XIX

"SUN-WORSHIP" & BEL-FIRE RITES IN EARLY

BRITAIN DERIVED FROM THE PHŒNICIANS

Disclosing Phœnician 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 First Aryans." —EMERSON. {Society and Solitude, 7, 137.}

"We must lay his head to the East!

My father [Cymbeline] hath a reason for it." —Prince Guiderius in SHAKESPEARE'S Cymbeline.

"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 {Siba, disclosing Sumerian origin of English word "Shepherd."} of his country,

May the (symbol of the) Sun-God be carried." —Sumerian Psalms. {S.H.L., 490-491.}

"The able Panch [Phœnic-ians], the Chedi [Ceti or Catti] are all highly blest, and know the Eternal Religion — the Eternal Truths of Religion and Righteousness." —Mahā-Barata. {M.B., Karma Parva, 45, 14-15, cp. M.B.P., 1, 157.}

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 Phœnician in origin, leads us to discover still further evidence of the Phœnician 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 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 pre-Roman 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 Phœnicians 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 Phœnicians, 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." {R.H.P., 320.}

These Early Phœnicians—contrary to the now current notions of popular writers who have confused the real Phœnicians with the mixed Semitic and polytheistic people remaining in the later province of "Phœnicia" after it had been mostly abandoned by the Phœnicians, properly so-called—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 Phœnicians." He says {Ib., 321-2.}:—

"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 Phœnicians 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.' " {Records of the Past, 4: 109-113.}

It was this pure and lofty Monotheism of the Early Phœnicians, 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 Phœnician 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 Cup-marked 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 {Savitri, "The Enlivening or Vivifying God." Cp. M.V.M., 34.} sends forth all men to labour." {R.V., 1, 124, 1.}

[p. 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 Syria-Phœnicia into Egypt, which occurred in or shortly before the reign of the semi-Syrian Pharaoh Akhen-aten, the father-in-law 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 non-Jewish source from which the Hebrews derived the 104th Psalm. {Prof. Breasted; and cp. A. Weigall, Life and Times of Akhnaton 134, etc.} Now this priest-king Akhen-aten was the grandson, son and husband respectively of "Syrian" or Mitani princesses—the "Mitani" being a branch of the Hittites and 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," {P.H.E., 2, 210-214.} i.e., Syria-Phœnicia; and that "new" art is seen to be patently Phœnician.

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 Phœnicians (see Fig. 1, p. 2), and on Phœnician coins, (Fig. 64, etc.), Babylonian seals, in Medo-Persian and later Mithra cult (see Fig. 10, p. 46), and among the classic Greeks and Romans. But the purer "Sun-worshippers" 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?" {S. Langdon, Sumerian Psalms, 77, where the name is spelt Ea.}

On the other hand, the Phœnicians frequently made statues of Hercules, who, Herodotus tells us, was merely a canonized human Phœnician 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 prow of their ships {Herod., 3, 37. H. describes these "pygmies," which he calls Pataikoi, as deformed like Vulcan the smith. They are believed to resemble the misshapen dwarf figurines of "Ptah, the Smith," common in Egypt.}—these were evidently "gollywog" mascots, carried perhaps to humour their native crews, who were probably in part Pictish pygmies. But these are not figured on the representations of Phœnician ships.

"Bel," or properly "Bil," is the title used for this "Sun" god in the Newton Stone Phœnician inscription, in both its versions—in the Ogam the short vowel is not expressed—and this form B-L (i.e., Bil or Bel) occurs in late Phœnician inscriptions elsewhere, {B.P.G., 20.} as the title of their Father God. And it is the title surviving in Britain in connection with the "Bel Fire" rite at midsummer solstice.

This name Bil or "Bel" is now disclosed to be derived from the Sumerian (i.e., Early Aryan) word for "Fire, Flame or Blaze," namely Bil, for which the written word-sign is a picture of a Fire-producing instrument with tinder sticks. {Br., 4566, and cp. P.S.L., 58; B.B.W., 2 pp. 99-100. It is also spelt by an analogous sign which is pictured by a Fire-Torch (cp. B.B.W., 2, 101).} It is defined with the title of "God," as "God BIL of the Sun, Darkness and Wisdom"; {Br., 4588.} and the Sumerian word-sign for the "Sun" itself is defined in the glosses as meaning "God Bēl," i.e., the old Father God of the Sun-temple at Nippur, the oldest Sun-temple in Babylonia, and the Bel who in the oldest Sumerian hymns "settled the places of the Sun and Moon." {S.H.L., 103.}

As this word "Bil," however, is a purely Sumerian (i.e., Aryan) word, when the Semites of the Chaldees in Babylonia borrowed from the Sumerians the idea of this Father-God, and having no name of their own resembling it with the meaning of "Fire" or "Flame," they appear to have equated that name to their Semitic word "Bal" or "Baal" meaning "Lord, Master or Owner" which they also spelt "Bel" and "Bilu"; {M.D., 156-158.} but which possesses no suggestion of Fire, Flame or the Sun, like the original Sumerian or Aryan word. Yet this Semitic Bēl thus derived from the solar Aryan Sumerian Father-God Bil, is often invested with Fire, as the paramount god of their Babylonian pantheon. And it was clearly through this Semitic form of Bil that the Israelites admittedly appropriated his attributes for their later tribal God "Jehovah,"

{Thus one of the latest Semitic authorities writes:

"Jahweh [Jehovah] assumes the attributes of the Baals." (J.R.B., 74). And "The Baals of the Canaanites [i.e., pre-Israelite people of Phœnicia Palestine] we know were personifications of the Sun" (Ib. 75).}

who is so often described as encompassed by Fire, and as appearing in Fire to the Hebrew prophets, and as a Pillar of Fire leading the Israelites in the desert; and as "a consuming Fire." {Exodus, 3, 2; 19, 18; Isaiah, 6, 4; Ezek., 1, 4; Deut., 4, 24.}

Now it is of great British and Scandinavian significance that this word Bil or "Blaze" or "Flame" gives us still another of those radical words that have occurred incidentally and disclose the Sumerian origin of a series of words in the English and kindred modern Aryan languages. It discloses the Sumerian origin of the Old English "Bale" for Blaze, Flame and Fire, the Scottish Bail, and the corresponding words in the Norse, Swedish, etc., as seen in this equation:—

Sumerian Origin of "Bil" or "Bel" Blaze and Flame Words

in English and N. European Aryan Languages.

