“Thou noblest monument of Albion’s isle!
Whether by Merlin’s aid from Scythia’s shore
To Amber’s fatal plain Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,
To entomb his Britain’s slain by Hengist’s guile;
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
Taught ’mid thy massy maze their mystic lore;
Or Danish chiefs, enriched with savage spoil,
To victory’s idle vast, an unhewn shrine,
Reared the rude heap; or in thy hallowed round
Repose the kings of Brutus’ genuine line;
Or here those kings in solemn state were crowned
Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,
We muse on many an ancient tale renowned.”
To descend to prose. Langtoft, in his Chronicle, says:—“A wander wit of
Wiltshire, rambling to Rome, to gaze at antiquities, and there screwing
himself into the company of antiquarians, they entreated him to
illustrate unto them that famous monument in his country called Stonage.
His answer was that he had never seen it. Whereupon they kicked him out
of doors, and bade him go home and see Stonage.”
The immortal Pepys says the stones are “as prodigious as any tales I have
ever heard of them, and worth going this journey to see.”
The archæologist, Mr. Edmund Story Maskelyne, fixes the date of
Stonehenge at 900 or 1000 B.C. I quote what he says from a lecture, read
1897, “On the Age and Purpose of Stonehenge”:—
“It is of consequence that we should recognize that Stonehenge was
built about nine or ten hundred years B.C., and not 700 A.D., as many
writers would have us believe. For instance, Dr. W. M. Flinders
Petrie, in his book, ‘Stonehenge, 1880,’ states his opinion that it
was erected A.D. 700±200, that is, between A.D. 500 and 900. The
date of Stonehenge will be of great interest if there is found at
Avebury remains sufficiently perfect to determine astronomically the
date when that monument was erected. For it cannot be but
interesting to ascertain when the two cults—that of the sun, pure and
simple, as exemplified in the original Temple at Stonehenge; and the
cult of the sun in connexion with the serpent, as exhibited at
Avebury—respectively prevailed in this country.”
Mr. Story Maskelyne’s reasons for his theory that Stonehenge was built by
the Phœnicians are as follows:—
“I should like to add some reasons for my belief that Stonehenge was
built by the Phœnicians. In the first place, I cannot think of any
other people that could have either designed or executed such a
monument, which required both science for its conception and skill
for its erection. The Phœnicians, with their perfect familiarity
with masts, and cordage, and pulleys, could easily lift the imposts,
of which the largest—being about 11 ft. long, 4 or 6 wide, and 3 ft.
thick—would weigh less than ten tons; and the Phœnicians must have
known how the Egyptians raised masses of stone many times heavier.
“The trilithon {24} standing clear seems to have had some fascination
for these people. They are found still standing in Tripoli in Libya,
as described in ‘The Hill of the Graces,’ a record of investigation
among the Trilithons and Megalithic sites of Tripoli by Mr. Cowper,
F.S.A., 1897, and specimens exist on the Continent of Europe, in
Normandy and in Brittany. One may be seen in the Island of Ushant,
and another in St. Nazaire on the probable route they adopted for the
passage of tin.
[Picture: Great Circle and Leaning Stone, as it was—now upright]
“Another peculiarity can be seen to this day by any one at Stonehenge
in the large trilithon impost, namely, that the under surfaces of the
imposts which rested on the uprights are smoothly cut and slightly
bevelled, so as to throw the principal weight of the mass of the
impost on its outside edge, thus excluding rain, &c., and this very
contrivance was employed by the Egyptians in the pyramids, and it is
certain that the Phœnicians had free intercourse with Egypt.
Finally, the Phœnicians had founded Cadiz, their Gadir in the
eleventh century B.C., more than two centuries before the date which,
from astronomical considerations, I assign for the building of
Stonehenge. We know that they sailed along the shores of Spain and
Gaul and to the Baltic, and though they preferred coasting as a rule,
the straight cut across from Cherbourg to Poole or Christchurch in
fine weather would not be a long voyage; and as they certainly did
trade with Britain, and it must have been hazardous for British
coracles to sail across the open sea, laden with tin, we may conclude
that Phœnician ships did cross the Channel. We know also that the
Phœnicians made, more or less, homes for themselves wherever they
landed; and it is probable that they did so at Poole or Christchurch,
also that they would build them a temple where they found it
convenient to stay.”
Mr. Story Maskelyne considers the Greeks reformed the Temple later on.
“Within 500 years of the latest of the above-mentioned dates the
Phœnician or Tyrian Empire had ceased to exist, and her numerous colonies
had been absorbed by the nationalities surrounding them. About B.C. 400
the Greeks supplanted the Phœnicians in their trade with Britain, and
probably for some time continued to use the same mart and sea route the
latter had used—we may assume from Cherbourg to Poole or Christchurch,
whence they bore away the tin in their coracles from Cornwall. Now
commenced a new era for Stonehenge. It must have been a noted Temple,
and I cannot doubt that Hecatæus did allude to it as cited by Strabo,
when he wrote, in the sixth century B.C., of the Round Temple to Apollo
in the land of the Hyperboreans. Now the festivals of the Greeks were
more connected with the months than with the year, and their calendar
months were alternate, full and hollow, where the thirty pillars were
doubtless used by them for the daily sacrifice in the months of thirty
days and the spaces between them, omitting the entrance, for the hollow
months, of twenty-nine days. Owing to the precession of the stars,
Stonehenge no longer answered some of the purposes for which it has been
founded. The Greeks had adopted with ardour the Metonic Cycle discovered
by them B.C. 430, and they reformed the old Sun Temple by the addition of
the inner horseshoe of blue stones which represented that Cycle, for they
were in number nineteen. As to how, or why, the blue stones came to be
imported, I imagine they are native to Brittany or Normandy, whence they
might easily have been brought as ballast in Greek ships, which took back
tin in their stead from Poole or Christchurch, and from the latter port
they might easily have been taken in rafts to Amesbury.”
[Picture: The stone and flint implements discovered at Stonehenge during
the excavations in 1902]
[Picture: Hele Stone]