Baal Durotrigensis. A dissertation on the antient colossal figure at Cerne, Dorsetshire; and an attempt to illustrate the distinction between the primal Celtae and the Celto-Belgae of Britain / with observations on the worship of the serpent and that of the sun.

  • Sydenham, John, 1807-1846.
Date:
[1842?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Baal Durotrigensis. A dissertation on the antient colossal figure at Cerne, Dorsetshire; and an attempt to illustrate the distinction between the primal Celtae and the Celto-Belgae of Britain / with observations on the worship of the serpent and that of the sun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    12 the truth in what Mr. Hutchins calls his “singular” opinion, though the erudite doctor could not divest himself of his Phoenician hypothesis. That it was, indeed, a memorial of the pagan divinity, El, the personified deity of the worship of the sun, is the opinion now hazarded: and that such opinion is well grounded will, it is trusted, be sufficiently evident from a consideration of many general and local circumstances;—that, in short, it is an en¬ during memorial of a triumph achieved here, long- prior to Roman intercourse, by a tribe of worship¬ pers of the sun over an earlier tribe of the worshippers of the diluvian serpent. they fancy it to be a deity of the antient Britons. Unquestionably it means to represent the famous and first Hercules, the Phoenician leader of the first colony to Britain, when they came hither for the Cornish tin. It is not to he supposed that it was made in his time, hut afterwards, and in memory of him, when the Britons had a notion of the latter Theban Hercules, the tamer of wild men and of wild beasts. But our Phoenician Hercules was a different person, and a different sort of a person, as coming from the politest part of the Asiatic world. Lucian gives us a just picture of him; “an old man, bald before, learned, and very eloquent and so one would think him to be, who could persuade his associates to venture into the great ocean, and fix an habitation in Britain. On the southern coast they first dwelt; and a great people we may well judge them to be, from the infinite number of barrows spread universally on the whole of these delightful downs of Dorset. Here they celebrated their religious panegyres, or public sacrifices, with public games of horse-racing and chariot-racing, whereat our British coins were the prizes of the victors. So grand and magnificent was the celebration of the games here, that one might, imagine Homer hence took his notion of the gods going to visit the * ineulpabiles Ethiopes,’ on the occasion. If Homer was not a Phoenician, of which we have suspicion, yet from them he learnt his great know¬ ledge, and it is more likely he should know from them the solemnities we speak of in Britain than those of Ethiopia properly so called. By Ethiopia, we know well, the antients meant Arabia, and from Arabia our first Britons came, and were of the same patriarchal religion as those Arabian magi, properly Druids, who came to worship our infant Saviour. It is of small purpose to gather up these antiqui¬ ties, unless we endeavour to give some rational and probable account of them. This the doctor proposes to the Society as a conjecture. The great British king Eli surnamed Maur and the just, father of Imanuence king of the Trinobantes, and of Casveian, who fought Ca:sar in his British expedition, is intimated in the name they give this figure, Helis. The doctor conjectures this enormous figure of Hercules might be cut by the Britons in compliment to king Eli, on his expel¬ ling the Belgae from that country, and driving them into Ireland, where they took possession of the south part of it, under the name of Firbolgs. The figure might be cut on his being present at the anniversary Midsummer games, a name still remaining in Yorkshire, from oldest times.”’—[From Dr. Stukeley’s MS.— Hutchins, iii, 331.]