Gothic Norse Anglo- Old

Sumer Eddic and Saxon Scot English English

Swede

Bil = Baela = Bal, Blis = Bael = Bail = Bele = Bl-aze

B l Belyse Bele Fl-ash

="Blaze ┐ Blus Fl-ame
"Flame ├ = " = " = " = " Blase
"Fire" ┘ & pyre. "

F/n on "Gothic Eddic": {V.D., 54, 91.} F/n on "Scot": {J.S.D., 23.}

F/n on "Bl-aze": {This and the corresponding Scandinavian forms seem to be a bilingual Sumerian compound Bil-izi—Izi, being another dialectic name for the word with the same meaning "Fire," and appears cognate with Sanskrit Vilas = "Flash" and the Greek Phalos "bright."}

We now see the significance of the name "St. Blaze" for the taper-carrying saint introduced into Early Christianity as patron of the intermediate solar festival of Candlemas Day; and probably also of the name "Bleezes" or "Blazes" for the old house on the hillock at the foot of Bennachie, commanding a view of the Newton Stone site, and possibly the site of an altar blazing with perpetual fire to Bel, to whom that stone was dedicated.

The "Bel-Fire" or "Bel-tane" rites and games which still survive in many parts of the British Isles are generally recognized to be vestiges of a former widely prevalent worship of "Bel" in these islands, extending from St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall to Shetland, which is now seen to have been introduced by the Phœnicians, and to be a survival of the great solar festival celebrations at the Summer solstice. The name "Bel-tane" or "Bel-tine" means literally "Bel's Fire."

{"Bel-tane" or "Bel-tine" is defined by old Scottish, Irish and Gaelic writers as "Fire of the god Bil or Bial or Bel." Thus the Irish king Cormac at the beginning of the tenth century A.D. describes "Bil-tene" as Lucky Fire, and defines Bil or Bial as "an idol god." (Cormac's Glossary, ed. Stokes, 19, 38); and Keating states "Bel-tainni is the same as Beil-teine, that is, teine Bheil or Bel's Fire." Its second element Tan in Breton and Tane, Tine or Tene, means "Fire" in Scottish and Irish Scottish with variant Teind or Tynd, "a spark of Fire " (J.S.D., 38, 564) and Eddic Gothic Tandr, "to light or kindle Fire," thus showing Gothic origin of English "Tinder." This Tan or Tene seems to be derived from the Akkadian Tenū for the Crossed Fire-producing sticks (M.D. 1176) with meaning also "to grind [firewood]," ib. The Breton form of the name for Bel-Fire of Tan-Heol is the same Tan (Fire) transposed + Heol, "the Sun" or Bil.}

The rite of Bel-Fire now surviving in the British Isles is mostly a mere game performed by boys and young people on Midsummer eve in the remoter parts of the country. On a moor, a circle is cut on the turf sufficient to hold the company and a bonfire is lit inside, and torches are waved round the head (presumably in sunwise direction, see later) while dancing round the fire; after which the individuals leap through the flames or glowing embers.

{Such a game was practised in the writer's boyhood in the West of Scotland. And Mr. S. Laing, the archæologist, who was born in 1810, writes with reference to these Bel-Fires lighted on the highest hills of Orkney and Shetland. "As a boy, I have rushed with my playmates through the smoke of these bonfires without a suspicion that we were repeating the homage paid to Baal." (Human Origins, 1897, 161.)}

As a serious religious ceremony it was not infrequently practised until about a generation ago by farmers in various parts of the country and in Ireland, who on the eve of the Summer solstice passed themselves, and drove their cattle through [p. 270] the flames {Cormac in the tenth century describes two fires for the cattle to pass between.} to bring good luck for the rest of the year. {Cp. H.F.F., 44, etc.} This clearly shows that it was essentially a simple rite of ceremonial Purification by Fire and presumably a rite of initiation into the Solar Religion by "Baptism with Fire," with the addition of Protection by the Sun as Fire. The fire employed to ignite the bonfire was doubtless the sacred Fire produced by friction of two pieces of tinder sticks or "fire-drill," as this method of producing sacred fire was employed so late as 1830 in Scotland, and was formerly common in the Hebrides, {Carmichael, Carmen Gaddica, 2, 340; and Martin, Descript. West. Islands, ed. 1884, 113.} where old customs linger longest.

This appears to be the same rite which is repeatedly referred to in the Old Testament of the Hebrews as practised by the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Canaan (i.e., Phœnicia-Palestine), in which children were passed through fire in consecration to "Moloch"—spelt Melek in the old Hebrew—a name which is evidently intended for the "Meleq-art" {This name, spelt M-l-q-r-t, is usually considered to represent Melek-qart or "King of the City."} title of Hercules in the later Semitic Phœnician inscriptions, as the "Baal of Tyre," and other Phœnician cities; and thus connecting it with the Phœnicians:—

"And they built up the high places of Baal, to cause their sons and daughters to pass through the fire to Moloch [Melek]." {Jeremiah, 32, 35, and cp. 2 Kings, 23, 10.}

But it seems that the Semites of Canaan who adopted the externals of the Sun-cult of their Aryan overlords, had in their inveterate addiction to bloody matriarchist sacrifices, human and other—practices also formerly current amongst the Hebrews {W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 1889; H. L. Strack, The Jew and Human Sacrifice, Lond., 1909, for sacrifices of first-born, etc.} —sometimes actually burned their children to death in sacrifice, in their perverted form of worshipping Bil or Bel. {2 Kings, 17, 31; 21, 6. Ezekiel, 16, 21; 20, 26, etc.} Now this sacrificial perversion of the simple and innocuous Bel-fire rite appears also to have been prevalent in Britain to some extent amongst the aboriginal Chaldees, who were also, as we have seen, addicted to human sacrifice in their Lunar cult of matriarchy with its malignant demons, under their Druid priests. Thus they changed the date of this Bel-Fire festival from the Midsummer solstice to their own May Day festival of their Mother-goddess on the First of May, which began their lunar Vegetation Year. Thus we have the vestiges of this sacrificial so-called "Beltane" rite surviving in Britain on May Day with the ceremonial sacrifice of a boy victim by lot.

