Phoenicians call their graves, "Khabr," appears to be essentially the same as the Gothic term " Kubl," applied in Runic inscriptions to the funereal barrows of the Goths—the liquid semi-vowels and being freely interchangeable, as in Hal for Harry, coronel for colonel and the cockney “arf" for "half."

This Phoenician spelling of the Barat title as PRT, in which the short vowels are unexpressed, as usual in Phoenician, just as they are similarly unexpressed in our Newton Stone inscription, and in the Indo-Aryan, Pali and Sanskrit, and in Hebrew, etc., thus gives a little variety in its reading. It may read either Pa RaT or Pa RT or PRaT, thus giving all the three forms of Parat (the equivalent of Barat), or Part, or Prat, as in the Newton Stone, and the equivalent of "Brit." In regard to this latter form of Prat or Prot on the Newton Stone, we shall find later that the famous Ionian navigating geographer Pytheas who circumnavigated and surveyed Britain as far as Shetland about the middle of the fourth century B.C., that is, about the time of our Newton Stone inscription, also spelt the name of Britain with an initial P, calling the British Isles "Pretanikai"; and "Pret-anoi" continued to be the name used by Ptolemy and other Greek writers for Britain and the Britons.

But, although the later Phoenicians of Cilicia, like those of Sardinia above-noted, whilst using P for B, in calling their chief city-port Tarsus, by the name of "Parth-enia" or "Place of the Parths," their remnant or their Aryanized and Phoenicianized successors thereabouts, so late as about the third century A.D., nevertheless continued to call themselves "Barats," as seen in their coin here figured. (Fig. 14).

"

The first of these coins tells us that it was a coin of the Barats of Lycaonia," which was the ultramontane portion of Cilicia to the north of the Taurus, and contained, besides the capital city of Iconium (the modern Turkish capital Konia, a city which was visited more than once by St. Paul)1, also the ancient city of Barata, to the south of which (at Heraclea, the modern Ivriz), on the ancient Hittite highway from

1 Acts 14, 1 and 21; 16, 2.

BRITANNIA OF PHOENICIAN ORIGIN

55

Ephesus and Troy to Tarsus and the Cilician Gates of the Taurus, are famous herculean Hittite sculptures and hieroglyphs, resembling those on Briton coins (see Fig. 62 in Chapter XXII.). The Lycaonians in the Roman period were still confederated with their kinsmen of Cilicia. The legend stamped on this coin is "The Commonwealth of the Lycaon Baratas" (Koinon Lukao Barateōn); and the Early Phoenician empire, we shall see later, was held together as a commonwealth by the confederation of home and colonial city-states.

FIG. 14. Coins of Phoenician "Barats" of Lycaonia, of third century A.D. disclosing their tutelary goddess" Barati" as "Britannia."

a. From Barata City. b. From Iconium City. Note she has the Sun-Cross or St George'sRed Cross as shield.

These coins, with others of the same type elsewhere, are of immense historical importance for recovering the lost history of the Britons in Britain and in their earlier homeland, as they now disclose the hitherto unknown origin of the modern British marine tutelary "Britannia," and prove her to be of Hitto-Phoenician origin.

Usually the head only of this goddess is figured on Phoenician coins, and it is of a fine Aryan and non-Semitic type; see for example the Phoenician " Barat " coin from Carthage (Fig. 5, p. 9), and Phoenician coins generally. In these coins of Lycaonia the general resemblance to Britannia

1a and b, after R.C.P., 368 and 415; and cp. photos in H.C.C., pl. 1, Fig. 3 and 9. Coin a is ascribed to the period of the Roman governor Otacilia Severa, 249 A.D.

will be noticed-Britannia hitherto being supposed to have been first invented by the Early Romans in Britain in the 2nd century A.D. (see Fig. 15) in practically the identical form still surviving on our modern British penny.

(After Akerman.)

a. Coin of Hadrian (117-137 A.D.). b. Coin of Antonine (138-161 A.D.).

