A direct View of Stonehenge from the union of the two Avenues.
A. the wing of the avenue going to Radfin. B. to the Cursus.
Beside the patriarchal custom of building these places of worship, and consecrating them with oil, we find many other footsteps of that most ancient religion, in the history of Hercules. Silius speaking of the strange rites used in the Gaditan temple of Hercules, says, the priests officiated there barefooted, practis’d chastity, had no statues, us’d white linen surplices. And it is a notorious custom with the ancient Phœnicians, to pay tithe. Indeed they paid tythe to Hercules. Which only imports, that it was a precept and practice introduc’d by Hercules. And after they had deified Hercules they practis’d it toward him. This was a common method, when idolatry began. I shall treat more largely of these affairs; when I discourse expressly of the patriarchal religion. Likewise, I shall prove more fully, from chronological characters, that this Hercules liv’d at the time, we are speaking of, in the canon Mosaicæ chronologiæ. What I now recite, concerning these matters, I could not well avoid, as they in my apprehension, relate to the name of Stonehenge.
Pliny Nat. Hist. VII. 56. gives us a testimony, of our Hercules, under the name of Melcartus, (as Bochart rightly corrects it) first bringing tin into Greece, from the Cassiterid islands. By which the British are meant. The tin of Tyre, which the merchants of Greece, came to buy, at the fairs of that city, is mention’d Ezekiel xxvii. 12. which, no doubt, came from hence. But it is much earlier mention’d, among lead and other metals, when the Midianites had it in Moses’s time, Numbers xxxi. 22. the Chaldee and Arabic version there, use the word kastira, the Hierosolymitan kistara. No wonder the Midianites should then abound with tin: when we were told by Josephus, that Apher son of Midian, was one of Hercules’s companions. The LXX. in that passage of Numbers call it κασσίτερος. But tin is mention’d earlier still, in Job xix. 24. and Job liv’d in this same country, on the borders of Arabia.
It is very evident from Bochart, that the Phœnicians, had sail’d quite round Britain, by what he writes of Thule. How then can we doubt but the great island, which they found in the extremest west, was Britain? but they kept their gainful navigation hither so secret, for many centuries, that even Herodotus the earliest Greek writer professes he knows not, whence the tin comes. Britain was the only country, where it could come from, in any quantity, as Pliny says. But from this great secrecy of the Phœnicians, we have lost the high antiquities of Britain, as unknown to the Greeks; the only heathen nation that had the address to commit things to writing. Therefore we must be content with what small remains of this kind, can be fish’d out of the wreck of time, by such conjectural methods, as antiquaries cannot avoid insisting on.
In Devonshire is Hartland point so call’d corruptly, as the excellent Camden observes, for Herculis promontorium. And upon the Durham sea coast is a town on a promontory call’d Hartlepool. A village call’d Hart near it. I take it to have been call’d by the Greek traders here Heracleopolis. And hence, probably came that fine old altar in Greek, dedicated to the Tyrian Hercules, which Mr. Roger Gale and I copied, in Corbridge church-yard.
From these and many other considerations of this kind, which I shall hereafter treat of more largely and professedly: I cannot but join in opinion with Franc. Philelphus in his epistles, and Lilius Giraldus in his Hercules mention’d by Mr. Camden, in the last quoted passage, and with many other writers, that the very ancient Phœnician or Tyrian Hercules conducted an eastern colony hither, upon the aborigines; with whom came the Druids, the builders of Stonehenge and the like works among us. And let this suffice for what I promis’d upon the first head of this chapter, viz. to speak of the antiquity of these works in general. 2. We are to speak of the time of founding Stonehenge.
CHAP. XII.
A conjecture about the time of the founding of Stonehenge. An uniform variation in setting these works, not to be accounted for, but by supposing the Druids us’d a magnetical compass. Their leader, the Tyrian Hercules, was possess’d of a compass-box. The oracle of Jupiter Ammon had a compass-box. The golden fleece at Colchis was a compass-box. Both these temples were founded by Apher, Hercules his companion, and grandson to Abraham. Apher, Aphricus, or Phryxus the same person, seems to have given name to Britain. The Druids set their temples and other works by it. The history of the mariner’s compass, since that time. The history of the variation of the magnetic needle. A conjecture of the time of building Stonehenge, from thence.
IN my Enquiries into these works of the antient Druids in our island, I observed a greater exactness in placing them, with regard to the quarters of the heavens, than one would expect, in works seemingly so rude; and in so remote an age, to which we must necessarily refer them. What more particularly mov’d my attention, was a certain variation from cardinal points, which I observed regular and uniform, in the works of one place. And that variation was different, in works of another place; yet equally regular and uniform in that place. Suppose (for instance) the works about Abury in Wiltshire generally vary 9 or 10 degrees to the left hand, from cardinal points: i. e. westward from the north. And the works at Stonehenge generally vary to the right hand, from cardinal points, and that to the quantity of 6 or 7 degrees. The principal diameter or groundline of Stonehenge, leading from the entrance, up the middle of the temple, to the high altar, (from which line the whole work is form’d) varies about that quantity southward of the north east point. The intent of the founders of Stonehenge, was to set the entrance full north east, being the point where the sun rises, or nearly, at the summer solstice. As well because that is the farthest elongation of the great celestial luminary, northward; the complement of our earthly felicity, in ripening the fruits of the earth: as because then they celebrated one of their principal religious meetings or festivals, with sacrifices, publick games, and the like. Such was the custom of all the antient nations. The Isthmian, Nemæan, Olympian, Pythian games, famous in the works of the learned nations: those of Tyre II. Maccabees iv. 18. dedicated to their and our founder, the antient Tyrian Hercules, who, I suppose, conducted the first Phœnician colony, with our Druids, into Britain: these were all held at this time of the year. A custom continu’d from patriarchal times.