[This sacrificial May Day "Beltane" rite seems, from the numerous accounts of its wide prevalence up till a few decades ago, to have been the more common, as the Aryan element is so relatively small. After cutting a circle and lighting the bonfire and torches, a cake is made of oatmeal, eggs and milk and baked in the fire, and divided up into a portion for each boy, one of the cakes being daubed black with embers. The pieces are then put into a cap, and drawn blindfolded, and whoever draws the blackened piece is the "devoted" person or victim who is to be sacrificed to obtain good luck for the year. This "devoted" victim is, of course, nowadays released or acquitted with a penalty, which is to leap three times through the flames.] {For details and refs. see H.F.F., 44, etc., 336.} {{See also the film The Wicker Man (British Lion Film Corp., 1973) with Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee. – JR, ed.}}

It was possibly, I think, the eating of the body of the human victims thus sacrificed by the Druid Chaldees on May Day, as a sacrament, which forms the basis of the historical references by St. Jerome and others in the early centuries of our era to the prevalence of cannibalism amongst savage tribes in Britain.

The sacred fire for igniting the fire-offering to Bil or Bel, as the God of the Sun, was generated by the Early Aryans and Phœnicians by the laborious friction of two tinder sticks or fire drill, the oldest method of fire-production. This generation of the sacred fire by friction of two tinder sticks was also the method employed in Britain down to the Middle Ages, for preparing the "Perpetual Fire" in shrines, and for the special "Need-Fires" in cases of dire need from plague, pestilence, drought or invasion and also presumably for lighting these Bel-Fires. The repositories for these sacred "Perpetual Fires,'' thus generated, still exist in Britain in some of our churches—in Cornwall, Dorset and York—in the so-called "Cresset-stones," some of which are placed in lamp niches furnished with flues, as pointed out by Dr. Baring Gould, who remarks that in the early centuries of our era, on the introduction of Christianity, "the Church was converted into the sacred depository of the Perpetual Fire." {Strange Survivals, 120.} And as showing conclusively that the "Need-Fires" lit in Bel-Fire fashion by the friction of the two tinder sticks were pagan, their lighting was expressly forbidden by the Church in the eighth century; and the Church "New-Fire" was transferred to Easter Day, to adapt it to the re-arranged Christian dates, and was obtained by striking flint and steel. "But the people in their adversity went back to their old time-honoured way of prepaying their sacred fire by wood friction in the pagan (Bel) fashion." {Ib., 122.} And it is significant to notice that St. Kentigern or St. Mungo (about 550 A.D.), the patron saint of Glasgow and bishop of Strath-Clyde down to the Severn, and whose many churches still bear his name in Wales and Cornwall, is recorded to have produced his sacred fire-offering by friction with two sticks. These medieval British doubtless derived their knowledge of generating this sacred fire from the ancestral descendants of the Phœnician Part-olon and Brutus and his predecessor Barats, just as the Phœnicians had generated their Perpetual Fire in the temple of Hercules at Gades (Cadiz), the penalty for extinguishing which was death. {C.A.F., 7.}

The truly solar character of the proper Bel-Fire festival of the Aryans to whom animal sacrifice was abhorrent, is seen not only from its date being at the Summer solstice, but also from the use at that festival of a wheel symbolizing the Sun, which they rolled about to signify the apparent movement of the Sun, and that the latter is then occupying its highest point in the zodiac and is about to descend; and, significantly, this Wheel is also rolled about at Yuletide, the old pagan Fire-Festival at the shortest day, i.e., the Winter solstice. {Durandus on Feast of St. John, H.F.F., 346.}

In the Christian period, this pagan Bel-Fire festival of the Summer solstice was early adjusted to Christianity by the Roman Church, for proselytizing purposes, making St. John the Baptist—who, we shall see, is represented in art as carrying the Fire Cross, whose priestly father offered simple Fire-incense offerings in the temple, {Luke, 1, 9.} and who "came to bear witness of The Light" {John, 1, 7.} —the patron saint of the old pagan Bel-Fire festival and transferred the Bel-Fire festivities to the eve of St. John's Day, the 24th of June, when they are still, or were until lately, celebrated in many parts of England, {Details in H.F.F., 346, etc.} as well as in Brittany and Spain, {Ib., 348-9.} also former colonies of the Phœnicians.

This fact of the association of the Bel-Fire rites with John-the-Baptist suggests that the latter, who bears an Aryan Gentile and non-Hebrew name, was himself an Aryan Gentile and of the Fire-Cross cult; and this seems supported by many other facts, presuming Gothic affinity, which require mention here. His initiatory rite of Baptism is wholly unknown in Judaism, whereas it is a part of the ancient ritual of the Sumerian and Aryan Vedic and Eddie Gothic Sun-cult, wherein Baptism is called by the Goths Skiri (or "The Scouring") which is radically identical with the name "Śakhar" applied to it by the Sumerians.

{Śakhar (Br. 5082, and Sakar (Br. 4339). The founder of the 1st Sumer dynasty about 3100 B.C., who uses the Swastika and figures himself as a Fire-priest, often records his presentation of a "Font-pan" or "Font of the Abyss" (Abzu-banda) to different temples which he erected (Thureau-Dangin Les Inscript. Sumér, 17, etc.) Sargon I. about 2800 B.C., as high-priest who uses the Swastika, describes himself as "water-libator" and devotee Nu-iz-sir (="Nazir") of God—"the Śakhar (or Baptist) Lord" (C.I.W.A., 3, Vol. 4, No. 7). And John-the-Baptist was also a "Nazir" or consecrated devotee (Luke i. 15, and cp. Numbers vi, 2 f.).}

And John-the-Baptist is called "Skiri-Jōn" by the Christian Goths of Iceland and Scandinavia; {V.D., 550.} and "Purification (by Water) Day" was officially called in Scotland, down to the reign of James VI., "Skiri-Thurisday." {J.S.D., 486.} Moreover, the father of John-the-Baptist was a Fire-priest,

{He offered simple Fire-incense in the temple "in the course of Abia" (Luke i, 5.) Ab, the 5th month of the Syrio-Chaldean calendar, was devoted to the worship of Bel the Fire-god, and was called by the Sumerians "Month of Bil or Gi-Bil" (?Gabriel). Br. 4579, 4587; Meissner 3101, or "Month of making Bil-Fire" (Br. 4621).}

and presumably a Gentile, and his name "Zacharias," which has no meaning in Hebrew, is apparently the Sumer title of Śakhar "Baptist," with the personal affix aś or "one," corresponding to the English "ist."

