XIX SUN-WORSHIP" & BEL-FIRE RITES IN EARLY Disclosing Phoenician Origin of Solar Emblems on pre-Christian Monuments in Britain, on pre-Roman Briton Coins, and of "Deazil" or Sun-wise direction for Luck, etc., and John-the-Baptist as Aryan Sun-Fire Priest. "The Days were ever divine as to the "We must lay his head to the East! " 'O Sun-God, thou liftest up thy head to the world, Thou settest thy ear to (the prayers) of mankind, Thou plantest the foot of mankind.' "In the right hand of the king, the shepherd' of his country, May the (symbol of the) Sun-God be carried."-Sumerian Psalms.' "The able Panch [Phoenic-ians], the Chedi [Ceti or Catti] are all highly blest, and know the Eternal Religion -the Eternal Truths of, Religion and Righteousness."-Mahā-Barata. THE "Sun-worship" which we have just seen reflected in the prehistoric Stone Circles and Cup-marked script in Britain, that are now disclosed to be Phoenician in origin, leads us to discover still further evidence of the Phoenician origin of the "Sun-worship" in Ancient Britain, which was formerly widespread over the land. This former Sun-cult is attested by the turning of the face of the dead to the East in the Stone and Bronze Age tombs the memory of which also in the Iron Age is Society and Solitude, 7, 137. Siba, disclosing Sumerian origin of English word "Shepherd," S.H.L., 490-491. M.B., Karma Parva, 45, 14-15, cp. M.B.P., 1, 157. PHOENICIAN SUN-WORSHIP IN BRITAIN 263 preserved by Shakespeare in his Cymbeline above cited. It is also attested by its very numerous sculptures and inscriptions on pre-Christian monuments in Britain, besides those of the Cup-marked inscriptions, and of caves and the Newton and other widely diffused sculptured stones; by the profusion of its symbols and stamped legends on the preRoman coins of Ancient Britain, by the vestiges of Bel and Beltain rites which still survive in these islands, from St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall to Shetland, and in the "Deazil" or Sun-wise direction in masonic and cryptic rites, and in the "lucky way" of passing wine at table, and in other ways now detailed. The Early Phoenicians were, as leading Aryans, an intensely religious people. They made religion the foundation of their state and gloried in their knowledge of the Higher Religion, as recorded in their Vedic hymns and in their own epic cited in the heading. And similarly, even in regard to the later Phoenicians, it is noted: In every city the temple was the chief centre of attraction, where the piety of the citizens adorned every temple with abundant and costly offerings."1 These Early Phoenicians-contrary to the now current notions of popular writers who have confused the real Phoenicians with the mixed Semitic and polytheistic people remaining in the later province of "Phoenicia" after it had been mostly abandoned by the Phoenicians, properly socalled-were monotheists, or worshippers of the One God of the Universe, whom they usually symbolized by his chief visible luminary, the Sun, as we have already seen established by a mass of concrete evidence. This important fact, now so generally overlooked by modern writers, was well expressed by the late Prof. G. Rawlinson in his great work on the "History of the Phoenicians." He says: Originally, when they first occupied their settlements upon the Mediterranean, or before they moved from their primitive seats upon the shores of the Persian Gulf, the Phænicians were Monotheists, It may be presumed that at this early stage of the religion there was no idolatry; when One God alone is acknowledged and recognized, the feeling is naturally that expressed in the Egyptian hymn of praise: He is not graven in marble; He is not beheld; His abode is not known; there is no building that can contain Him; unknown is his name in heaven; He doth not manifest his forms; vain are all representations." It was this pure and lofty Monotheism of the Early Phoenicians, expressed in their so-called "Sun-worship" or "Bel-worship," which they are now found to have cherished down the ages in the Mediterranean. From it the early Phoenician merchant princes derived their happy inspiration; they carried it with them as they ploughed the unknown seas; they invoked it in their hours of danger, and transplanted it at their various colonies and ports of call; and they carried it to Early Britain and disembarked and planted it along with their virile civilization, upon her soil about 2800 B.C. or earlier. The early Aryans appear at first to have worshipped the Sun's orb itself as the visible God. In thus selecting the Sun, it is characteristic of the scientific mind of these early Aryans that in searching for a symbol for God they fixed upon that same visible and most glorious manifestation of his presence that latter-day scientists credit with having emitted the first vital spark to this planet, and with being the proximate source and supporter of all Life in this world. But at an early period, some millenniums before the birth of Abraham, the Aryans imagined the idea of the One Universal God, as "The Father-God" behind the Sun, and thereby gave us our modern idea of God. This is evident in the early Sumerian hymns, and in the prehistoric Cupmarked prayers in Britain; and it is also thus expressed in one of the oldest Aryan hymns of the Vedas, in a stanza which is still repeated every morning by every Brahman in India, who chants it as a morning prayer at sunrise: "The Sun's uprising orb floods the air with brightness : The Sun's Enlivening Lord' sends forth all men to labour." 