly finished and polished implements which we are accustomed to consider, and rightly so, as characteristic of Neolithic man, would find no place in such work. They required too much labour and time for their manufacture, and, when made, could not have been more effective than the hammer-axes and hammer- stones found in the excavations, which could be so easily fashioned by merely rudely shaping the natural flints, with which the district abounds, by a few well directed blows of a sarsen pebble.”
On this ground Prof. Gowland is of opinion that, notwithstanding their rudeness, they may be legitimately ascribed to the Neolithic age, and, it may be. near its termination, that is, before the Bronze age, the commencement of which has been placed at 1400 B.C. by Sir John Evans for Britain, though he is inclined to think that estimate too low, and 2000 B.c. by Montelius for Italy.
Prof. Gowland guardedly writes :—
“ The occurrence of stone tools does not alone prove with absolute certainty that Stonehenge belongs to the Neolithic age, although it affords a strong presumption in favour of that view. But, and this is important, had bronze been in general or even moderately exten-
VIII ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 77
78
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
sive use when the stones were set up, it is in the highest degree probable that some implement of that metal would have been lost within the area of the excavations, and if so lost, it would certainly have been found together with the stone tools. Further, the employment of deer’s horn picks for the extensive excavations made in the chalk around the base of the monoliths also tends to support the view that bronze implements cannot have been in common use. If they had it would seem not unreasonable to assume that they would have been employed, as they would have been so much more effective for such work than the picks of deer’s horn.
“ Again, the chippings of the stones of Stonehenge in two of the Bronze age barrows1 in its neighbourhood show that it is of earlier date than they.”
And finally:—
“ In my opinion, the date when copper or bronze was first known in Britain is a very remote one, as no country in the world presented greater facilities for their discovery. The beginning of their application to practical uses should, I think, be placed at least as far back as 1800 B.C., and that date I am inclined to give, until further evidence is forthcoming, as the approximate date of the erection of Stonehenge.”
Now the date arrived at by Mr. Penrose and myself on astronomical grounds was about 1700 B.C. It is not a little remarkable that independent astronomical and archaeological inquiries conducted in the same year
1 Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Ancient History of South Wiltshire, p. 127. (London, 1812); W. Stukeley, Stonehenge, p. 46. ('London, 1740).
VIII ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 79
should have come so nearly to the same conclusion. If a general agreement be arrived at regarding it, we have a firm basis for the study of other similar ancient monuments in this country.
I have previously in this book referred to the fact that the trilithons of the naos and the stones of the outer circle are all built up of so-called “ sarsen ” stones. To describe their geological character, I cannot do better than quote, from Mr. Cunnington’s “ Geology of Stonehenge,”1 their origin according to Prestwich.
“Among the Lower Tertiaries (the Eocene of Sir Charles Lyell) are certain sands and mottled clays, named by Mr. Prestwich the Woolwich and Reading beds, from their being largely developed at these places, and from these he proves the sarsens to have been derived; although they are seldom found in situ, owing to the destruction of the stratum to which they belonged. They are large masses of sand concreted together by a siliceous cement, and when the looser portions of the stratum were washed away, the blocks of sandy rocks were left scattered over the surface of the ground.
“ At Standen, near Hungerford, large masses of sarsen are found, consisting almost entirely of flints, formed into conglomerate with the sand. Flints are also common in some of the large stones forming the ancient temple of Avebury.
“The abundance of these remains, especially in some of the valleys of North Wilts, is very remarkable. Few persons who have not seen them can form an adequate
1 Wilts Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, xxi. pp. 141-149.
8o
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
idea of the extraordinary scene presented to the eye of the spectator, who standing on the brow of one of the hills near Clatford, sees stretching for miles before him, countless numbers of these enormous stones, occupying the middle of the valley, and winding like a mighty stream towards the south.”
These stones, then, may be regarded as closely associated with the local geology.
The exact nature of the stones, called “ blue stones,” can best be gathered from a valuable “ Note ” by Prof. Judd which accompanies Prof. Gowland’s paper. These blue stones are entirely unconnected with the local geology; they must, therefore, represent boulders of the Glacial drift, or they must have been brought by man, from distant localities. Prof. Judd inclines to the first opinion.
The distinction between these two kinds of stone are well shown by Prof. Gowland :—
“ The large monoliths of the outer circle, and the trilithons of the horse-shoe are all sarsens. [See general plan, Fig. 15.] These sarsens in their composition are sandstones, consisting of quartz-sand, either fine or coarse, occasionally mixed with pebbles and angular bits of flint, all more or less firmly cemented together with silica. They are the relics of the concretionary masses which had become consolidated in the sandstone beds that once overlaid the chalk of the district, and had resisted the destructive agencies by which the softer parts of the beds were removed in geological times. They range in structure from a granular rock resembling loaf sugar in internal appearance to one of
VIII ARCHEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1501 81
great compactness similar to and sometimes passing into quartzite.
“The monoliths and trilithons all consist of the granular rock. The examples of the compact quartzite variety, of which many were found in the excavations, were almost without exception either hammerstones that had been used in shaping and dressing the monoliths, or fragments which had been broken from off them in these operations.
“ The small monoliths, the so-called ' blue stones,’ which form the inner circle and the inner horse-shoe, are, with the undermentioned exceptions, all of diabase more or less porphyritic. Two are porphyrite (formerly known as felstone or hornstone). Two are argillaceous sandstone.
“ Mr. William Cunnington, in his valuable paper,
‘ Stonehenge Notes,’ records the discovery of two stumps of * blue stones ’ now covered by the turf. One of these lies in the inner horseshoe between Nos. 61 and 62, and 9 feet distant from the latter. It is diabase. The other is in the inner circle between Nos. 32 and 33, 10 feet from the former, and consists of a soft calcareous altered tuff, afterwards designated for the sake of brevity fissile rock.
“ The altar stone is of micaceous sandstone.”
I now come to the second point, to which I shall return in the next chapter.
In studying the material obtained from the excavations, it was found in almost every case that the number of chippings and fragments of blue stone largely exceeded that of the sarsens; more than this, diabase
G
82
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
(blue stone) and sarsen were found together in the layer overlying the solid chalk (p. 15). Chippings of diabase were the most abundant, but there were few large pieces of it. Sarsen, on the other hand, occurred most abundantly in lumps (p. 20); very few small chips of
sarsen were found (p. 42). Hence Prof. Gowland is of opinion that the sarsen blocks were roughly hewn where they were found (p. 40); the local tooling, executed with the small quartzite hammers and mauls, would produce not chips but dust.
FIG. 20.—Showing the careful tooling of the Sarsens.
VIII ARCHEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 83
Finally, I reach the third point of importance from the present standpoint; the excavations produced clear evidence touching the mode of erection. Prof. Gowland’s memoir deals only with the leaning, stone, but I take
ATUM LINE I
TURF4*. MOULD
EARTHY CHALK RUBBLE WH/TE CHALK RUBBLE
CHALK HOCH
? FL/HF /MRLEMEHT
• SARSEN HAHHflSTOMt
I
r
. FEET
FIG. 21.—Face of rock against which a stone was made to rest.
it for granted that the same method was employed throughout: the method was this.
(l) The ground in the site a stone was to occupy was removed, the chalk rock being cut into in such a manner as to leave a ledge, on which the base of the stone was to rest, and a perpendicular face rising from it, against which as a buttress one side would bear when set up. From the bottom of this hole an inclined plane was cut to the surface down which the monolith which
G 2
84 STONEHENGE CHAP.
had already been dressed was slid until its base rested on the ledge.
(2) It was then gradually raised into a vertical position by means first of levers and afterwards of ropes. The levers would be long trunks of trees, to one end of which a number of ropes was attached (this method is still employed in Japan); so that the weights and pulling force of many men might be exerted on them. The stronger ropes were probably of hide or hair, but others of straw, or of withes of hazel or willow, may have been in use for minor purposes.
(3) As the stone was raised, it was packed up -with logs of timber and probably also with blocks of stone placed beneath it.
(4) After its upper end had reached a certain elevation, ropes were attached to it, and it was then hauled by numerous men into a vertical position, so that its back rested against the perpendicular face of the chalk which had been prepared for it. During this part of the operation, struts of timber would probably be placed against its sides to guard against slip, a precaution taken when the leaning stone was raised and until the foundation was properly set.
As regards the raising of the lintels, and imposts, and the placing of them on the tops of the uprights, there would be even less difficulty than in the erection of the uprights themselves.
It could be easily effected by the simple method practised in Japan for placing heavy blocks of stone in position. The stone, when lying on the ground, would be raised a little at one end by means of long wooden levers. A packing of logs would then be placed under
VIII ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 85
FIG. 22.—The leaning stone upright before the struts were removed.
the end so raised, the other extremity of the stone would be similarly raised and packed, and the raising and packing at alternate ends would be continued
86
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
Fid. 23.—Stonehenge, lOOi).
VIII ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN 1901 87
until the block had gradually reached the height of the uprights. It would then be simply pushed forward by levers until it rested upon them.
It is not often that an engineering operation has been made so subservient to the interests of science as the one we have dealt with in this chapter. It is satisfactory to know not only that much new knowledge has been acquired by Professor Gowland and his coadjutors, but that the famous leaning stone has now been set upright in such fashion that it will remain upright for hundreds of years. May the other leaning stones soon receive the same treatment.
CHAPTER IX
WAS THERE AN EARLIER CIRCLE?
WHEN we come to examine Stonehenge carefully in relation to the orientation theory, it soon becomes clear that its outer circle of upright stones with lintels, and the inner naos, built of trilithons, oriented in the line of the “ avenue ” and the summer solstice sunrise, are not the only things to be considered. These stones, all composed of sarsen, which, be it remarked, have been trimmed and tooled, are not alone in question. We have*:—
(1) An interior circle broken in many places, and other stones near the naos, composed of stones, “ blue stones,” which, as we have seen, are of an entirely different origin and composition.