The presence of Gentile Sun-priests in the temple on Mt. Moriah at Jerusalem is explained by the fact that, besides the name "Moriah"—which is recognized as meaning "Mount of the Morias or Amorites" {Encycl. Biblica., 3200.} —that temple, long before the occupation of Jerusalem by David and its rebuilding by Solomon, was a famous ancient Sun-temple of the Hittites or Morites. Ezekiel says, "Jerusalem, thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite." {Ezekiel, 16, 3 and 45.} And Jerusalem, the "IRUSLM" of the Hebrews, was already "a holy city" under that non-Hebrew name, and called by its Hittite king about 1375 B.C. (i.e., over three centuries before the time of David), in his still existing original official letters, "The city of the Land of Urusalim, the city of the Temple of the Sun-god Nin-ib-u-śu" {Amarna Letters found in Aken-Aten's archives. AL(W) 183, Berlin No. 106, lines 15, 16. Text reads: "Al mat U-ru-sa-lim-u ki, al Bid an Nin-Ib-u-śu mu."} —wherein the latter part of the name (Ib-u-śu) appears now to disclose the title of the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Jerusalem, the "Ibus" of the Old Testament Hebrew, the "Jebus-ites" of our English translation.

{Similarly, in the other Amarna reference to this temple AL(W) No. 55 (Brit. Mus. 12) l. 31, the word read "Nin-ib" is followed by "buz." "Ib" and "Nin-ib" are defined as the Sun-god Uras (Br. 10480, etc.). "Ib" also means "enclosure," temple (Br. 10488 and M.D. 1146) and "seer or priest " (Br. 10482). Ib-u-śu thus could mean "Temple priest of Winged Sun." "Ib-uś" is also defined as Ib + "Thresher-of-Corn" (Br. 10491 and 4713) and the Jebusite king had his threshing floor on Mt. Moriah (2 Sam. xxiv, 16, etc.).}

This Hittite (or Jebusite) king of Jerusalem, who is regarded as a kinsman of the Aryan Kassi princes of Babylonia, {Kassi princes were staying with him and he defended them: AL(W), 180 II. 32, etc.} bore the Gentile name of Erikhi or Urukhi-ma, {The first element Eri or Uru is the Sumerian for "man or hero" (Br. 5858) and thus disclosed as Sumer source of Greek 'Eros, Sanskrit and Latin Vir, Gothic Ver, Anglo-Saxon Were and English "hero."} and was obviously a Sun-Fire worshipper. In his official letters to Aken-Aten, to whom he was at the time tributary, he addressed that Sun-worshipping Pharaoh, who, it will be [p. 275] remembered, called himself "Son of the Sun," as "My Sun, the great Bil Fire-Torch." {AL(W) 181, (184, etc.). Berlin text, l. i, reads Zal-ia gi-Bil ma wherein Zal = Sol or Sun, and ma = Sumerian source of English "my."}

The Israelitic occupation of the Sun-temple and its court on Mt. Moriah, from about 1012 B.C. onwards, was evidently only a joint one, shared with the Jebusites, Hittites and Amorites of Palestine and their descendants. Shortly before his death about 1015 B.C., King David, we are told, purchased from the Jebusite king of Jerusalem, Araunah (whose name is in series with that of Urukhi and "Uriah the Hittite"), a site on "the threshing place" of that king, "where the angel of the Lord was," in order to build there an altar. {2 Sam. xxiv, 16-24. The Revised Version translates the text literally as "all this did Araunah the king give unto the king."} That spot was thus outside the Jebusite temple itself, as sacrificial altars were in the open air. It is noteworthy that "the angel of the Lord" was already there before David obtained a part of the site; for it is significant that the "Sun-god" Nin-ib is otherwise styled "Taś," i.e., the Hitto-Sumerian Archangel of God and the "Tascia" of the Briton coins and monuments, as we have seen. We thus have confirmation through the Old Testament tradition of the existence of this pre-Israelitic temple of the Aryan Archangel of God on Mt. Moriah, as recorded in the original contemporary letters of its pre-Israelitic king. And David's great fear of that angel {1 Chron. xx, 15-30.} is explained by the latter being the Hittite tutelary of Jerusalem and Palestine which David had invaded.

The temple which Solomon began to build on Mt. Moriah about 1012 B.C., and which was built mainly through the agency of Phœnicians from Tyre, was presumably merely the rebuilding of the old Hittite Bil or Bel shrine, and continued to be shared by the Jebusites, of whom we are informed that "the children of Judah could not drive them out, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day" {Joshua xv, 63; Judges i, 21.} —i.e., until the date of compiling the Old Testament, about the 6th century B.C.

The Solomon temple had for its porch the characteristic Phœnician pillars of the Bel Sun-temple, it was consecrated by "Fire from Heaven," {2 Chron. vii, 1.} it contained images of the Sun, {2 Chron. xiv, 5; xxxiv, 4 and 7, Revised Version.} and of Sun-horses, {2 Kings xxiii, 11.} and it and its court continued to be used, more or less, for Sun and Bel worship down to the period of its destruction about 580 B.C.

