Stukeley d.
A. The Roman road. B. the Snakes head or hakpen.
Dr. Halley supposes the whole period is perform’d in about the space of 700 years. I am sufficiently satisfy’d from considering the different effect of the weather between Abury and Stonehenge, the great diversity in the manner of the works, and some other considerations, that Abury must be above 700 years prior in time to Stonehenge. But if we take two entire revolutions, 1400 years, and set it 460 years before the christian æra, the supposed time of the building of Stonehenge, it brings us, in Usher’s chronology, which, I take to be the best, to the year of the death of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, which happen’d in the summer time of the 1859th year before Christ. This was a little before the time of Inachus.
By the best light I can obtain, I judge our Tyrian Hercules made his expedition into the ocean, about the latter end of Abraham’s time: and most likely ’tis, that Abury was the first great temple of Britain, and made by the first Phœnician colony that came hither; and they made it in this very place on account of the stones of the gray-weathers, so commodious for their purpose.
Usher makes this retirement of the Hycsi, or royal pastors out of Egypt, which was done by our Hercules, to be 34 years after that date. But my numbers make it somewhat later.
Tho. Robinson ALBURIAE Jerostratus
CHAP. XI.
This second sort of temples made by the circle and snake, was call’d in very old times, Dracontium, and not understood. The first temples made in form of the symbol of the deity. Why mankind should make the serpent the symbol of the deity? Of symbols in general. Their antiquity and use. It was the first kind of writing, even antediluvian. The serpent of high account from China to Britain. Of the nature of the serpent. The extraordinary beauty of the creature. Its wonderful motion without legs, thought to be like that of the gods. The wisdom of the serpent consider’d. Symbolically understood. Its bifid tongue the symbol of eloquence. Its enchanting power real. By the eyes, by the ears. Whence emblematic of the preachers of the gospel, and of our Saviour himself. On these, and many other accounts, esteem’d a divine animal, and chosen to symbolize the first begotten son of God, or first product of the divine fecundity.