(2) Two smaller untrimmed sarsen stones lying near the vallum, not at the same distance from it, the line joining them passing nearly, but not quite, through the centre of the sarsen eircle. The amplitude of the line joining them is approximately 26“ S. of E. and 26° N. of W. Of these stones, the stump of the N.W. one is situated 22 feet from the top of the vallum according to the Ordnance plan. The S.E. stone has fallen, but according to careful observations and
CH. ix WAS THERE AN EARLIER CIRCLE? 89
measurements by Mr. Penrose, when erect its centre was 14 feet from the top of the vallum. The centre of the
FIG. 24.—Map of the Stones made by the Ordnance Survey.1 A, N.W. stone; B, S.E. stoner; c, Friars Heel; D, Slaughter stone.
line joining the stones is therefore about 4 feet to the S.E. of the axis of the present circles, which, it may be
1 Flans and photographs of Stonehenge, <fcc., by Colonel Sir Henry James, R.E., F.R.S., Director-General of the Ordnance Survey, 1867.
90
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
stated, passes 3 feet to the N.W. of the N.W. edge of the Friar’s Heel (see Fig. 24).
There are besides these two large untrimmed sarsen stones, one standing some distance outside the vallum, one recumbent lying on the vallum; both nearly, but not quite, in the sunrise line as viewed from the centre of the sarsen circle. These are termed the “ Friar’s Heel ” and “ Slaughter Stone ” respectively.
I will deal with (1) first, and begin by another quotation from Mr. Cunnington, who displayed great acumen in dealing with the smaller stones not sarsens.
“ The most important consideration connected with the smaller stones, and one which in its archaeological bearing has been too much overlooked, is the fact of their having been brought from a great distance. I expressed an opinion on this subject in a lecture delivered at Devizes more than eighteen years ago, and I have been increasingly impressed with it since. I
believe that these stones would not have been brought from such a distance to a spot where an abundance of building stones equally suitable in every respect already existed, unless some special or religious value had been attached to them. This goes far to prove that Stonehenge was originally a temple, and neither a monument raised to the memory of the dead, nor an astronomical calendar or almanac.
“ It has beeq suggested that they were Danams, or the offerings of successive votaries. Would there in such case have been such uniformity of design, or would they have been all alike of foreign materials ? I would make one remark about the small impost of a trilithon of syenite, now lying prostrate within the circle. One
IX WAS THERE AN EARLIER CIRCLE? 9r
writer has followed another in taking it for granted that there must have been a second, corresponding with it, on the opposite side. Of this there is neither proof nor record, not a trace of one having been seen by any person who has written on the subject. This small impost, not being of sarsen, but syenite, must have belonged to the original old circle; it may even have suggested to the builders of the present Stonehenge the idea of the large imposts, and trilithons with their tenons and mortices.”
In Prof. Gowland’s examination of the contents of the holes necessarily dug in his operations, it was found over and over again, indeed almost universally, that the quantity of blue stone chippings was much greater than that from the sarsen stones. While the sarsen stones- had only been worked or tooled on their surface, the blue stones had been hewed and trimmed in extraordinary fashion; indeed it is stated by Prof. Judd that they had been reduced to half their original dimensions in this process, the chippings almost equalling the volume of the stones themselves.
It seems, then, that when the sarsen stones were set up, the sarsen and blue stones were treated very differently. This being so, the following quotation from Prof. Judd’s “Note” is interesting (Arcliaeologia, lviii,
p. 81):—
“ I may repeat my conviction that if the prevalent beliefs and traditions concerning Stonehenge were true, and the “ bluestone ” circles were transported from some distant locality, either as trophies of war or as the sacred treasures of a wandering tribe, it is quite inconceivable that they should have been hewed and
-92
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
chipped, as we now know them to have been, and reduced in some cases to half their dimensions, after having been carried with enormous difficulty over land and water, and over hills and valleys. On the other hand, in the glacial drift, which once probably thinly covered the district, the glacial deposits dying out very gradually as we proceed southwards, we have a source from which such stones might probably have been derived. It is quite a well-known peculiarity of the glacial drift to exhibit considerable assemblages of stones of a particular character at certain spots, each of these assemblages having probably been derived from the same source.
“ I would therefore suggest as probable that when the early inhabitants of this island commenced the erection of Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain was sprinkled over thickly with the great white masses of the sarsen- stones (‘ grey wethers ’), and much more sparingly with darker coloured boulders (the so-called ‘ blue- stones’), the last relics of the glacial drift, which have been nearly denuded away. From these two kinds of materials the stones suitable for the contemplated temple were selected. It is even possible that the abundance and association of these two kinds of materials so strikingly contrasted in colour and appearance, at a particular spot, may not only have decided the site, but to some extent have suggested the architectural features of the noble structure of Stonehenge.’'
If we grant everything that Prof. Judd states, the question remains—why did the same men in the same place at the same time treat the sarsen and blue stones so differently?
IX WAS THERE AN EARLIER CIRCLE ? 93
I shall show subsequently that there is a definite answer to the question on one assumption.
I next come to (2). The important point about these stones is that with the amplitude 26°, at Stonehenge, a line from the centre of the circle over the N.W. stone would mark the sunset place in the first week in May, and a line over the S.E. stone would similarly deal with the November sunrise. We are thus brought in presence of the May-November year.
Another point about these stones is that they are not at the same distance from the centre of the sarsen stone circle, which itself is concentric with the temenos mound; this is why they lie at different distances from the mound. Further, a line drawn from the point of the Friar’s Heel over the now recumbent Slaughter Stone with the amplitude determined by Mr. Penrose and myself for the summer solstice sunrise in 1680 B.c. cuts the line joining the stones at the middle point, suggesting that the four untrimmed sarsen stones provided alignments both for the May and June years at about that date.
Nor is this all ; the so-called tumuli within the vallum (Fig. 10) may have been observation mounds, for the lines passing from the northern tumulus over the N.W. stone and from the southern tumulus over the S.E. one are parallel to the avenue, and therefore represent the solstitial orientation.
So much, then, for the stones. We see that, dealing only with the untrimmed sarsens that remain, the- places of the May sunset and June and November sunrises were marked from the same central point.
Statements have been made that there was the stump
94
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
•of another stone near the vallum to the S.W., in the line of the Friar’s Heel and Slaughter Stone, produced backwards, at the same distance from the old centre as the N.W. and S.E. stones. This stone was not found in an exploration by Sir Edmund Antrobus, Mr.
Fig. 25.—The rod on the recumbent stone is placed in and alone the common axis of the present circle and avenue. It is seen that the Friars Heel, the top of which is shown in the distance, would hide the sunrise place if the axis were a little further to the S.E.
Penrose and Mr. Howard Payn by means of a sword and an auger. But the question will not be settled until surface digging is permitted, as a “ road ” about which there is a present contention passes near the spot.
But even this is not the only evidence we have for
IX
WAS THERE AN EARLIER CIRCLE? 95
the May worship in early times. There is an old tradition of the slaughter of Britons by the Saxons at Stonehenge, known as “The Treachery of the Long Knives ”; according to some accounts, 460 British chieftains were killed while attending a banquet and conference. Now at what time of the year did this take place ? Was it at the summer solstice on June 21? I have gathered from Guest’s “ Mabinogion,” vol. ii. p. 433, and Davies’s “ Mythology of the British Druids,” p. 333, that the banquet took place on May eve “ Meinvethydd.” Is it likely that this date would have been chosen in a solar temple dedicated exclusively to the solstice?
Now the theory to which my work and thought have led me is that the megalithic structures at Stonehenge —the worked sarsens with their mortices and lintels, and above all the trilithons of the magnificent naos— represent a re-dedication and a reconstruction, on a more imposing plan and scale, of a much older temple, which, was originally used for worship in connection with the May year.
CHAPTER X
THE MAY AND JUNE WORSHIPS IN BRITTANY
I PURPOSE next to inquire whether in the wonderful series of Megalithic remains in Brittany, remains more extensive than any in Britain, any light is thrown on the suggestion I have made that the May Worship preceded the Solstitial Worship at Stonehenge.
It has long been known that the stones which compose the prehistoric remains in Brittany are generally similar in size and shape to those at Stonehenge, but, as I have already stated, in one respect there is a vast difference. Instead of a few, arranged in circles as at Stonehenge, we have an enormous multitude of the so-called menhirs arranged in many parallel lines for great distances. Some of these are unhewn like the Friar’s Heel, some have as certainly been trimmed.
The literature which has been devoted to them is very considerable, but the authors of it, for the most part, have taken little or no pains to master the few elementary astronomical principles which are necessary to regard the monuments from the point of view of orientation.
It is consoling to know that this cannot be said of the last published contribution to our knowledge of this region, which we owre to Monsieur F. Gaillard, a member
CH. x THE MAY AND JUNE WORSHIPS 97
of the Paris Anthropological Society and of the Poly- mathic Society of Morbihan at Plouharnel.1
M. Gaillard is a firm believer in the orientation theory, and accepts the view that a very considerable number of the alignments are solstitial. But although he gives the correct azimuths for the solstitial points and also figures showing the values of the obliquity of the ecliptic as far as 2200 B.C., his observations are not sufficiently precise to enable a final conclusion to be drawn, and his method of fixing the alignments and the selection of the index menhir are difficult to gather from his memoir and the small plans which accompany it, which, alas! deal with compass bearings only.
