210 



According to this view the towers may well have been accounted 

 ancient, as they appear to liave been when Cambrensis arrived in 

 Ireland; yet it does not make their age so absurdly remote as to 

 render their present existence almost an impossibility. 



Let not the excellence of the workmanship prove an obstacle to 

 the adoption of this hypothesis, since Persia, from which the Irish 

 claim to derive in great measure their descent, their arts, and their 

 religion, was remarkable for her skill in masonry, and possessed a 

 knowledge of the keyed arch* from time immemorial. 



The purposes of the Egyptian pyramids are considered to have 

 been three-fold :-\- as temples, as tombs, and as observatories. 



May not the towers have been also intended for more than one 

 object, as fire-temples, and as observatories? for as all the re- 

 ligious festivals depended upon the sun's course, and were decided 

 by his entrance into certain constellations, continual observation of 

 the heavens was in consequence necessary. And that astronomy 

 was highly cultivated, and rightly understood in Ireland, is proved 

 by the fact, which has been often quoted, that Bishop Virgilius, an 

 Irishman, educated at the college of Armagh, in the year 767, 

 asserted the spherical form of the earth, at a time when all Europe 

 was ignorant of the fact. J 



The towers might also have served for gnomons, like the obelisks 

 of Thebes.§ The many ages elapsed since the building of the 

 towers, the erection of other structures close around them, the 

 occupation of the circumjacent ground as grave-yards, and the 



• Morier's Travels in Persia Ouseley's Travels in the East. — And above all, Chardin's Journey 



in Persia This early knowledge of the arch may have arisen from the absolute want of timber 



in some of the provinces. 



f Maurice's Ind. Ant. vol. iii. p. 86. 



X Ware's Irish Writers, p. 50 — Collect. Reb. Hib. IV. p. 315. 



J Brace's Travels, I. p. 46.— Murray's Octavo Edition. 



