STONE CIRCLES & MORITE PHOENICIANS

217

It was long ago observed that the distribution of these prehistoric megaliths or "great stones," over a great part of the world followed mainly the coast lines, thus presuming that their erectors were a seafaring people, though of unknown prehistoric identity and race. Moreover, as these monuments are most numerous in the East, it is generally agreed that this cult in Britain, Brittany, Scandinavia, Spain and the Mediterranean basin was derived from the East. Latterly, owing to the great antiquity of Egyptian civilization, and to a few of these monuments (of which some are funereal) being found on the borders of Egypt, it has been conjectured by some that this cult arose in, and was spread from, Egypt. But as there is no evidence or presumption that the Ancient Egyptians were ever great mariners, it is significant that the agents, whom Prof. Elliot Smith is forced to call in to distribute the monuments over the world, are the Phoenicians. Prof. Smith supplies a great deal of striking evidence to prove that the chief agents in spreading these megalith monuments (as well as other ancient Eastern and characteristically Phoenician culture) "along the coastlines of Africa, Europe and Asia and also in course of time in Oceania and America" were the Phoenicians; although as an ardent Egyptologist he still credits the origin of the cult of these rude stone prehistoric monuments to the Egyptians, notwithstanding the relative absence of such unhewn monuments in Egypt itself.

This Phoenician agency for the "distribution" of these megalith monuments is further attested by an altogether different class of evidence, even more specifically Phoenician than the seafaring character of their erectors. It has been observed by Mr. W. J. Perry that "the distribution of megalithic monuments in different parts of the world would

Britain, associated with Stone Circles and megaliths and mostly on the coast, e.g., Mori-dunum, port of Romans in Devon, and several More-dun, Mor-ton and Martin, Cær Marthen, West Mor-land, rich in circles and old mines, More-cambe Bay, Moray and its Frith and seat of Murray clan, &c. 'Pitt-Rivers, J.E.S., 1869, 59, etc.; J.(R.)A.I., 1874-5, 389, etc. And Ferguson, F.R.M. map, p. 532 ; and T. E. Peet, Rough Stone Mons., 1912, 147, etc.

S.E.C., 3, etc., based partly on Mrs. Z. Nuttal's great work on Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations, Harvard. 1901.

suggest that their builders were engaged in exploiting the mineral wealth of the various countries." He proves conclusively by a mass of concrete facts that these megaliths all the world over are located in the immediate neighbourhood of ancient mine workings for tin, copper, lead and gold or in the area of the pearl and amber trade. His details, geographic and geological, regarding the correlation of these monuments to mines in England and Wales, are especially decisive of the fact that their builders were miners for metals and especially tin, and not agricultural colonists; for many of the monuments with remains of prehistoric villages and mines are located on barren mountain tracts, where only the old mine workings could have attracted these people to settle on such spots (see Sketch Map). And he concludes, in illustration of what was happening at the other mines with their megaliths, that "the men who washed the gold of Dartmoor were also extracting the tin and taking it back to the Eastern Mediterranean in order to make bronze."

Strange to say, notwithstanding the clear indications that this seafaring people who erected these megalith monuments in Britain came from the Eastern Mediterranean, and were solely engaged in mining operations, expressly for tin, were Phoenicians, yet Mr. Perry, in this article, does not even suggest the obvious inference that they were Phoenicians, nor even once mentions that name. There was, however, no other ancient seagoing trading people of the Early Bronze Age who explored the outer seas, came from the Eastern Mediterranean, had a monopoly of the bronze trade of the Ancient World, and who worked in prehistoric times the tin-mines and gravels in Cornwall and Devon.

P.M.M. (A.) 1915, 60, No. 1. Regarding India, for instance, in the Hyderabad State, the Inspector of Mines, Major Munn, found that Stone Circles and dolmens were invariably situated close to mines of gold, copper and iron. Manchester Memoirs, 1921, 64, No. 5.

'Where no metalliferous strata are found on the sites of megaliths, as at Stonehenge, etc., in Wilts and in Devon, there are found old flint-factories for the tools needed by the miners to extract the ores in Cornwall, etc. P.M.M. (B.) 11-18. Surface tin, now exhausted, formerly occurred more widely in the drift and gravels, as tin and gold are in the same geological formations, so that it may have occurred on surface near Stonehenge, etc. Cæsar says that the tin supply came from the Midlands, (D.B.C., 5, 5) where no trace of tin now exists.