All the same, those interested in such researches owe a debt of gratitude to M. Gaillard for his laborious efforts to increase our knowledge, and will sympathise with him at the manner in which his conclusions were treated by the Paris anthropologists. One of them, apparently thinking that the place of sun rising is affected by the precession of the equinoxes, used this convincing argument:—“ Si, it l’origine les alignments etaient orient^s, comme le pense M. Gaillard, ils ne le pourraient plus 6tre aujourdhui ; au contraire, s’ils le sont. actuellement, on peut afiirmer qu’ils ne l’etaient pas alors ! ”
M. Gaillard is not only convinced of the solstitial orientation of the avenues, but finds the same result in the case of the dolmens.
I cannot find any reference in the text to any orientations dealing with the farmers’ years, that is with ampli
1 “ L’Astronomic Prehistorique.” Published in “Les Sciences Popu- laires, revue mensuelle internationale,” and issued separately by the administration des “Sciences populaires,” 15 Rue Lebrun, Paris.
H
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
98
tudes of about 25° N. and S. of the E. and W. points; bat in the diagrams on pp. 78 and 127 I find both avenue and dolmen alignments, which within the limits of accuracy apparently employed may perhaps with justice be referred to them ; but observations of greater accuracy must be made, and details of the heights of the horizon at the various points given, before anything certain can be said about them.
I append a reproduction of one of M. Gaillard’s plans, which will give an idea of his use of the index menhir. It shows the alignments at Le Mdnec, lat. 47|-° (Fig. 26). The line A—Soleil runs across the stone alignments and is fixed from A by the menhir B, but there does not seem any good reason for selecting B except that it appears to fall in the line of the solstitial azimuth according to M. Gaillard. But if we take this azimuth as N. 54° E., then we find the alignments to have an azimuth roughly of X. 66° E., which gives us the amplitude of 24° N. marking the place of sunrise at the beginning of the May and November years, and the alignments may have dealt principally with those times of the year.
I esteem it a most fortunate thing that while I have been casting about as to the best way of getting more accurate data, Lieutenant Devoir, of the 'French Navy and therefore fully equipped with all. the astronomical knowledge necessary; who resides at Brest and has been studying the prehistoric monuments in his neighbourhood for many years, has been good enough to give me the results of his work in that region, in which the problems seem to be simpler than further south; for while in the vicinity of Carnac the menhirs were erected in groups numbering five or six thousand, near Brest, lat. 48^°, thev
X THE MAY AND JUNE WORSHIPS 99
are much more restricted in number. I am much indebted to him for permission to use and publish his results.
Lieutenant Devoir, by his many well-planned and
FIG. 26.—Alignments at Le M£nec.
approximately accurate observations, has put the solstitial orientation beyond question, and, further, has made important observations which prove that the May and August sunrises were also provided for in the systems of
H 2
CHAP.
ioo STONEHENGE
alignments. I give the following extracts from his letter:—
“It is about twelve years ago that I remarked in the west part of the Department of Morbihan (near Lorient) the parallelism of the lines marked out by monuments of all sorts, and frequently oriented to the N.E., or rather
FIG. 27.—Menhir (A) on Melon Island.
between N. 50° E. and N. 55° E. I had ascertained, moreover, the existence of lines perpendicular to the first named, the right angle being very well measured.
“ The plans, which refer to the cantons of Ploudal- mdzeau and of St. Renan (district of Brest) and of Crozon (district of Chateaulin), have been made on a plane-table; the orientations are exact to one or two degrees.
“ In the cantons of Ploudalm^zeau and of St. Renan,
X THE MAY AND JUNE WORSHIPS IOI
the monuments are generally simple; seven menhirs are visible of enormous dimensions, remarkable by the polish of their surface and the regularity of their section. The roughnesses hardly ever reach a centimetre ; the sections are more often ovals, sometimes rectangles with the angles rounded or terminated by semicircles. In the canton of Crozon the monuments are, on the contrary, complex; we find a cromlech with
B AC
FIG. 28.—Melon Island, showing Menhir (A) and Cromlech (B and C).
an avenue leading to it of a length of 800 metres, another of 300 metres. Unfortunately, the rocks employed (sandstone and schist from Plungastel and Crozon) have resisted less well than the granulite from the north part of the Department. The monuments are for the most part in a very bad condition; the whole must, nevertheless, formerly have been comparable with that of Carnac-Leomariaquer.
“ For the two regions, granitic and schistose, the results of the observations are identical.
“ The monuments lie along lines oriented S. 54° W.
102
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
-> N. 54° E. (54° = azimuth at the solstices for L = 48° 30' and i = 23° 30') and N. 54° W. -» S. 54° E. Some of them determine lines perpendicular to the meridian.
“ One menhir (A), 6m. 90 in height and 9m. 20 in circumference, erected in the small island of Melon
D E F
FIG. 29.—Menhirs of St. Dourz&l, D, E, F.
(canton of Ploudalmdzeau, latitude 48° 29' 05") a few metres from a tumulus surrounded by the ruins of a cromlech (B and C), has the section such that the faces, parallel and remarkably plane, are oriented N. 54° E. (Figs. 27 and 28).
“At 1300 metres in the same azimuth there is a line of three large menhirs (D, E, F), of which one (E) is overthrown. The direction of the line passes exactly
X THE MAY AND JUNE WORSHIPS 103
by the menhir A. Prolonged towards the N.E. it meets at 3k. 700m. an overturned block of 2m. 50 in height, which is without doubt a menhir; towards the S.W. it passes a little to the south some lines of the island of Molene. . . . (Fig. 29).
“ There exists in the neighbourhood other groups, forming also lines of the same orientation and that of
FIG. 30.—Alignment at Lagatjar, G G\
the winter solstice. It is advisable to remark that orientations well determined for the solstices are much less so for the equinoxes, which is natural, the rising amplitude varying very rapidly at this time of year.
“The same general dispositions are to be found in the complex monuments of the peninsula of Crozon. I take for example the alignments of Lagatjar. Two parallel lines of menhirs, GG' H H', are oriented to S. 54° E. and cut perpendicularly by a third line, IF. There existed less than fifty years ago a menhir at K,
104
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
6 metres high, which is to-day broken and overturned. This megalith, known in the country by the name of ‘ pierre du Conseil ’ (a bronze axe was found underneath it) gives with a dolmen situated near Camaret the direction of the sunrise on June 21 (Fig. 31).
“ I have just spoken of the lines perpendicular to the solstitial one; there exists more especially in the complex monuments another particularity which merits
FIG. 31.—Alignments at Lagatjar, showing the pierre du Conseil and the direction of the dolmen. From the pierre du Conseil the dolmen marks the sunrise place at the summer solstice, and the avenue GG' HH' the sunset place on the same day.
attention. Between two monuments, M and N, on a solstitial line, sometimes other menhirs are noticed, the line joining them being inclined 12° to the solstitial line, always towards the east ” (Fig 32).
I must call particular attention to this important observation of Lieutenant Devoir, for it gives us the amplitude 24° N., the direction of sunrise at the beginning of the May and August years. It shows, moreover, that, as at Le Mdnec according to M. Gaillard, the solstitial and May-August directions were both provided
X THE MAY AND JUNE WORSHIPS 105
for at the monuments in the neighbourhood of Brest so carefully studied by Lieutenant Devoir.
Lieutenant Devoir points out the wonderful regularity of form and the fine polish of many of the menhirs. It will have been gathered from his account that those most carefully trimmed and tooled belong to the solstitial .alignments. The one at Kerloas (11 metres high) heads
FIG. 32.—Menhirs, M N on N.E.-S.W. solstitial alignment. Menhirs 1, 2, on May-August years alignment, sunrise May-August, sunset November-February.
the list in point of size; others in the island of Melon (7 metres), at Kergadion (8 metres and 10 metres), Kerenneur, Kervaon and Kermabion follow suit. He considers them to have been erected at the time of the highest civilisation of the Megalithic peoples. He also states that these regularly formed menhirs do not exist at Carnac, or in the region of Pont l’Abb^, so rich in other remains which certainly refer chiefly to the May- No vember year. It seems, then, that in these localities
io6
STONEHENGE
CH. X
the May-August worship first chiefly predominated, and that the index menhirs of M. Gaillard which indicate the solstice and which do not form part of the alignments were erected subsequently.
Finally, then, the appeal to Brittany is entirely in favour of the May-November year worship having preceded the solstitial one.
I have already stated the evidence at Stonehenge j that the sunrise at the beginning of the May and j August years was observed in an earlier temple which existed before the present structure existed. Were this so we have another point common to the British and j Breton monuments. I therefore think that I may justly . claim the Brittany evidence as entirely in favour of the suggestion put forward in Chap. IX with regard to Stonehenge.
CHAPTER XI
ASTRONOMICAL HINTS FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS
THE foregoing chapters will have shown that in dealing with the ancient monuments from an astronomical point of view, we have to consider chiefly the direction of the sight-lines, whether they are marked as in Brittany by long rows of stones—alignments; as at Stonehenge by an avenue ; as in some of our British circles, by two or more circles the direction being indicated from the central stone of one to the central stone of the other, or finally by a single standing stone or barrow.
It is important then that before we proceed further in our inquiries we should consider how a meaning is got out of these directions, and I propose, to devote this chapter to this question, so that the full use of the “ azimuths ” already referred to and others which are to follow may be fully understood.
There is another matter, at which I hinted on pp. 36 and 42. We have to inquire whether there are any stones or barrows marking the direction of the rising or setting of stars, as well as those which deal with the rising and setting of the sun at different times of the year, which we have already found at Stonehenge and in Brittany. To face this question we have to consider the stellar as well as
io8
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
solar conditions of observations, and as the former are the simpler I will begin with them, especially as now there is no question whatever that the rising and setting of stars were provided for.
