Fig. 463.
Sections of a Dene-hole and Ground Plan of Chambers. (Based upon a plan and description by Mr. T. V. Holmes, F.G.S.)
Fig. 464.—From The Chislehurst Caves (Nichols, W. J.).
Fig. 463, evidently representative of the Great terrestrial Mother holding in her hand a simple horn, the fore-runner of the later cornu copia or horn of abundance, is the outline sketch of a rock-carved statue, 2 feet in height, discovered on the rubble-covered face of a rock cliff in the Dordogne: this has been proved to be of Aurignacian age and is the only yet discovered statue of any size executed by the so-called Reindeer men; in the Chislehurst caves have been discovered the deer horn picks of the primeval men who apparently first made them.
Fig. 465.—Ground plan of a group of Dene Holes in Hangman’s Wood, Kent. From a plan by Mr. A. R. Goddard, F.S.A.
The Kentish Dene hole is never an aimless quarrying; on the contrary it always has a curiously specific form, dropping about 100 feet as a narrow shaft approximately 3 feet in diameter and then opening out into a six-fold chamber, vide the plans[914] herewith. This is not a rational or business-like form of chalk quarry, and it must have been very difficult indeed to bucket up the output in small driblets, transport it from the tangled heart of woods, and pack-horse it on to galleys in the Thames: nevertheless something similar seems to have been the procedure in Pliny’s time for he tells that white chalk, or argentaria, “is obtained by means of pits sunk like wells with narrow mouths to the depth sometimes of 100 feet, when they branch out like the veins of mines and this kind is chiefly used in Britain”.[915]
In view of the fact that either chalk or flints could have been had conveniently in unlimited quantities for shipment, either from the coast cliffs of Albion, or if inland from the commonsense everyday form of chalk quarry, it is difficult to suppose otherwise than that the Deneholes—which do not branch out indiscriminately like ordinary mine-veins—were dug under superstitious or ecclesiastical control. Of this system perhaps a parallel instance may be found in the remarkable turquoise mines recently explored at Maghara near Sinai: “These mines,” says a writer in Ancient Egypt,[916] “lie in the vicinity of two adjacent caves facing an extensive site of burning, which has the peculiarities of the high-places of which we hear so much in the Bible. These caves formed a sanctuary which, judging from what is known of ancient sanctuaries in Arabia generally, was at once a shrine and a store house, presumably in the possession of a priesthood or clan, who, in return for offerings brought to the shrine, gave either turquoise itself, or the permission to mine it in the surrounding district. The sanctuary, like other sanctuaries in Arabia, was under the patronage of a female divinity, the representative of nature-worship, and one of the numerous forms of Ishthar.”