TAB. XXXIV.
P. 66.
Stukeley delin.
Harris Sculp.
The Kistvaen in Clatford bottom. Jun. 30. 1723 from ye Northwest
In this island of Delos he had a most magnificent temple, built to him in after ages, when idolatry began. The noble remains of it are to be seen there still. For his great fame and exploits, posterity consecrated him, calling him the son of Jupiter, meaning Jupiter Ammon, or more properly of Saturn.
But in no place was Phut more famous than in Phocis. He planted the country about the mountain Parnassus, where he built, as I apprehend, a great serpentine temple, like ours of Abury, at the bottom of that mountain, by the city of Delphos. This I gather from the Greek reports of the serpent Python of an immense bulk, bred of the slime left on the earth, by the general deluge, which Apollo here overcame; and instituted annual games call’d Pythia, plainly from his own name. These were the first and most ancient games we hear of in Greece.
Change the places, Abury for Parnassus, and we have both the natural, as well as chronological history of the place; a vast temple in form of a serpent, made out of stones left on the surface of the earth after the deluge: not only so but the very name too. The name of Parnassus was originally Larnassus, says Stephanus Byzantinus. The letter L is not a radical in this word, as the learned Dickenson observes in Delphi phœnic. therefore the word is Harnassus, Har is a headland or promontory of a hill, and nahas a serpent, which is no other than our Hakpen of Abury. Whence we conclude, the snaky temple extended its huge length along the bottom of Parnassus, and laid its head upon a promontory of it, just as ours at Abury, on Overton-hill. Whence Ovid not merely poetically, describes it;
——Tot jugera ventre prementem.
This was the original patriarchal temple dedicated to the true God, where oracles were originally given by Themis says Apollodorus I. 4. Which name I take to be a corruption made in after times from the Jewish Thummim, for a divine and true oracle; which Dickenson asserts to have been at this place, page 104. in time turn’d into an idolatrous one. Many built one after another, as the former ones were sack’d and destroy’d.