In continuation of my work in Egypt in 1891, and Mr. Penrose’s in Greece in 1892, I have recently endeavoured to see whether there are any traces in Britain of star observations, including those connected with the worship of the sun at certain times of the year. We both discovered that stars, far out of the sun’s course, especially in Egypt, were observed in the dawn as heralds of sunrise—“ warning-stars ”—so that the priests might have time to prepare the sunrise sacrifice. To do this properly the star should rise while the sun is still about 10° below the horizon. There is also reason to believe that stars rising not far from the north point were also used as clock-stars to enable the time to be estimated during the night in the same way as the time during the day could be estimated by the position of the sun.
I stated (Dawn of Astronomy, p. 319) that Spica was the star the heliacal rising of which heralded the sun on May-day 3200 B.C. in the temple of Menu at Thebes. Sirius was associated with the summer solstice at about the same time.
Mr. Penrose found this May-day worship continued at Athens on foundations built in 1495 B.c. and 2020B.c.,on which the Hecatompedon and older Erechtheum respectively were subsequently built, the warning star being now no longer Spica, but the cluster of the Pleiades rising, or Antares setting, in the dawn.
It is generally known that Stonehenge is associated with the solstitial year, and I have suggested that it was
XI
ASTRONOMICAL HINTS
109
originally connected with the May year ; but the probable date of its re-dedication, 1680 B.C., was determined by Mr. Penrose and myself by the change of obliquity.
Now if Stonehenge or any other British stone circle could be proved to have used observations of warning stars, the determination of the date when such observations were made would be enormously facilitated. Mr. Penrose and myself were content to think that our date might be within 200 years of the truth, whereas if we could use the rapid movement of stars in declination brought about by the precession of the equinoxes, instead of the slow change of the sun’s declination brought about by the change of the value of the obliquity, a possible error of 200 years would be reduced to one of 10 years.
In spite of this enormous advantage, no one so far as I know has yet made any inquiry to connect star observations with any of the British circles.
I have recently obtained clear evidence that some circles in different parts of Britain were used for night work and also in relation to the May year, which we know was general over the whole of Europe in early times, and which still determines the quarter-days in Scotland.
If the Egyptian and Greek practice were continued here, we should expect then to find some indications of the star observations utilised at the temple of Min and at the Hecatompedon for the beginning, or the other chief months, of the May year.
I have found them, and I will now show the method employed.
To begin with, if we assume that the astronomer-
IIO
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
priests here did attempt such observations, what is the most likely way in which they would have gone to work ?
The easiest way for the astronomer-priests to conduct such observations in a stone circle would be to erect a stone or barrow indicating the direction of the place on the horizon at which the star would rise as seen from the centre of the circle. If the dawn the star was to herald occurred in the summer, the stone or barrow itself might be visible if not too far away, but there was a reason why they should not be too close ; in a solemn ceremonial the less seen of the machinery the better.
Doubtless such stones and barrows would be rendered obvious in the dark by a light placed on or near them. Cups which could hold oil or grease are known in connection with such stones, and a light thus fed would suffice in the open if there were no wind; but in windy weather a cromlech or some similar shelter must have been provided for it.
Now if these standing stones or barrows were ever erected and still remain, accurate plans—not the slovenly plans with which Ferguson and too many others have provided us, giving us either no indication of the north or any other point, or else a rough compass bearing without taking the trouble to state the variation at the time and place—will help us.
I have already pointed out that much time has been lost in the investigation of our stone circles, for the reason that in many cases the exact relations of the monuments to the chief points of the horizon, and therefore to the place of sunrise at different times of the year, have not been considered; and when they were, the observations
XI
ASTRONOMICAL HINTS
111
were made only with reference to the magnetic north, which is different at different places, and besides is always varying; few indeed have tried to get at the real astronomical conditions of the problem. The first, I think, was Mr. Jonathan Otley, who in 1849 showed the “orientation” of the Keswick circle “according to the solar meridian,” giving true solar bearings throughout the year.
In my opinion the most accurate plans conceivable, in the absence of a long and minute local inquiry, are the 25-inch maps of the Ordnance Survey, on which, I have it on the authority of Colonel Johnston the distinguished Director, each stone may be taken to be shown with a limit of error of 6 feet. With a large circular protractor azimuths can be read to one minute of arc, and in critical cases the true azimuth of the side lines, which are not necessarily meridians as latitudes are not marked, can be found on inquiry at the Ordnance Office, Southampton.
Having then true azimuths, the next question concerns the declinations of the stars which may have been observed.
The work of Stockwell in America, Danckworth in Germany,1 and Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer in England, has provided us with tables of the changing declinations of stars throughout past time, or enough of it for our purpose.
An accurate determination on the 2 5-inch map of either the azimuth (angular distance from the N. or S. points) or amplitude (angular distance from the E. or W. points)
1 Dr. O. Danckworth, Vierteljahrschrift der Astronomischen Gesell- schaft} 16 Jahrgang 1881, p. 9. Dr. Stockweirs results have been communicated to me by letter. Some, but not all, of Dr. Lockyer’s calculations appeared in The Dawn of Astronomy.
112
STONEHENGE
CH. XI
of the stone or barrow as seen from the centre of the stone circle will enable us to determine the declination of the star at the time when it was observed.
I give a diagram which enables this determination to be made with the greatest ease for any monuments between Land’s End and John o’ Groats, whether the direction is recorded by amplitude or azimuth ; the declination is read at the side from the value of either indicated, say, by a dot, at the proper latitude.
This, of course, only gives us a first approximation. The angular height of the point on the horizon to which the alignment or sight-line is directed by the stone or barrow from the centre of the circle must be most accurately determined, otherwise the declinations may be one or two degrees out.
In the absence of measurements it is convenient to assume, in the first instance, that the horizon is half a degree high, as with this elevation refraction is compensated, as the following table will show:
Elevation of actual horizon. Bessel’s
refraction. Combined effect.
OW 34'54" -34'54"
0°10' 32*49" -22'49"
20' 30'52" -10*52"
30' 29'3*5" + 0*56*5"
40' 27'22*7" + 12*37 *3*
50' 25'49*8" +2410*2*
ro' 24'24*6" + 35*35*4"
In the absence of theodolite observations the actual elevation of the horizon can be roughly found by a study of the contour lines on the 1-inch map. The following heights will agree with the previous assumption of hills high : Distance 1 mile Height = 46 feet
2 miles „ = 92
4 » „ =184 J>
8 „ =368
10 „ =460 )>
FIG. 33.—Diagram for finding declination from given amplitudes or azimuths in British latitudes.
114
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
I also give other diagrams showing the changing declinations of the brightest stars, those which] would naturally be observed, between the years 150 A.D. and 2150 B.c. These have been plotted from the calculations of the authorities I have named.
Fig. 34 deals with the Northern stars. The stars are numbered as follows:—
Number. Name of star. Number. Name of star.
1 0 Ursae Minoris. 14 a Coronae.
2 a Ursae Minoris (Polaris). 15 a Geminorum (Castor).
3 a Draconis. 16 0 Geminorum (Pollux).
4 a Ursae Majoris (Dubhe). 17 a Bootes (Arcturus).
5 y Ursae Majoris. 18 0 Leonis.
6 11 Ursae Majoris (Benetnasch). 19 a Leonis (Regulus).
7 y Draconis. 20 a Andromedae.
8 0 Cassiopeiae. 21 ri Tauri (Alcyone).
9 a Cassiopeiae. 22 a Tauri (Aldebar&n).
10 a Persei. 23 a Canis Minoris (Procyon).
11 a Aurigae (Capella). 24 a Aquilae.
12 a Cygni. 25 a Orionis (Betelgeuse).
13 a Lyrae (Vega). 26 a Virginis (Spica).
On Fig. 35, dealing with the Southern stars, the names are given along the curves.
Now supposing that we have our plans; that we have determined the azimuth of the sight lines; and have found the declination of the star observed ; we may find more than one star occupying that declination at various dates.
Which of these stars, then, must we consider?
Obviously those most conveniently situated for enabling the time to be estimated during the night, or those which could have been used as warning stars.
The warning stars can be conveniently picked up by using a precessional globe. From it we gather that about 1900, 1400 and 800 B.c. they were as follows for the critical
Prometheus:
XI
ASTRONOMICAL HINTS
IJ5
Fio. 34.—Declinations of Northern Stars from 250 A.D. to 2150 B.c.
I 2
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
116
m;
DEC*
*>?
J0-
'* ? M -
70-
80-
^ 66C sio cio isio' ' ’ ’fiioo'
FIG. 35.—Declinations of Southern Stars from 250 A.D. to 2150 B.C.
a Ceti, a Aquarii, & Orionis, a Capricorni, a Can is Majoris, a Scorpii, a Columbai, a Pisces Austr., n ArgAs, a Centauri, a Argils, a Crucis, a Gruis, and a Eridani.
ASTRONOMICAL HINTS
XI
U7
times of the May year, i.e. May, August, November, February:—
1900 B.C. 1400 B.C. 800 B.C.
May .... Castor rising . . . N. 41° E. Pleiades rising N 77° E. Pleiades
Antares rising. . N. 71° E.
Antares setting ... 8. 75" W. setting 8. 72° W.
August. . . Arcturuscircumpolar. Arcturus Sirius
With hill 3° highrising. N. 17® E. rising. . 8. 63* E.
Rising.
Date 2170 B.C. . . N. 11*15' E.
„ 2090 B.C. . . N. 14*18' B.
„ 1900 B.C. . . N. 18*44' E.
November
Betclgeuse
setting . N. 87® W.
February . . Capella rising ... N. 36* E. Capella . N. 28* E. Capella . . N. 21* E.
rising rising
For the solstices, that is, June and December, the following stars might be used as warners:—
1900 B.C.
Summer Solstice. Betelgeuse rising. . N. 87* E.
