TAB. XXXVIII.
P. 74.
The alate Temple of the Druids at Barrow in Lincolnshire, on the banks of the humber.
W. Stukeley delin. 25 July 1724
I. A coin in Vaillant’s colonies II. p. 148, 218, 340, 351. Of the city of Tyre, an olive-tree with a snake between two stones, petræ ambrosiæ. An altar; and a conch, meaning Tyre.
II. A coin in Vaillant’s colony coins II. p. 314, struck at Ptolemais or Acon.
A great and rude stone altar without any mouldings or carvings, between two serpents, a Caduceus which is truly the ophio-cyclo-pterygomorph on a staff meaning in the hieroglyphick doctrine, the power of the deity. These imperial coins of colonies intended to preserve the memory of their antiquities, and this probably regards the old serpentine temple in the foundation of their city Acon or Ptolemais.
III. A coin in Vaillant’s colonies II. p. 111, struck at Berytus. They all regard Hercules’s building serpentine temples.
Of his building our Druid temples in general, of these great stones, the two coins of Gordian in Stonehenge page 50, are a further evidence. The Ambrosiæ Petræ are a work of this sort, when he began or assisted in building the city Tyre. And I gather he was a great builder of serpentine temples in particular, such as we have been describing, call’d Dracontia. What he did of this sort in Britain I have no foundation for discovering; but in ancient history still left us, there are sufficient traces that shew he did it, in the more eastern parts of the world.