[Solomon worshipped "Baal" {1 Kings xi, 5.} as well as Iahvh—and "Baal" is used in the Old Testament occasionally as a title of Iahvh or Jehovah. {Hosea, ii, 16; Jer. xxxi, xxxii.} He set in the porch the two colossal pillars of the Phœnician Bel temples under their Phœnician names, and supposed to represent the Phœnician deity. {1 Kings vii, 21. These two pillars are described by Herodotus, ii, 44. They bore the Phœnician names of "Buz-Iakin" (Boaz-Jachia). Cp. Encycl. Biblica, 4933.} About this time "the Children of Israel served Baal;" {Judges ii, 11-13.} and fifty years later a successor, Ahab, "served Baal and worshipped him," {1 Kings, xvi, 31.} so that there were only "seven thousand in Israel, all the knees of which have not bowed unto Baal." {Ib. xix, 18.} Twenty years later Ahaz, with his high-priest Urijah, placed an altar of Baal of Phœnician pattern in the temple and erected "Baal altars in every corner of Jerusalem." {2 Chron. xxviii, 24; 2 Kings xvi.} Two centuries later, Manasseh placed Baal altars and vessels for Baal worship inside the temple; {2 Chron. xxxiii, 3; 2 Kings xxi, 3; xxiii, 4.} and Bel and Sun-worship still were practised in the temple and its courts about the time of its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, about 580 B.C., as recorded by Ezekiel.]

The Sun-worship in the temple, as described by Ezekiel, is especially significant. He refers to a non-Judaist image at "the door of the gate of the inner court where was the seat of the image which provoketh to jealousy," {Ezek. viii, 3, etc.} and he calls it by the name used by the later Phœnicians for their image of Melqart and Resef (Taśia). {C.I.S.T., 88, 2, 3, 7; and 91, 1. This "Salmu," properly Sumerian "Salam," is especially applied to Sun-god. M.D., 879.} He further says: "In the inner court of the Lord's house, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces towards the East, and they worshipped the Sun towards the East." {Ezek. viii, 16.} And here it is important to note that the sacred place of the Sun-worshippers was in the court inside the porch, on the flat top of the sacred mount of their ancestors, and outside the Jewish sanctuary containing the tabernacle and ark, which for them was defiled by its bloodshed meat offerings.

Similarly, in the new temple, rebuilt by the Sun-worshipping Cyrus the Medo-Persian, as "The house of God of Heaven," and begun about 535 B.C. {Ezra, i, 2, etc.; vi, 4, etc.} —for which services he was affiliated to Iahvh as "The Messiah" or "The Lord's anointed" {Isaiah xlv, 1 and cp. xliv, 28.} —Bel worship appears also to have been practised, more or less. {Ezra ix, 1 etc., about 450 B.C. Hosea ii, 16, etc., xiv, 3; and later books Amos to Malachi. Antiochus I. about 250 B.C. set up an altar to Jupiter (1 Maccab. i, 23, etc., and Josephus Ant. xii, 7, 6).} And significantly in Herod's new temple, which was still in course of building when Christ began His ministry, {John ii, 20. It was not completed till 62-64 A.D. Encycl. Biblica, 4948.} there was an outer court inside the walls of the "temple" enclosure, called "The Gentiles' Court," {Enc. Bib., 4945.} thus recognizing the right of access for Gentiles (Fire-worshippers?) to a part of the summit of the sacred mount of their Aryan ancestors. This Outer Court was presumably the part of the "Temple" in which the father of John-the-Baptist performed his "course of Abia," and the part frequented by Christ.

The word "Temple" in our English translation of the Bible is used in different senses, and for different words. It is used for the Hebrew words for "Palace," "The House," "House of God or of Iahvh," which variously designated the smallish building in the centre of the great court, enshrining the ark in a dark chamber, surrounded by cells for offices, the storage of vessels, furniture and treasures. It was not a place of worship, in the sense of a meeting-house of worshippers. "The small size of the Temple proper is accounted for by the fact that the worshippers remained outside, the priests only went within." {Cambridge Companion to Bible, 153.} The altars were in the court in the open air. "In this great or outer court the prophets generally addressed the people, as also did our Lord on many occasions; and even this court is termed 'The House of the Lord,' and is 'The Temple' in the New Testament." {S. Lee, Hebrew Lexicon, 636, cp. Jer. xxvi, 2 and 2 Kings xi, 13.} It must certainly have been this outer court of "the temple" which Christ called "My Father's House," from whence he drove out "the sheep and the oxen, and he poured out the changer's money, and overthrew their tables"; {2 John ii, 14-15. The word used in the Greek text here, translated "temple," is 'ieron, i.e., "holy or sacred thing," and is seldom used for a temple building (cp. Liddell & Scott, 727); whereas in verses 19-20 the word for "temple" is naos, the classic word for a temple "building."} for neither religiously nor physically could these have been within the temple-house proper. It was "in the presence of all his people in the courts of the Lord's house" that David paid his vows {Psalms cxvi, 19.}: "For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand." {Ib. lxxxiv, 10.} And it is to be noted that the gateway on the N. side—i.e., where the non-Judaist Phœnician "image of jealousy" was formerly located—was called "The Gate of Sparks," and it had an upper chamber. {Encl. Bibl., 4946, the word is Nisus.} This was possibly where the father of John-the-Baptist performed his Fire-offering course in "The month of Making Bel-Fire"; and the simple burning of incense is repeatedly referred to in the O.T. as the usual form of Baal worship.

The Cross-sceptre or staff traditionally carried by John-the-Baptist was also an especial emblem of the "Sun-god" Nin-ib of Jerusalem. As "Son of God" that "Sun-god" is given in the Sumerian the synonym of "God of the Cross + ," {Br., 11096.} wherein that Cross in the form of St. George's Red Cross is defined as "Wood-Sceptre," also "Fire" and "Fire-god" under the name of Bar or Maś {Bar = Gi-Bil or "Great Fire-god " (Meissner, 998); also Baru, a priest (Meissner, 994), thus defining the Sumerian priest as "the carrier of the Bar or Wood-Cross."} (i.e., the English "Bar" and "Mace"). There were thus very real, although forgotten, historical reasons for the crusaders seeing visions of St. George's Red Cross upon the battlements of Jerusalem beckoning them on to rescue this old ancestral Aryan shrine from the Saracens. Indeed, it now appears as if the numerous commands by Christ to his hearers and disciples, each to "take up his Cross and follow Me,"