Arcturus setting . N. 18° W. with hill 3° high
Winter Solstice . Sheat rising (early). N. 72* E.
Markab ,, (late) . S. 89° E.
H00 B.c. 800 B.c.
Betelgeuse y Geminorura
rising . N. 90° E. rising . . N. 68* E. Arcturus setting (“Alhena” mag. 1*9.)
(late) . N. 16° W. a Serpen tis setting N. 53* W.
Castor a Capricomi
setting N. 37* W. rising . . 8. 66* E. Pollux
setting N. 42* W.
It is obvious that a star used all the year round for night work will warn the sunrise at some one of the yearly festivals.
When the stars having the same declinations are considered from this point of view, the star actually used, and therefore the date of its use, may generally be gathered. I shall show subsequently that some of the stars in the above lists were actually observed in British as well as in Grecian temples.
CHAPTER XII
ASTRONOMICAL HINTS FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS—Continued.
I NEXT come to the sun observations.
First we must consider the astronomical differences between the rising of a star and of the sun, by which we generally mean that small part of the sun’s limb first visible.
It is frequently imagined that for determining the exact place of sunrise or sunset in connection with these ancient monuments we have to deal with the sun’s centre, as we should do with the sun half riseD. As a matter of fact, we must consider that part of the sun’s limb which first makes its appearance above the horizon ; the first glimpse of the upper limb of the sun is in question, say, when the visible limb is 2' high; and we must carefully take the height of the hills over which it rises into account.
The accompanying diagram will at once show the difference between the rising conditions we have now to consider. It deals with the summer solstice, as being the most precise case, in Lat. 59° N.
At this time the position of the sun, that is of the sun’s centre, as given in the “ Nautical Almanac,” is represented by the double circle on the sea horizon.
ALTITU0E9 SUNRBE SUMMER SOLSTEE LATITUPC B9*N.
FIG. 36.—The Conditions of “Sunrise” at the Summer Solstice in Lat. 59° N.
VO
ASTRONOMICAL HINTS
120
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
The azimuth of this position is N. 39° 16' E. This is the equivalent of the declination of a star, but it will be seen that the real azimuths we want are
very different. The dotted circles represent the actual position of the sun with regard to the horizon, the continuous circles the apparent positions caused by the lifting-up effect of refraction. We have the positions in azimuth of the apparent sun as it appears on a sea horizon, and when the horizon is formed by hills up to l£° in vertical height.
To make this quite clear I give a table which has been computed by Mr. Rolston, of the Solar Physics Observatory, showing azimuths with hills up to l£° high for lat. 59° N., and 51° N. nearly the latitude of Stonehenge, of the sun’s upper limb for the summer solstice:—
Lat. »«* Lat. 5V
SUMMER SOLSTICE. Rising Si—E or Rising N—E or
Setting N—W. Setting X—W.
Sun’s centre; uncorrected
ri , , _ ,sea horizon
Sun’s upper limb ; cor- j hm high
rected for semi-diameter and refraction
„ 1° ,» • ‘ l „ li° „
WINTER SOLSTICE.
39 16 ... 50 40
37 1 ... 49 20
38 34 ... 50 16
40 8 51 12
41 30 ... 52 4
Rising S—E or Rising S—E or
Setting S—W. Setting S—W.
Sun’s centre; uncorrected
Sun's upper limb; corrected for semi-diameter and refraction
sea horizon hill high » 1°
„ 14° »
39 16 & 40
41 24 52 0
39 54 51 4
38 23 50 8
36 54 49 14
The first important thing we learn from the table is that although at both solstices the azimuths of the rising and setting of the sun’s centre are the same, these azimuths of the upper limb at the summer and winter solstices differ in a high northern latitude by some 5°. The difference arises, of course, from the
FIG. 37.—The Azimuths of the Sunrise (upper limb) at the Summer Solstice.
The values given in the table have been plotted, and the effect of the height of hills on the azimuth is shown. The range of latitude given enables the diagram to be used in connection with the solstitial alignments at Carnak, Le Menac, and other monuments in Brittany.
XII ASTRONOMICAL HINTS
122 STONEHENGE CH. XII
fact that the limb is some 16' from the sun’s centre, so that considering the sun’s centre as a star with fixed declination, at rising the limb appears before the centre, and at setting it lags behind it.
It will also be seen that at sunrise hills increase the azimuth from N., and refraction reduces it; while at setting, hills reduce the azimuth from S. and refraction increases it.
This diagram and table should fully explain the variation of azimuth at sunrise caused by the fact that from our present point of view we do not deal with the sun as a star.
To make the foregoing applicable for monuments in all latitudes between Brittany and the Orkneys, I give still another diagram, Fig. 37, also prepared for me by Mr. Rolston which will enable any archaeologist to determine approximately, fo present time, the azimuth of sunrise at the summer solstice, without waiting for the 21st of June in any year actually to observe it.
As before stated, I have dealt with the solstice in this' chapter because it affords us the most precise case. I hope to be able to deal with the May year sun in the same way later on.
CHAPTER XIII
STENNESS (Lat. 59° N.).
I WROTE a good deal in Nature1 on sun and star temples in 1891, and Mr. Lewis the next year expressed the opinion that the British stone monuments, or some of them, were sun and star temples.
Mr. Magnus Spence, of Deemess, in Orkney, published a pamphlet, “ Standing Stones and Maeshowe of Stenness,”2 in 1894; it is a reprint of an article in the Scottish Review, October, 1893, showing that the stones were set up for solar worship. Mr. Cursiter, F.S.A., of Kirkwall, in a letter to me dated March 15, 1894, a letter suggested by my “ Dawn of Astronomy,” which appeared in that year, and in which the articles which had been published in Nature in 1891 had been expanded, directed my attention to the pamphlet.
I began the consideration of the Stenness circles and alignments in 1901, but other pressing calls on my time then caused me to break off the inquiry. Quite recently it occurred to me that a complete study of the Stenness circles might throw light on the question of an earlier
1 See especially Nature, July 2, 1891, p. 201.
2 Gardner: Paisley and London.
STONEHENGE CHAP.
STENNESS
XIII
125
Stonehenge, so I have gone over the old papers, plotting the results on the Ordnance map.
Now that the inquiry is as complete as I can make it without spending some time in Orkney with a theodolite, I will begin my reference to other circles besides Stonehenge by stating the conclusions at which I have arrived with regard to the stones of Stenness.
In the first place I may state that although many of the alignments to which Mr. Spence refers in his pamphlet on Maeshowe prove to be very different from those he supposed and drew on the map which accompanies his paper, the main point of his contention is amply confirmed.
I give a copy of the Ordnance map showing the true orientation of these and of other sight-lines I have made out.
The alignments on which Mr. Spence chiefly depended were two, one running from the stone circle past • the entrance of Maeshowe to the place of sunrise at Hallowe’en (November 1), another from the same circle by the Barnhouse standing stone to the mid-winter sunrise at the solstice.
Although the map gives these sight-lines, I shall show that they had not the use Mr. Spence attributes to them ; but still observations of the sun were provided for on the days in question, and the circles and outstanding stones were undoubtedly set up to guide astronomical observations relating to the different times of the year. Of course, as I have shown elsewhere, such astronomical observations were always associated with religious celebrations of one kind or another, as the astronomer and the priest were one.
Km. 30. —Copy Of Onl.mnro Map -howing ohiof .ight-Unw from the .tone, of Htommaa.
XIII
STENNESS
127
I shall not refer to all the sight-lines indicated, hut deal only with those which I have without local knowledge been able to test and justify by means of the 25-inch Ordnance map.
Not only does calculation prove the worship of the May and June years, but I think the facts now before us really go to show that in Orkney the May year was the first established, and that the solstitial (June) year came afterwards, and this was one of the chief questions I had in view.
I will begin with the May year. I have already shown, p. 22, that the half-way time between an equinox and a solstice is when the sun’s centre has a declination approximately 16° 20' N. or S. In Orkney, with the latitude of 59°, assuming a sea horizon, the approximate amplitude of sunrise or sunset is 33° 6', the corresponding azimuth being 56° 54'.
Now the most interesting and best defined line near this azimuth on the Ordnance map is the one stretching S.E. from the centre of the Stenness circle to the Barnstone, with an azimuth of 57° 15'. The line contains between the two points I have named another stone, the Watchstone, 18^ feet high, in the precise alignment; and from the statements made and measures given it is to be inferred that a still more famous and perforated stone, the “ Stone of Odin,” demolished seventy years since, was also in the same line within the extremities named.
If we may accept this we learn something about perforated stones, and can understand most of the folk lore associated with them, and few have more connected with them than the one at Stenness. I
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
I 28
suggest that the perforation, which was in this case 5 feet from the ground, was used by the astronomer- priest to view the sunrise ill November over the Barn- house stone iu one direction, and the sunset in May over the circle iu the other. I hope to be able to return to this 11uestiou subsequently.
There is another echo of this fundamental line ; that joining the Ring of Bookan and the Stones of Via has the same azimuth and doubtless served the same purpose for the May year.
But this line, giving us the May sunset and November sunrise, not the December solstitial sunrise as Mr. Spence shows it. is Dot the only orientation connected with the May year at the stones of Stenness. The November sunset is provided for by a sight-line from the circle to a stone across the Loch of Stenness with an azimuth of S. 53 30' W.
To apply the table, given on p. 120, to the solstitial risings and settings at Stenness, and the sight-lines which I have plotted on the map, it.will be seen that
tin table shows us that the lines marked
S. 41° O' E.
N. 41 111 K. S. 36° 30' W.
an- solstitial lines ; to get exact agreement with the table tin* heights of tlie hills must be found and
allowed for.
