Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments Astronomically Considered

by Sir Norman Lockyer

CHAPTER XXIII
THE SIMILARITY OF THE SEMITIC AND BRITISH WORSHIPS

I propose in this chapter to bring into juxtaposition the various British and Semitic-Egyptian practices which we have so far considered.

I confess I am amazed at the similarities we have come across in the first cast of the net; we have found so much that is common to both worships in connection with all the points we considered separately. I will, for convenience, deal with the various points seriatim.

1. The cult of sacred stones or cairns.

The only objection which, so far as I can see, may be raised to these practices being absolutely common is the idea among many British archæologists that the cairns, in which term I include chambered barrows or dolmens and their skeletons, the cromlechs and stone passages, were set up for burial and not for worship. This idea has arisen because some of them have been used for burials. But I cannot accept this argument, because since the burials might have taken place at any time subsequent to their erection they prove nothing as to the reason of the erection; and further, if these chambered cairns were meant for burials, there should be burials in all of them, and yet there are none in the most majestic of them all, Maeshowe.

Let us consider a few facts in relation to the Semitic use of cairns referred to on [p. 244].

That the cromlechs found both in Britain and Syria—there are 780 in Ireland and 700 in Moab—are the remains of chambered cairns is pretty clear from the evidence brought forward by Borlase.[100]

Mr. John Bell, of Dundalk, disinterred over sixty cromlechs from cairns in Ulster. All dolmens were covered by tumuli according to Mr. Bell and Mr. Lukis. Monuments called cairns in the earliest Ordnance Survey have been marked dolmens in subsequent surveys (e.g. Townland of Leana in Clare) because the earth covering the stones had disappeared in the meantime.

Among the evidences of natural and artificial caves preceding cairns which replaced them are the twenty-four caves which have been explored in France (op. cit., p. 568).[101]

Borlase points out with regard to the Irish dolmens that large tumuli were not essential; all that was necessary was that the walls of the cell or crypt should be impervious to the elements and to wild animals. A creep or passage communicating with the edge of the mound is common to Ireland, Wales, Portugal and Brittany (op. cit., p. 428).