{Matt. xvi, 24, etc. The word used here for cross is stauros, usually employed in classic Greek for a stave, or wooden bolt, cognate with Gothic stafr or staff, sanskrit stavara, "firm." It seems cognate with the Akkad word for this + sign Śadadu, defined as "The Wood of Winged God, the Light Red Cross" (Br. 1800).}

were references to the visible, Fiery Red Cross sceptre-symbol of the Sun-cult of the One Father-God of the Hittite temple of Jerusalem, the symbol carried by John-the-Baptist who baptized Christ, and not an anticipation of the Crucifix. {The same Greek word stauros is used for the Crucifix in the New Testament.} And Christ baptized "with Fire." {Matt. iii, 11.}

This now suggests that not only the Cross-carrying John-the-Baptist and his father, the Fire-priest Zacharias, but also Christ of Galilee of the Gentiles, were Gentiles of the Aryan religion of the One and Only Father-God with his symbol of the Sun Cross, and its associated rite of Baptism, and whose ancient Aryan shrine was at Jerusalem. This appears to explain the anti-Judaist teaching of Christ and John the Baptist, and why Christ and the father of John, as well as his earlier priestly namesake, were slain by the Jewish priests. {Matt. xxiii, 25; 2 Chron. xxiv, 20; G.L.S., Novr. 148 on Zacharias and cp. Enc. Bibl., 5373 for refs.} It also seems to explain the visit of "the wise men from the East" to Jerusalem, at the Nativity of Our Lord. The persons generally called "wise men from the East" were, we find, as corrected in the Revised Version of the New Testament, "Magi," {Matt. ii, 1.} a term solely used for the priests of the Sun and Fire-cult; and this name is obviously derived from the Sumerian Maś, as "bearer of the Maś or + Cross." Moreover, the related words translated in our English version "from the East" occur in the original Greek text as "from Anatolia" {'Apo anatolōn. Yet anatolē, literally "Rising up," especially of Sun, is used sometimes poetically for "East."} —Anatolia being the middle part of Asia Minor, including Cappadocia, the old homeland of the Hittites and their Sun-cult, and the traditional home of St. George and his Red Cross.

[p. 280] It is also noteworthy that the traditional place to which the infant Christ was carried in the Flight to Egypt was the great Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, or "The House of the Phœnix"—the resurrecting Sun-bird of the Phœnicians and the Ancient Egyptians, to the north of Cairo. {Herodotus ii, 73.} And there, to the present day, is "The Virgin's Tree" and "The Virgin's Well," where, by the tradition of the Copts, one of the oldest sects of the Early Christians, the Virgin and Child with Joseph rested in Egypt.

{Baedeker's Lower Egypt, 333; Lunn, Mediterranean, 1896, 251. The ancient sycamore is about 250 years old, and replaced a former old sacred tree, and was railed in by the late Empress Eugénie at the opening of the Suez Canal. The Phœnix Sun-bird was supposed to appear every morning to the faithful on the top of the sacred Persea tree there (B.G.E. ii, 97, 371).}

This, again, appears to connect Christ with the Aryan Sun-cult.

Racially, also, we are informed that the Virgin Mary was "the cousin of Elisabeth, {Luke i, 36.} the mother of John-the-Baptist," and that Elisabeth was "of the daughters of Aaron." {Luke i, 5.} Now "Aaron," latterly used as a generic term for the priesthood in Jerusalem, is shown by leading biblical authorities to have been "a name extremely probably absent altogether from the earliest document of the Hextateuch in its original form, and apparently introduced by the editor" {Enc. Bibl. 2.} scribes later. This raises the possibility that the name AHRN, as "Aaron" is spelt in the old Hebrew, is really derived from the name of "Araunah," the Jebusite king and evidently priest-king of the Sun-temple at Jerusalem; for the Hittite kings were usually priest-kings, and the title Ibus or "Jebus-ite," we have seen, implied priesthood. That name, commonly rendered "Araunah," is spelt in the old Hebrew variously as ARUNH, AURNH, ARNIH, and ARNN. The statement, therefore, that Elisabeth was "of the daughters of Aaron," might mean that she was a descendant of Araunah, the Hittite or Jebusite priest-king of Jerusalem, and that her cousin Mary, the mother of Christ, was also in the royal line of descent from the pre-Israelitic Aryan king of Jerusalem. Such a descent would account for the repeated references to the Jewish fears that Christ claimed a temporal kingship as "King of the Jews" (? Jebus) in Jerusalem.

{The references to Jewish rites of circumcision, etc., in regard to Christ are not necessarily historical but possibly additions of later Jewish convert copyists for proselytizing purposes. They do not appear in Mark; the earliest and most authentic of the gospels. The Davidic genealogy also, which differs widely in its two versions in Matthew and Luke, refers only to Joseph, who is represented as not being the father of Our Lord.}

The location of the holy family in Nazareth of "Galilee of the Gentiles" is also suggestive of Gentile and Hittite relationship. Nazareth is near and almost overlooked by the mount, the scene of "The Sermon on the Mount," which is still called, from its double peak, "The Horns of the Hittites." Gentilic Galilee was the scene of most of Christ's preaching. Here he selected his disciples, most of whom, besides Bartholomew, we shall find bear Aryan Gentile names, as did John-the-Baptist, and his father Zacharias, the Bel-Fire priest.

Resuming now our survey of the Bel-Fire rites in ancient Britain, we find that one of the earliest or earliest of all centres in Britain for these ancient Bel-Fire rites was at the ancient Phœnician tin-port itself in Cornwall, or "Belerium," as the Romans called it. That tin-port, St. Michael's Mount, rising as a spiry islet, and natural temple, off Marasion with its Stone Circle, and connected with that town at low tide, was formerly called "Din-Sol" or "Castle of the Sun."