1 have rou ghlv .h •tcniiincd this height from the 1-inch map in the cast- nl the Bnrnstone-Maeshowe alignment. Ou the N.E. horizon arc the Burden Hills, four miles awav, (100 feet high at the sunrise place, gradually
ascending to the L,, vertical angle=l° 36' 30". The
XIII
STENNESS
129
near alignment is on and over the centre of Maeshowe. Colonel Johnston, the Director-General of the Ordnance Survey, has informed me that the true azimuth of this bearing is N. 41° 16' E., and in all probability it represents the place of sunrise as seen from the Barn- stone when Maeshowe was erected. What is most required in Orkney now is that some one with a good 6-inch theodolite should observe the sun’s place of rising and the angular height of the hills at the next summer solstice in order to determine the date of the erection of Maeshowe. Mr. Spence and others made an attempt to determine this value with a sextant in 1899, but not from the Barnstone.
In the absence of this observation we may use the diagram given on p. 121. With the height of hill previously given the sun should rise according to calculation at about the azimuth N. 41° 50' E.
The difference between the new and old azimuth then, on the assumption that az. N. 41° 16' E. really represents an observation over Maeshowe, gives us the difference of date.
Treating these figures then as we have done in the case of Stonehenge in Chapter VII, the result is as follows. The Barnhouse—Maeshowe line was established about 700 B.C., when the obliquity had a value of 23° 48' according to Stockwell’s tables. (Fig. 40.)
I confess the late date does not surprise me. The masonry of Maeshowe differs widely from that of other similar structures in that the sides of the gallery and chamber, instead of being composed of upright stones, are built in regular courses.
I do not believe that the Maeshowe structure was
K.
130
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
built to observe a winter sunrise twenty days from the solstice, nor can I think it was set up at midsummer by someone who had only dealt with a high sun and a sea horizon, and imagined that the sunrise and sunset points were exactly opposite to each other. It was a priest’s house, and the alignment of the passage to the
Obliquity Years.
FIG. 40.—Variation of the Obliquity of the Ecliptic, 100 A.D.—4000 B.C. (Stockwell’s Values.)
Barnstone was for the exchange of signals, probably by lights in Maeshowe itself.
The Ordnance maps give no indication of stones, itchy which the direction of the midsummer setting or the midwinter rising and setting might have been indicated from either the Maeshowe or the Barnstone.
To sum up the solar alignments from the circle.
XIII
STENNESS
131
We have the May sunrise marked by the top of Burrien Hill, from 600 to 700 feet high, Az. 59° 30'.
We have the November sunset marked by a standing stone on the other side of the Loch of Stenness, Az. 53° 30'.
June rising, Line from Barnstone over Maeshowe tumulus.
December rising, tumulus (Az. 41°) on Ward Hill.
December setting, tumulus Onston 36° 30'.
It is not a little remarkable that the summer solstice rising and the winter solstice rising and setting seem to have been provided for at the Stenness circle by alignment on the centres of tumuli, two of them, across the Loch, one the Onston tumulus to the S.W. (Az. 36° 30'), the other tumulus being on Ward Hill to the S.E., Az. 41° (rough measurement).
If the Maeshowe tumulus was a structure erected at the time I have suggested to use the Barnstone for the summer solstice rising; then these two other tumuli, to deal with the winter solstice at Stenness circle, may have been built at the same time. All these provided for a new cult.
There are also tumuli near the line (which cannot be exactly determined because the heights of the hills are unknown) of the summer solstice setting; none was required for the sunrise at this date, as the line passes over the highest point of Hindera fiold, a natural tumulus more than 500 feet high, and on that account a triangulation station.
Another argument in favour of the tumuli being additions to the original design is that the place of the November setting from the Stenness circle is marked,
K 2
132
STONEHENGE
CH. XIII
not by a tumulus, but by a standing stone. As this stone, near Deepdale, and the tumulus at Onston are only about 1200 yards apart, the suggestion may be made that under certain unknown conditions and possibly in later times tumuli in some cases replaced stones as collimation marks.
With regard to the clock-star, it is to be feared that the stones in the N.E. quadrant as viewed from the circle which might have given us a clue have been removed. As the latitude of Stenness is N. 59°, some star with a less declination than N. 31° would have been chosen, assuming that the sky-line towards the
N. point is not very high.
CHAPTER XIV
THE HURLERS (Lftt. 50° 3l' N.)
THE sight-lines to which I have drawn attention in relation to the stones of Stenness had to do with the places of sunrise and sunset in the May and Solstitial years. I now pass to another group of circles in which we deal chiefly with the places of star-rise and star-set, some of the stars being used as warners for sunrise at the critical times of the two years in question.
Following the clue given me in the case of the Egyptian temples, such as Luxor, by successive small changes of the axis necessitated by the change in a. star’s place due to precession, I began this stellar branch of the inquiry by looking out for this peculiarity in an examination of many maps and plans of circles.
I very soon came across two examples in which the sight-line had been changed in the Egyptian manner. The first is the three circles of the Hurlers, some 5 miles to the north of Liskeard, a plan of which is given in “ Prehistoric Stone Monuments of the British Isles: Cornwall,” by W. C. Lukis, Rector of Watli, Yorkshire, published by the Society of Antiquaries, who were so good as to furnish me with a copy, and also
134
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
some unfolded plans on which sight-lines could be accurately drawn and their azimuths determined. I am anxious to express my obligations to the council and officers of the society for the help thus afforded me.
The three circles are thus referred to by Lukis in the valuable monograph which I have already mentioned.
“ On the moor, about a mile to the south of the singular pile of granite slabs, which rest upon and overlap each other, and is vulgarly called the Cheesewring, there are three large circles of granite stones placed in a nearly straight line in a north-north-east, and south-south-west direction, of which the middle one is the largest, being 135 feet in diameter, the north 110 feet, and the south 105 feet.
“The north Circle is 98 feet, and the south 82 feet from the central one. If a line be drawn uniting the centres of the extreme Circles, the centre of the middle ring is found to be 12 feet 6 inches to the west of it.
“ These Circles have been greatly injured. The largest consists of 9 erect and 5 prostrate stones; the north Circle has 6 erect and 6 prostrate, and a fragment of a seventh ; and the south has 3 erect and 8 prostrate. In Dr. Borlase’s time they were in a slightly better condition. A pen-and-ink sketch made by him, which is extant in one of Dr. Stukeley’s volumes of original drawings, represents the middle Circle as consisting of 7 erect and 10 prostrate stones; the north’ of 10 erect and 6 prostrate; and the south of 3 erect and 9 prostrate. The stone to the east of that marked C in the plan of the middle Circle is the highest, and is
J
XIV
THE HURLERS
135
5 feet 8 inches out of the ground, and appears to have been wantonly mutilated recently. Two of the prostrate stones of the north Circle are 6 feet 6 inches in length.
“About 17 feet south from the centre of the middle Circle there is a prostrate stone 4 feet long and 15 inches wide at one end. It may possibly have been of larger dimensions formerly, and been erected on the spot where it now lies, but as Dr. Borlase has omitted it in his sketch it is probably a displaced stone of the ring.
“ If we allow, as before, an average interval of 12 feet between the stones, there will have been about 28 pillars in the north, 26 in the south, and 33 in the middle Circle.
“ At a distance of 409 feet westwards from K in the middle Circle there are 2 stones, 7 feet apart, both inclined northwards. One is 4 feet 11 inches in height out of the ground, and overhangs its base 2 feet 7 inches; the other is 5 feet 4 inches high, and overhangs 18 inches.”
I now pass from a general description of the circles to the azimuths of the sight-lines already referred to, so far as they can be determined from the published Ordnance maps.
To investigate them as completely as possible without local observations in the first instance, I begged Colonel Johnston, R.E:, C.B., the Director-General of the
Ordnance Survey, to send me the 25-inch maps of the site giving the exact azimuth of the side lines. This he obligingly did, and I have to express my great indebtedness to him.
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
136
In Fig. 41 I show the sight-lines from the south and north Circles as determined by the stones and barrows marked on the map. The sight-lines on Arcturus are from
the centres of the three circles in succession. 1 shall point out later the significance of the fact that the November alignments are from the south, the solstitial ones from the north Circle.
XIV
THE HURLERS
137
Of the various sight-lines found, those to which 1 wish to direct attention in the first instance, and which led me to the others, are approximately, reading the azimuths to the nearest degree,
Lat. 50° 31' N. Az.
S. circle to central circle . . . N. 12° E.
Central to N. circle . . . . N. 15° E.
N. circle to tumulus . . . . N. 19° E.
In a preliminary inquiry in anticipation of the necessary local observations with a theodolite, I assumed hills half a degree high, for the reason given on p. 112. We have the following declinations approximately :—
Dec. N. 38£°
Here, then, we have declinations to work on, but declinations of what star? To endeavour to answer this question I studied the declinations of the three brightest stars in the northern heavens, having approximately the declinations in question some time or other during the period 0 to 2500 B.c.
Vega is ruled out as its declination was too high. The remaining stars Capella and Arcturus may have been observed so far as the declinations go. For time limits we have :—
Dec. N. Capella. Arcturus.
38£° 500 B.C. 1600 B.C.
36° 1050 „ 1150 „
Now there is no question as to which of these two stars we have to deal with, for the northern circle is
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
138
evidently less ancient than the others, for some of the stones are squared and the others are less irregular than those in the S. circle.
This being so, the approximate dates of the use of the three circles at the Hurlers can be derived. They are, with the above assumption:—
B.C.