In these Barat Lycaonian coins Barati is seated in the pose of Britannia, in the first upon a rock, and in the second on a chair (of a ship) amidst the waves, the latter being personified by a semi-submerged water-nymph, as was the conventional method of representing rivers and the sea, after the nereid model of the Lycians, in the Roman art of the period to which this coin belongs. She holds a cornucopia or horn of plenty and in her right hand, in one of the coins, an object which may be a sceptre, as is figured in her representation on many of these coins; and in the other she holds the tiller of a rudder, indicating her marine tutelarship; and beside her chair on board ship is the shield-like Sun Cross or St. George's Cross within the Sun's disc, designating her to be of the solar cult. This latter emblem is now seen to be the origin of the shield bearing the Union Jack which is figured in the modern representations of Britannia, but which cannot date earlier than the Union of England and Scotland in 1606 A.D., and was previously presumably the St. George's Red Cross or the rayed Cross or the rayed Sun itself, as in these coins. In other coins of Cilicia, Lycaonia, Phoenicia and other Phoenician

BRITANNIA ON PHENECIAN COINS

57

colonies she sometimes holds a sceptre1 or a standard Cross (see Fig. 16), or a caduceus, which latter ensigns of authority were presumably the source of the Neptune trident now given to her in her modern British representation. And she sometimes carries a torch as in the representation of the "Sun-god" Mithra, the torch of the Sun, which explains the lighthouse figured beside Britannia on the old pennies.

FIG. 16.-Phoenician Coin of Barati or Britannia
from Sidon.
(After Hill.)

Note she holds a Cross as standard and a rudder amongst the waves.

This beneficent marine and earth tutelary goddess of Good Fortune has not usually her name stamped on the coins bearing her effigy, and has been surmised by modern numismatists to be the late Greek goddess of Fortune (Tychē), the "Fortuna" of the Romans, a goddess unknown to Homer,' and who first appears in Greek classics in the odes of Pindar (about 490 B.C.). In this regard it is interesting to note that the first traditional statue of this goddess of Fortune (or Tyche) is reported to have been made for the people of

"

'H.C.P., 116, 297; H.C.C. on a Barata" coin she carries a palm branch of Victory and ears of corn. Pl. 1, Fig. 1.

H.C.P., 116.

•H.C.P., 297; H.C.C. xxvi, 68, No. 14; in Pl. 1, Fig. 2, she carries a spear.

•Coins of Syracuse, Brit. Museum, post-card series, xxiv, 5a reverse. Syracuse was an ancient colony of the Phoenicians.

She does not appear in the Iliad and Odyssey, but only in the apocryphal Hymn to Demeter Ch. 4, 7-20; and see P.D.G. 4, 30; and Liddell and Scott, Greek Dict. under Tychē.

Smyrna1-that is, an ancient Hittite seaport of the Ægean with rock-cut prehistoric Hittite hieroglyphs in the neighbourhood.

Her proper name is now disclosed by the Vedic hymns of the Eastern branch of the Aryan Barats to have been Bāratî, meaning "Belonging to the Barats." She is also I called therein "Brihad-the Divine" (Brihad-divā); and she seems identical with Pritvi or "Mother Earth." Her especial abode was on the "Saras-vati River," which, I find, was the modern Sarus River of Cilicia which entered the sea at Tarsus, the "Tarz" of its own coins (see Figs. later) or Parth-enia, which appears to have been the first seaport of the Barat homeland. In these Vedic hymns all the attributes of Britannia are accounted for; her tutelarship of the waters and of ships, her lighthouse on the sea, her Neptune trident (as well as the origin of Neptune himself and his name), her helmet and shield, her Cross on the shield, as well as the cornucopia, which she sometimes bears upon the Phoenician and Greco-Roman coins, taking the place of the corn-stalk on the Briton coins.

2

In the Vedic hymns she is called " The great Mother (Mahi)" • and" Holy Lady of the Waters" and is hailed as First-made mother" in a hymn to her son "Napat the Son of the Waters who has a horse [thus disclosing the remote Aryan origin of the the name and personality of the old Sea-god, Neptune, and his horses, and accounting for Neptune's trident in her hands]. She is a Fire-Priestess " and shows the Light" [thus accounting for the Lighthouse on the older British coins with Britannia]. She is personified Fire' and sits upon the sacred Fire [thus accounting for the St. George's Cross which, we shall find later, symbolizes Fire of the Sun]. She is associated with the twin horsemen of the Sun (Aswin or Dioscorides), represented on the Briton coins, and coins of Syracuse (an ancient Phoenician

1 P.D.G., 4, 30.

2

R.V., 1, 13, 9, etc. Frequently she is triplicated by treating her two other commoner titles as separate personalities, called her sisters,"

namely the personified Saras-vati River, on which she specially dwelt, and personified Food or Oil (Ilā); but in other hymns these three are identified as one with her. R.V., 2, 1, 11, etc.

R.V., 2, 355; 3, 56, 5.

R.V., 10, 110, 7-8.

R.V., 2, 35, 6.
R.V., 2, 1, II.

• See, for example, Figs. 61, etc., and E.B.C.,

R.V., 2. I, II.

8 R.V., 2, 31, 4; 10, 59, 9. Pl. G. 2 and 3.