{It is called "Din Sol" in the Book of Landaff (C.B., 1, 4; and L.H.P., 91). Din is Cornish for the Cymric and Scottish Dun, "a fort or town" (as in "Dun-Barton"), and is the Gothic Eddic Tun, "an enclosure or dwelling," and thus the Gothic source of the English "Town," from Sumer Du (Du-na) "dwelling, mound" (Br. 9579, 9591). Sol is the Cornish and Gothic Eddic for "Sun" (also in Latin), which is now disclosed to be derived from the Sumerian Zal, "The Sun."}

Its old sacred character is also reflected in its Roman title of "Forum Jovis" or "Market of Jove," as Bel we have seen was Ia or "Jahveh," and he was usually called "Jove" (or Jupiter) by the Romans in their eastern provinces and elsewhere, where the Bel cult was prevalent; and the thunderbolts which they put in the hands of Jove were of crackling tin, possibly with reference to that Phœnician metal. The Fire festivals surviving, or till recently surviving here and in Cornwall generally, are held on the eve of St. John the Baptist's Day, and are significantly associated especially with the tin mines worked by the ancient Phœnicians.

["The boundary of each tin mine in Cornwall is marked by a long pole with a bush on the top of it. These on St. John's Day are crowned with flowers. It is usual at Penzance to light fires on this occasion and dance and sing around them. {H.F.F., 347.}

"Still to this age the hills around Mount's Bay are lighted at Midsummer eve with the bonfire, and still the descendants of the old Dunmonii wave the torch around their heads after the old, old rite." {L.H.P., 15.} And similarly in Devon, etc., etc. {H.F.F., 44, etc., 347, etc.}]

The Stone Circles, which we have seen to be early Phœnician, also appear to have been especial sites of these Bel-Fire rites, and for the production of the sacred Fire. {For Circles at Stennis, Merry Maidens, etc., L.S., 191, etc.; and D. MacRitchie, Testimony of Tradition.} And we have seen that these rites were latterly held within a circle cut on the turf, which suggests that the Stone Circles were thus used as Sun temples. And we have found that the "Cup-mark" inscriptions on circles and their neighbourhood are prayers of the Sun-cult.

Altogether, the Phœnician origin and introduction of the Bel-Fire rites into Britain, as part of the old "Sun-worship," thus appears to be clearly established.

The Sun-wise direction of walking around a sacred or venerated person or object in the direction of the hands of a clock or watch, in the direction of the Sun's apparent movement in northern latitudes, from east to west, is admittedly part of the "Sun-worship" ritual. It is inculcated in the old Aryan Vedic hymns and epics for respect and good luck and is called "The Right Way" or "Right-handed Way" (pra-) Daxina, the "Deasil" or "Right-hand Way" {Or Dessil, in Gaelic Deesoil, Deisheal, J.S.D., 150. The root of these words is Da, "the right hand" in Sumerian.} of the Scots, who call the opposite direction "Withersins" or "Contrary to the Sun," which is considered unlucky. This sun-wise direction is that in which the votaries are usually figured walking on the old Sumerian sacred seals in approaching the enthroned "Sun-god"; and it is the direction in which all Indo-Aryan votaries approached and passed Buddha, and in which Buddhists and Hindus still pass their sacred monuments, as opposed to the disrespectful and unlucky way of the devil-worshippers in the contrary direction. This Sun-wise direction and its solar meaning as "The Right Way" were commonly practised and well-recognized formerly in England, as evidenced by Spenser in his Faery Queen, when he makes the false Duessa in her enmity to the Red Cross Knight and Fairy Queen emphasize her curse by walking round in the opposite direction:—

"That say'd, her round about she from her turn'd,

She turn'd her contrary to the Sunne,

Thrice she her turn'd contrary, and return'd,

All contrary: for she the Right did shunne."

It is still practised in Britain in masonic ritual and by superstitious country folk in walking round sacred stones and sacred walls supposed to possess lucky or curative magical virtues. It is the "lucky way" of passing wine at table. And it is the direction adopted by the Sumerians and all Aryans and Aryanized people for their writing, as opposed to the Semitic or Lunar style, in the reversed or retrograde left-handed direction.

This Sun-wise or "Right Way" was the direction in which the Fire was carried and the circumambulation made in the Bel-Fire ceremonies.

[Thus, in recording the practice of this "Dessil" in the Hebrides, Martin states "there was an antient custom to make a fiery circle about the houses, corn, cattle, etc., belonging to each particular family. A man carried fire in his right hand, and went round, and it was called Dessil from the right hand, which is called Dess." And he adds that Dessil is "proceeding sun-ways from East to West." {H.F.F., 175.}]

Solar symbols in Ancient Britain are also especially profuse and widespread on the pre-Roman Briton coins, pre-Christian monuments and caves, although they have not hitherto been recognized as of solar import. On Early Briton coins the very numerous circles (often arranged in groups like cup-marks) sometimes concentric and rayed, along with wheels and crosses, spirals, single-horse sometimes with horseman, hawk or eagle, goose, winged disc, etc. (see Fig. 44), now disclosed to be purely solar symbols, have not hitherto been recognized as such, but are described by numismatists merely as "ring ornaments, annules, pellets or rosettes of pellets" and the rayed discs as "stars," and regarded apparently as being merely decorative devices, and without symbolic meaning. {E.B.C., 46 and 58, etc., passim; and numismatic works generally.} And the horse and horseman type, although invariably represented single, and not in competition nor with chariots, are fancied to be horse and chariot racing in Olympian games borrowed from Macedonian coinage, notwithstanding that the latter is devoid of the Briton associated solar symbols.

The circle symbol for the Sun's disc was early used by the Sumerians, as we have seen, in their cup-mark script, and it is one of the common ways of representing the Sun in the Sumerian and Hitto-Phœnician seals. In these seals the Sun is also represented by the dual and concentric circle, rayed circle, petalled and rosetted circles, spirals and swastikas, precisely as we find it figured in all these conventional ways in the Early British coins. {See Sumerian and Hitto-Phœnician originals in D.C.O.; W.S.C., etc.}

The equivalence and interchange of these various conventional ways of representing the Sun are well seen in the series of Briton coins here figured (Fig. 44).