Southern circle aligning Arcturus over centre of central circle 1600 Central „ „ „ N. circle 1500
Northern „ „ „ tumulus 1300
The next step was to obtain, by means of a large circular protractor, more accurate readings of the Ordnance Map. This I could do, but the all important question of the angular height of the horizon remained. As it was impossible for me to leave London when the significance of the alignments was made out, I appealed to the authorities of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society for aid in obtaining the necessary angles, and as a result, Captain J. S. Henderson, of Falmouth, an accomplished surveyor, volunteered his aid and shortly sent me the angular heights along some of the alignments, the means of eight readings obtained with a 6-inch theodolite, both verniers and reversed telescopes being employed. Other students of science besides myself will, I am sure, feel their indebtedness for such opportune help.
The combination of the large protractor and theodolite work gives the following final values. The difference between them and the provisional ones given above speaks volumes as to the necessity of a local study of the height of the horizon, a point I believe invariably neglected by archaeologists.
XIV
THE HURLERS
i39
FINAL VALUES.
Arcturus from S. circle to central circle.
Az. N. 11° 15' E. Dec. = 41° 38'
Hills, 3° 23' 52" high. DATE, 2170 B.C.
Arcturusfrom central circle to N. circle. Az. N. 14° 18' E.
Bee. = 41° 9'
Same hills. DATE, 2090 B.C.
Arcturus from Ar. circle to Barrow.
Az. N. 18° 14' E. Dec. = 40° 6'
Same hills. DATE, 1900 B.C.
Now before this evidence of star worship, so important if it can be depended on, could be accepted, it was necessary to make a special inquiry as to the existence of similar star observations in other places. Many have been found of which more in the sequel.
The next point which arose was that Arcturus used as a clock-star (p. 108) would serve as a warner for August. This necessitated another inquiry into the chief festivals in Cornwall: among these the August (Harvest) festival is one.
Another point to consider was whether there was any evidence of a local August festival. It happens that the Hurlers are in the parish of St. Cleer, and some of the other Arcturus sight-lines are in that of St. Just. Now, a local festival in old days was often associated with the local Saint. As most of the Cornish Saints are common to Cornwall and Brittany, I looked up the Calendar of the Annuaire of the Institut de France, and found that the days dedicated
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
I4O
to SS. Justin and Claire are the 9th and 12th of August. It seems, then, that at the Hurlers it was really a question of a clock-star also used as a warning star for the August festival. I think we have at last, then, run to earth the origin of some of the northerly alignments referred to on pages 36 and 43.
It will have been noted that the last sight-line on Arcturus was marked by a barrow. Captain Henderson inspected it and found it much ruined by explorers, remains of a chamber inside being visible.
In a subsequent visit, in which Captain Henderson was accompanied by Mr. Horton Bolitho, my wife and myself, we not only visited this barrow, but found that the whole hill had been honeycombed to such an extent by mining operations that it was very difficult to discriminate between “ investigated ” barrows and other heaps and holes, unless the barrow showed the remains of a chamber.
Our examination was not limited to barrows. Captain Henderson had spent a long bleak day in examining and measuring the stones marked on the Ordnance Map, to w’hich I had called his special attention. We went over part of the ground with him. and came to the conclusion that the whole question of the Cornish treatment of “ ancient stones ” would have to be gone into—an inquiry which Mr. Bolitho is now carrying on.
It must be remembered that any stone or barrow used in the sight-lines we are now considering must have been put up nearly 4,000 years ago, so long ago. in fact, that many of the chief barrows have been reduced to the skeletons of their former selves, the
XIV THE HURLERS 141
enclosed stone chamber, built of mighty stones, alone remaining.
Cromlechs and standing stones then formed important points in the landscape long before ecclesiastical divisions were thought of, or any attempt was made to indicate the boundaries of private property.
We should expect then to find these ancient monuments freely made use of to mark what we now term “ parish boundaries.’' This is so. Four parishes have thus used one of the larger cromlechs, and it is more than probable that something beside the denunciation of the cultus lapidum, which we have seen at work in Brittany (p. 39), has been responsible for the many stone crosses in Cornwall. Of some of them near circles I have gathered the astronomical use, while now they “mark the bounds,” as do some of the stone rows in Dartmoor.
I believe that in later times this practice of the Church was followed by those among whom the land was distributed, and this has gone on till at last there are many ancient stones trimmed on one side and bearing initials and so having a modern appearance. The astronomer, and even the archaeologist, may regret this practice, but as the habit in Cornwall appears to be for anybody to use the nearest uncrossed and uninitialled stone for a wall or a pigsty, Mr. Bolitho’s inquiry may show that in some cases, at all events, it has been a blessing in disguise, for the stones are still there.
In the case of a long chambered barrow, the top of which nearly touches the horizon, as seen from a circle near it, there is less danger of being misled.
142
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
In my notes on the stones of Stenness (Chapter XIII) I pointed out that the chambered Cairns at Onston and Maeshowe suggested that such structures were later variants of the more ancient standing stones. Some barrows at the Hurlers lend further confirmation of this view. I will deal with them first. Of one the data are Az. from N. Circle S. 72° 49' W., height of horizon 12' (Capt. Henderson). The resulting declination is S. 11° 5', the declination of Antares 1720 B.C. But why should Antares be thus singled out ? The table on page 117 shows the reason. At the date involved the setting of Antares in the dawn was the wamer of the sunrise on May morning, the greatest day in all the year.
Is there any precedent for this use of Antares?
I have already pointed out (p. 108) that Mr. Penrose found the warning stars for May morning at the dates of foundation of the Hecatompedon, and the older Erechtheum, to be the group of the Pleiades rising and Antares setting. As the foundations of the Hecatompedon were built only some few years after the stones of the central circle of the Hurlers were used, we ought to find traces of the observations of the same May-morning stars.
We have, then, now a third term in the astronomical use of stars to herald the sunrise on May morning.
Temple of Min Thebes . . 3200 B.C. . . Spica.
Temple at the Hurlers . . . Liskeard . .1720 „ . . Antares.
Older Erechtheum .... Athens . . 1070 „ . . „
The next barrow to be referred to—it is shown to be a long one on the Ordnance Map—is situated
XIV
THE HURLERS
H3
near the top of Caradon Hill, and is visible on the skyline from the circles. Data : Az. from N. Circle S. 65° E., height of horizon 1° 38' (Henderson). This corresponds almost exactly with the azimuth of the rise of the sun’s upper limb with declination S. 16° 20' on the two critical dates in November and February of the May- year (Halloween and Candlemas, see p. 23), so I am inclined to consider it more than a mere coincidence that the azimuths coincide so closely. It, however, may be urged that there are other barrows on Caradon Hill, but judging from the Ordnance Map they seem to be of the round variety used for burials, perhaps a thousand years after the circles were in use, and in my opinion by a different race of men ; but this matter must not detain us now, I hope to return to it later.
Still one more barrow and a stone, uncrossed and uninitialled, in the same sight-line, data: Az. from N. circle S. 59° 35' E. Height of horizon 1° 38' 23" (Henderson), resulting declination S. 19° 50'. This was the declination of Sirius 1690 B.c. Why Sirius ? The table on p. 117 gives us the answer. Sirius replaced Arcturus as a warning star for the August festival, and we have seen that the last use of Arcturus was connected with the sight-line to the barrow about 1900 B.c.
I pass now from barrows to stones. There is one about which there can be no question. It is a famous Cross, a “ Longstone ” at which all travellers stop on their way from St. Cleer to the Hurlers. It occupies nearly the same position on the S.W. horizon as does the long tumulus on Caradon Hill in the S.E. quadrant. From the South Circle, and this is important, its
144
STONEHENGE
CH. XIV
Azimuth, S. 64° W., is nearly the same ; it marked, and still marks, the sunset point on the critical days of the May year in November and February.
There is another stone marked on the Ordnance Map Az. N. 88° E. from the N. circle. It has been removed, so I may fairly assume that it was really an ancient stone. Captain Henderson’s value for the height of the horizon is 11' 31". The table on p. 117 will show that in this direction we have to deal with Betelgeuse as a warner for the summer solstice. The resulting date is 1730 B.c.
It would appear that possibly this is not the only stone dealing with (later) solstitial alignments. Lukis gives two stones on the west side of the circles which on the Ordnance Map are classed as boundary stones: they lie on a boundary beyond all question, but also beyond all question they are as ancient as the stones of the circles themselves. From the N. circle they are almost but not quite in a line, and the azimuth of the south stone is S. 49° W. This is a solstitial azimuth. I think, therefore, that we may accept this as another evidence of the worship of the setting sun at the winter solstice, from the N. circle, and in this we have still further evidence that to the worship of the May year in the south circle was added later one dealing with the solstitial year which was chiefly carried on in the N. circle.
CHAPTER XV
THE DARTMOOR AVENUES
IN Chapter XI. I referred to the very numerous alignments of stones in Brittany, and I was allowed by Lieutenant Devoir, of the French Navy, to give some of his theodolite observations of the directions along which the stones had been set up.
The conclusion was that we were really dealing with monuments connected with the worship of the sun of the May year, a year which the recent evidence has shown to have been the first used after the length of the year had been determined; thus replacing the lunar unit of time which was in vogue previously, and the use of which is brought home to us by the reputed ages of Methuselah and other biblical personages, who knew no other measurer of time than the moon.
There was also evidence to the effect that in later times solstitial alignments had been added, so that the idea that we were dealing with astronomically oriented rows of stones was greatly strengthened, not to say established.
