The Hakpen, or head of the Snake, in ruins.
2. Ordinary barrows, meaning plain round ones, common all over England. Some may be roman, or saxon, or danish, as well as british.
3. Barrows with ditches round them. These are commonly such as I esteem royal, of the newest fashion among the old Britons; generally of an elegantly turn’d bell-form. These two last sort I call king-barrows.
4. Large oblong barrows, some with trenches round them, others without. These I call, for method sake, archdruids’ barrows. Several of ’em near Abury and Stonehenge. And sometimes we find ’em in other places about the kingdom. A druid celt was found in that north of Stonehenge, which induc’d me to give them the title. I shall speak a little concerning them in the method mention’d, as they are observable about Abury, but we ought to begin with Silbury, which, says our right reverend and learned author, is the largest barrow in the county, and perhaps in all England.
Silbury indeed is a most astonishing collection of earth, artificially rais’d, worthy of Abury, worthy of the king who was the royal founder of Abury, as we may very plausibly affirm. By considering the picture of Abury temple, we may discern, that as this immense body of earth was rais’d for the sake of the interment of this great prince, whoever he was: so the temple of Abury was made for the sake of this tumulus; and then I have no scruple to affirm, ’tis the most magnificent mausoleum in the world, without excepting the Egyptian pyramids.
[Silbury] stands exactly south of Abury, and exactly between the two extremities of the two avenues, the head and tail of the snake. The work of Abury, which is the circle, and the two avenues which represent the snake transmitted thro’ it, are the great hierogrammaton, or sacred prophylactic character of the divine mind, which is to protect the depositum of the prince here interr’d. The Egyptians, for the very same reason, frequently pictur’d the same hieroglyphic upon the breast of their mummies, as particularly on that in my lord Sandwich’s collection; and very frequently on the top and summit of Egyptian obeliscs, this picture of the serpent and circle is seen; and upon an infinity of their monuments. In the very same manner this huge snake and circle, made of stones, hangs, as it were, brooding over Silbury-hill, in order to bring again to a new life the person there buried. For our Druids taught the expectation of a future life, both soul and body, with greatest care, and made it no less than a certainty.
————vobis auctoribus umbræ
Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi
Pallida regna petunt; regit idem spiritus artus
Orbe alio—— Sings Lucan. Phars. I.