It will be noticed that the Sun above the Sun-horse is figured as a simple disc or the dual Sun-disc (corresponding to "cups") in b, rayed in a, rosetted as circles around a central one in c, as a wheel with 2 concentric circles and spirals in d, as circled disc with reversed or returning swastika feet and concentric circle with spirals in e, and as Sun-hawk with the dual Sun-disc in f. In g and i the upper Sun symbol is 8-petalled, rayed, and the horse tied to one of the Sun-discs and in i the horse is reversed with the "returning' Sun; whilst in h the single Sun-disc is borne by the Sun Eagle or Hawk with head duplicated to picture the "returning" Sun. In c, moreover, is seen the legend Aesv, [p. 285] spelt in other mintages Asvp, etc. {Asvp, Eciv, Eisw, see E.B.C., 385-6, 389, 410, and C.B.G., 1, lxxxix.} which significantly is the Vedic Sanskrit name for the Sun-horse, now found to be derived from the Sumerian word for "horse." {Sumerian Ansu (or AS ?), "a horse," Akkad Sisū, Br., 4986, and Pinches Signatures, 5, col. 3, where it means "ass."} No more

[for graphic see GRAPHICS FOLIO]

FIG. 44.—Sun Symbols: Discs, Horse, Hawk, etc., on Early Briton Coins.

(After Evans) {E.B.C., Plates: a, Pl. 411; b, 5, 14; c, 15, 8; d, 14, 3; e, 14, 1; f, 14, 6; g, E., 2; h-i, E., 4.}

Note varied forms of Sun's Disc above horse, as circle, rayed, wheel, spiral, swastika, winged Disc. Also Cross in a, Horse tied to Sun in g and i and the legend Aesv, the Vedic name for Sun-Horse. And in a the Sun-horse leaps over the Gate of Sunset, as in Hittite Seals, see Fig. 37.

complete evidence, therefore, could be forthcoming for the solar character and Hitto-Sumerian origin of these emblems on the Ancient Briton coins. The interchangeability of the Sun's vehicle seen in the British coins, etc., as Horse (Asvin), Deer (or Goat), Goose, and Hawk or Falcon is voiced in the Vedas, and often in dual form:—

"O Asvin (Horse) like a pair of Deer

Fly hither like Geese unto the mead we offer . . .

With the fleetness of the Falcon." —R.V. 5, 78, 2-4.

The Deer, Goat and Goose, symbols associated with the Sun by Hitto-Sumerians and Phœnicians, and on Briton coins, etc., are seen in next chapter.

This solar character of these devices on the Early Briton coins is still further seen in the specimens in Fig. 67. p. 349. The Sun is borne on the shoulders of the Eagle or Hawk, which in the third transfixes with its claws the Serpent of the Waters or Death. In the second the winged horse is tied to the Sun and is passing over the 3 "cup-marks" of "Earth" (or Death). And on its obverse is the legend Tascia, the name of the Hitto-Sumerian archangel of the Sun, as we found in the cup-mark inscriptions in Britain and in the Hitto-Sumerian seals and amulets from Troy; and in the name of the Sun-temple in Jerusalem. It is a very common name on the Briton coins, as we shall see. This name "Tascia" thus connects the Briton coins and Cup-marks directly with the Hitto-Sumerian seals and the amulets of Troy.

The Sun-Horse, figured so freely on the Briton coins, does not appear on Early Sumerian or Hittite seals, where its place is taken by the Sun-Hawk or Eagle. But it appears later and on Phœnician coins {For the galloping horse on Phœnician coins of Carthage and Sicily, sometimes with Angel and Ear of Barley, see Duruy, Hist. Romaine, 1, 142, etc., and P.A.P., 1, 374.} and on the Greco-Phœnician coins of Cilicia from about 500 B.C. (see Figs. later), and on archaic seals from Hittite Cappadocia. {C.M.C., Figs. 141, 148.} This horse is presumably the basis of Thor's horse (or Odinn's) of the Goths and Ancient Britons-on which Father Thor himself as Jupiter Tonans, The Thunderer, with his bolts, latterly rode, and he is so figured riding on early Briton monuments.

The traditional worship of "Odinn's horses" still persists in some parts of England—for example in Sussex, where I observed bunches of corn tied up to the gables of several old timbered cottages and steadings, and was told that it was to feed "Odinn's horses" as a propitiation against lightning bolts. Offerings of grain to Indra's Sun-horses are repeatedly mentioned in the Vedic hymns; and the horses are invoked also in prayers as the vehicle for Indra's visitations:—

"They who for Indra, picture his horses in their mind,

And harness them to their prayers,

Attain by such (pious) deeds an (acceptable) offering." —R.V., 1, 20, 2.

The Sun-horse of the Ancient Britons is also the source of the modern superstition regarding the good luck of finding a horse-shoe pointing towards you—on the notion that it might have been dropped by Odinn's horse.

The Spirals also, which are found on British coins (as in Fig. 44, etc.), on Bronze Age work and on prehistoric monuments and rocks in Britain, and usually in series of twos, are already found in Sumerian, Hittite and Phœnician Seals, and as a decorative device on vases, etc., in old Phœnician settlements in Cyprus and Crete and along the Mediterranean. Yet the meaning of this spiral does not appear to have been hitherto elicited. It is now seen by our new evidence to represent the dual phases of the Sun of the Sumerians. The right-handed or westward moving spiral represented the Day Sun, and the left-handed or eastward moving spiral represented the "returning" Sun at Night—as we have already seen illustrated through the Sumerian cup-marks, with standard Sumerian script and on the amulets of Troy. The concentric "Rings," which have usually a radial "gutter," and are often arranged in twos and sometimes threes, now appear to be merely an easy way, by means of the "gutter," of giving the effect of a spiral.

And so widespread was "Sun-worship" formerly in Ancient Britain, and so famous in antiquity were the Ancient Britons as "Sun-worshippers," that Pliny remarks that the Ancient Persians, who are generally regarded as the pre-eminent Sun-worshippers of the Old World, actually seemed to have derived their rites from Britain. {Nat. Hist., 30.}

These further facts in regard to the source and prevalence of "Sun-worship" and Bel-Fire rites in the religion of the One God in Early Britain furnish additional proof that these elements of the Higher Civilization and Religion and their names were introduced into the British Isles by the Aryan Barat Catti, or Brito-Phœnicians.

FIG. 44A.—St. John-the-Baptist with his Cross-sceptre or Sun-mace.

(After Murillo.)