So long as the Brittany alignments were things of mystery, their origin, as well as that of the more or less similar monuments in Britain, was variously explained;
146
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
they were models in stone of armies in battle array, or they represented funeral processions, to mention only two suggestions. I should add that Mr. H. Worth, who has devoted much time to their study, considers that some sepulchral interest attaches to them, though he thinks it may be argued that that was secondary, even as are interments in cathedrals and churches. About burials associated with them, of course, there is no question, for the kistvaens and cairns are there; but my observations suggest that they were added long after the avenues were built, because some cairns block avenues. Perhaps a careful study of the modes of burial adopted may throw light on this point.
The equivalents of the Brittany alignments are not common in Britain; they exist in the greatest number on Dartmoor, whither I went recently to study them. The conditions on high Dartmoor are peculiar ; dense blinding mists are common, and, moreover, sometimes come on almost without warning. From its conformation the land is full of streams. There are stones everywhere. What I found, therefore, as had others before me, was that as a consequence of the conditions to which I have referred, directions had been indicated by rows of stones for quite other than ceremonial purposes. Here, then, was another possible origin. It was a matter of great importance to discriminate most carefully between these alignments, and to endeavour to sort them out. My special inquiry, of course, was to see if they, like their apparent equivalents in Brittany, could have had an astronomical origin. The first thing to do, then, was to see which might have been erected for worship or which for practical purposes.
XV
THE DARTMOOR AVENUES
147
In doing this there is no difficulty in dealing with extremes. Thus one notable line of large flat stones has been claimed by Messrs. R. N. Worth and R. Burnard as a portion of the Great Fosseway (Rowe’s Perambulation, third edition, p. 63); it has been traced for eighteen miles from beyond Hameldon nearly to
Photo, by Lady Lockytr.
FIG. 42.—The Southern Avenue at Merrivale, looking East.
Tavistock, the stones being about 2 feet thick and the road 10 feet wide.
There are two notable avenues of upright stones at Merrivale; the/ are in close connection with a circle, and could have had no practical use. These stones, then, we may claim as representing the opposite extreme of the Fosseway and as suggesting an astronomical, as opposed to a practical, use ; the adjacent circle, of course greatly strengthens this view.
148
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
It is between these extremes that difficulties may arise, but the verdict can, in a great many cases at all events, be settled without any very great hesitation, especially where practical or astronomical uselessness can be established. But even here care is necessary, as I shall show.
The stones now in question, originally upright, are variously called avenues, rows, alignments or paralleli- thons. Their study dates from 1827, when Rowe and Colonel Hamilton Smith examined those at Merrivale (Rowe, op. cit., p. 31). Their number has increased with every careful study of any part of the moor, and doubtless many are still unmapped.1 The late Mr. R. N. Worth, of Plymouth, and his son, Mr. H. Worth, have given great attention to these monuments, and the former communicated a paper on them to the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science in 1892 (Trans., xxv. pp. 387-417).
A word of caution must be said before I proceed. We must not take for granted that the stone-rows are now as they left the hands of the builders. The disastrous carelessness of the Government in the matter of our national antiquities is, I am locally informed, admirably imitated by the Devonshire County and other lesser councils, and, indeed, by anybody who has a road to mend or a wall to build. On this account, any of the rows may once have been much longer and with an obvious practical use; and those which nowT appear
1 On June 15, 1905, that excellent guide of the Chagford part of the moor, Mr. S. Perrott, showed me an avenue (Azimuth N. 20° E. true) near Hurston Ridge which is not given in the 1-inch map.
XV
THE DARTMOOR AVENUES
149
to be far removed from circles may once have been used for sacred processions at shrines which have disappeared.
Again, the rows of stones we are now considering must not be confounded with the “ track lines ” or “ boundary banks ” which are so numerous on Dartmoor, and are represented in Wiltshire according to Sir R. C. Hoare; these serve for bounds and pathways, and for connecting and enclosing fields or houses.
Dealing, then, with stone rows or avenues, which may be single, double, or multiple; any which are very long and crooked, following several directions, are certainly not astronomical; and it is easy to see in some cases that they might have been useful guides at night or in mist in difficult country with streams to cross. This possible utility must not be judged wholly by the present conformation of the ground or the present beds of streams.
For multiple avenues it is hard to find practical uses such as the above, and we know how such avenues were used in Brittany for sun worship. Mr. Baring Gould considers there were eight rows in an avenue on Challacombe Down 528 feet long; of these only three rows remain, the others being represented by single stones here and there (Rowe, p. 33). I shall have something to say about this avenue further on.
Although, as I have said, long rows bending in various direction^ are not likely to have had an astronomical origin, it must not be assumed that all astronomical avenues must be exactly straight. This, of course, would be true for level ground, but if the avenue has to pass over ridges and furrows, the varying
15o
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
height of the horizon must be reckoned with, and therefore the azimuth of the avenue at any point along it.
I think it possible that in the Stalldon Moor row we have the mixture of religious and practical intention at which I have before hinted. Both Mr. Lukis and Mr. Hansford Worth have studied this monument, which is two miles and a quarter long. There is & circle at the south end about 60 feet in diameter, while at its northern end there is a cairn.
Where the line starts from the circle the direction of the row is parallel to many sight-lines in Cornwall, and Arcturus would rise in. the azimuth indicated. But this direction is afterwards given up for one which leads towards an important collection of hut circles, and it crosses the Erme, no doubt at the most convenient spot. More to the north it crosses another stream and the bog of Red Lake. All this is surely practical enough, although the way indicated might have been followed by the priests of the hut circles to the stone circle to prepare the morning sacrifice and go through the ritual.
But there is still another method of discrimination. If any of these avenues were used at all for purposes of worship, their azimuths should agree with those already found in connection with circles in other parts of Britain, for we need not postulate a special race with a special cult limited to Dartmoor; and in my inquiries what I have to do is to consider the general question of orientation wherever traces of it can be found. The more the evidences coincide the better it is for the argument, while variations afford valuable tests.
XV
THE DARTMOOR AVENUES
I51
Now, speaking very generally (I have not yet compared all my numerous notes), in Cornwall the chief alignments from the circles there are with azimuths N. 10°—20° E. watching the rise of the clock-star, N. 64°—68° E. watching the rise of the May sun, N. 75°—82° E. watching the rise of the Pleiades. The variation in the azimuths is largely due to the different heights of the horizon towards which the sight-lines are directed.
The conclusion I have come to is that these alignments, depending upon circles and menhirs in Cornwall, are all well represented on Dartmoor associated with the avenues; and further, so far as I have learned at present, in the case of the avenues connected with circles, there are not many alignments I have not met with in connection with circles in Cornwall and elsewhere.
This is not only a prima facie argument in favour of the astronomical use underlying the structures, but it is against the burial theory, for certainly there must have been burials in Cornwall.
In order, therefore, to proceed with the utmost caution, I limit myself in the first instance to the above azimuths, and will begin by applying a test which should be a rigid one.
If the avenues on Dartmoor had to deal with the same practices and cults as did the circles in Cornwall, they ought to prove themselves to have been in use at about the same time, and from this point of view the investigation of the avenues becomes of very great importance, because of the destruction of circles and menhirs which has been going on, and is still going on, on Dartmoor. We have circles without menhirs
I52
STONEHENGE
CHAP.
and menhirs without* circles, so that the azimuths of the avenues alone remain to give us any chance of dating the monuments if they were used in connection with star worship. The case is far different in Cornwall, where both circles and menhirs have in many cases been spared.
On Dartmoor, where in some cases the menhirs still remain, they have been annexed as crosses and perhaps as boundary stones, and squared and initialed; hence the Ordnance surveyors have been misled, and they are not shown as ancient stones on the map. In some cases the azimuth of the stones suggests that this, has been the sequence of events.
It will be seen from the above that I have not tackled a question full of pitfalls without due caution, and this care was all the more necessary as the avenues have for long been the meeting ground of the friends ;
and foes of what Rowe calls “ Druidical speculations”; j
even yet the war rages, and my writing and Lieut Devoir’s observing touching the similar but grander avenues of Brittany have so far been all in vain; chiefly, I think, because no discrimination has been considered possible between different uses of avenues, and because the statements made by archaeologists as to their direction have been quite useless to anybody in consequence of their vagueness, and last of all because the recent work on the Brittany remains is little known.
I began my acquaintance with the Dartmoor monuments by visiting Merrivale, and the result of my inquiries there left absolutely no doubt whatever on my mind. I was armed, thanks to the kindness of Colonel Johnston, the Director of the Ordnance Survey, with the
XV THE DARTMOOR AVENUES 153
25-inch map, while Mr. Hansford Worth had been so good as to send me one showing his special survey.
The Merrivale avenues (lat. 50° 33' 15") are composed of two double rows, roughly with the azimuth N. 82° E.; the northern row is shorter than the other. Rowe, in his original description (1830), makes the northern 1143 feet long; they are not quite parallel, and the southern row has a distinct “ kink ” or change of direction in it at about the centre. The stones are mostly 2 or 3 feet high, and in each row they are about 3 feet apart; the distance between the rows is about 80 feet.
I have before pointed out (p. 149) that an avenue directed to the rising place of a star, if it is erected over undulating ground, cannot be straight. I may now mention another apparent paradox. If two avenues are directed to the rising place of the same star at different times, they cannot be parallel. It is not a little curious that absence of parallelism has been used against avenues having had an astronomical use !
Both the Ordnance surveyors and Mr. Worth have shown the want of parallelism of the two avenues, and Mr. Worth has noted the kink in the southern one. The height of the horizon, as determined from my measures, is 3° 18'. The results of these inquiries, assuming the Pleiades to have been observed warning May morning, are as follows:—
Azimuth. Authority. N. Declination. Date B.C.
N. 83*15 E. Worth 6 47 47 1710
82*30 Worth 7 16 20 1630
82*10 Ordnance 7 32 0 1580
80*40 Worth 8 26 0 1420
80-30 Ordnance 8 30 0 1400
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