1 Records of the Past, 4: 109-113. 2 Savitri, "The Enlivening or Vivifying God." Cp. M.V.M., 34. 3 R.V., 1, 124, I. ARYO-PHOENICIAN GOD & AKHEN-ATEN 265 As "Father-God" and creator and director of the Sun and the Universe he was usually called, as we have seen, by the Hitto-Sumerians Induru or "Indara," the Indra of the Eastern Aryans and " Indri" of the Goths, and to him most of the Sumerian and Vedic hymns, and the Early Briton votive monuments are addressed. [Thus as Induru (or “Indara ") he is regularly called by the Sumerians" the Creator; " and so in the Vedas Indra is invoked as Creator of the Sun (3, 49, 4), who made the Sun to shine (8, 3, 6) and raised it high in heaven" (1, 7, 3). He is "Man's sustainer, the bountiful and protector," (8, 85, 20), the most fatherly of fathers" (10, 48, 1), “ aye, our forefather's Friend of old, swift to listen to their prayers" (6, 21, 8). There is no comforter but Thee, O Indra, lover of mankind (1, 85, 19). Yet so specially was his bounty associated with the Sun that he still is hailed: "Indra is the Sun" (10, 89, 2).] It was presumably the re-importation of this Aryan idea of The One Father-God symbolized by the Sun, from SyriaPhoenicia into Egypt, which occurred in or shortly before the reign of the semi-Syrian Pharaoh Akhen-aten, the father-inlaw of Tut-ankh-amen, and whom we have heard stigmatized so much lately as "the heretic king" (sic), merely because he introduced into Egypt a purer and more refined form of Sun-worship over that contaminated with the animal worship of the ram-headed god Ammon, which predominated there in his day. The Living God behind the Sun, called by him "The Living Aten," is usually supposed, materialistically, to designate the radiant energy of the Sun in sustaining Life by his beams. But He is referred to as the universal creator, a god of Love and " Father of the king,” and he has "hands," and in his pictorial representation each of the Sun's beams ends in a helping hand stretched forth to man. The famous sublime hymn to this "God of the Sun," by Aken-aten and recorded in Egyptian writing over three centuries before David, is generally regarded as the nonJewish source from which the Hebrews derived the 104th Psalm.1 Now this priest-king Akhen-aten was the grandson, son and husband respectively of "Syrian" or Mitani 1 Prof. Breasted; and cp. A. Weigall, Life and Times of Akhnaton 134, etc. princesses-the "Mitani" being a branch of the Hittitesand his "propagation" of Aten-worship began when he was only 16 years old, two years after his marriage to a "Syrian" princess, and the Aten symbol was previously used by his mother, also a Syrian, when she was regent of Egypt. All the circumstances lead Sir F. Petrie and other authorities to believe that this "Aten" Sun-worship, as well as Akhenaten's new art, which adorns Tut-ankh-amen's tomb, was derived from " Syria," i.e., Syria-Phoenicia; and that new" art is seen to be patently Phoenician. The later representation of God in human form by the Sumerians and some of the later Aryans was presumably led down to by their long habit of invoking him as " Father" and "King," and thus conjuring up a mental picture of a father and king in human form. Such "graven images" we have seen in the Sumerian seals (Fig. 33, etc.); and amongst some of the later Phoenicians (see Fig. 1, p. 2), and on Phoenician coins, (Fig. 64, etc.), Babylonian seals, in MedoPersian and later Mithra cult (see Fig. 10, p. 46), and among the classic Greeks and Romans. But the purer "Sunworshippers" appear to have religiously abstained from making graven images of God, as in the Ancient Briton coins and pre-Christian monuments, as in our Newton Stone; nor is there any reference to such images in the Gothic Eddas. Thus the purer Sumerians sing in their psalms: "Of Induru [Ia or "Jove"], can anyone comprehend thy Form? Of the Sun-god, can anyone comprehend thy Form?" On the other hand, the Phoenicians frequently made statues of Hercules, who, Herodotus tells us, was merely a canonized human Phoenician hero, and thus analogous to St. George. They carved the image of their marine eponymic tutelary Barati or Britannia on their coins (see Fig. 5, p. 9), and elsewhere, as a protecting angel and not God. They also carved grotesque little images of misshapen pygmies," which, Herodotus states, they carried on the 'P.H.E., 2, 210-214. ⚫S. Langdon, Sumerian Psalms, 77, where the name is spelt Ea. |