'P.M.M. (B.), P. 7.

DISTRIBUTION OF STONE CIRCLES IN ENGLAND 219

Moreover, actual articles of special Phoenician character or association, apart from bronze, have been found at some of these megalithic monuments and in the sepulchral barrows near those sacred sites. At the Stonehenge Circle and some others have been found shells of the Tyrian purple mollusc, oriental cowries and jewellery including blue-glazed and glass

.

Sketch Map showing Distribution of Stone Circles and Megaliths in

England and Wales.

(After W. J. Perry.')

beads such as were a speciality of the Phoenicians. The blue-glazed beads of an amber necklace exhumed from an Early Bronze tomb near Stonehenge and others found in that circle itself and at other prehistoric sites, are of the identical kind which were common in Ancient Egypt within the 1 1 By permission of Manchester Lit. and Phil. Socy.

restricted period of between about 1450 B.C. to 1250 B.C.1 But the obvious Phoenician origin of these blue beads at Stonehenge and other parts of Britain has not been remarked. The Phoenicians were the great manufacturers of fine necklaces in the ancient world, as recorded by Homer, and specialists in glass and glazes, as attested by the remains of their great glass factories at their port of Cition and elsewhere.

Now, the blue-glazed beads in question first appear in Egypt at the beginning of the Phoenician Renaissance in that country, usually called "The Syrian Period" of Egyptian Civilization-Egyptologists suppressing its proper title of "Phoenician" in the modern vogue of depreciating Phoenician influences. This "Syrian " fashion, which transformed and exalted Egyptian art and handicraft, was introduced about 1450 B.C. with the seizure and annexation of Phoenicia, and the carrying off captive to Egypt hundreds of the artists and skilled craftsmen of Tyre, Sidon, etc., as well as their chief art treasures as plunder. Writing of that great event, Sir F. Petrie tells us that the "Syrians" [i.e., Phoenicians] "had a civilization equal or superior to that of Egypt, in taste and skill . luxury far beyond that of the Egyptians, and technical work which could teach them rather than be taught." And great numbers of their artists and skilled workmen were carried off, and continued to be sent as tribute, to Egypt. Significantly, these blue-glazed beads first appear in Egypt at the beginning of this Phoenician period, and they suddenly cease when the Phoenicians regained more or less their independence from Egypt about 1250 B.C. The inference is thus obvious that the blue beads found at Stonehenge Circle and elsewhere in Britain are Phoenician in origin, and were carried there by Phoenicians of about that period. And here also it is to be noted that the finest of the art treasures recently unearthed at Luxor from the tomb of Tut-ankh-amen, along with those of his predecessor Akenaten the Sun-worshipper and his Hitto-Mitanian (or Mede) ancestors, which belong to this same period, and are admittedly of a naturalistic type foreign to previous Egyptian art, are also now disclosed as Aryan Phoenician.

3

'H.R. Hall, J. Egypt, Archæology, 1. 18-19. 2 P.H.E. 2, 146.

• Ib., 147.

PHOENICIAN BEADS & ART IN ANCIENT BRITAIN 221

Significantly many of the motives of this " Syrian," properly Phoenician, art are reproduced on the monuments and coins of the Early Britons. Thus, for example, the finely carved chair of "Syrian " workmanship found in the tomb of the "Syrian" high priest who was the grandfather of Akhen-aten (see Fig. 26) contains a sacred scene unknown in Egyptian art, but which, we shall find later (chapter XX), is common not only on Phoenician sacred seals and coins, but also on the prehistoric monuments and coins of the Ancient Britons.

FIG. 26.-Phoenician Chair of 15th century, B.C., with Solar scene as on Early Briton Monuments and Coins.

From tomb of Syrian high-priest in Egypt.
(After A. Weigall.1)

Note the Goat is worshipping Cross, as in Phoenician and Briton versions, pp. 334-5.

Still further fresh evidence for the Phoenician origin of the megalithic monuments in the British Isles and Western Europe has recently been elicited by the explorations of M. Siret in the ancient tumuli near megaliths of the Late Stone Age in Southern Spain and Portugal, the Iberian "half-way house" of the Phoenicians on their sea route to

Life of Akhnaton, p. 48. It was found in tomb of the Syrian high priest Yuaa, maternal grandfather of Akhen-aten, and his mummy discloses him to be of a fine Aryan type (Ib., pp. 24, 28).