88 ROMAN ANTIQUITIES 



burial by cremation into the island. The practice among the anci- 

 ent Britons of depositing warlike instruments, drinking cups, and 

 other articles with the dead, is likewise supposed to have been de- 

 rived from the Phoenicians and Belgic Gauls. This custom is of 

 great antiquity ; and an instance of it occurs in the Book of Joshua,* 

 in a very ancient copy of the Septuagint, preserved in the Vatican, 

 (although it is not in our translation), wherein it is stated that 

 knives and instruments of flint were buried with his body in the 

 tomb. The custom is also alluded to in the Book of Ezekiel, where- 

 in he speaks of persons who were gone down to the grave with 

 their weapons of war, and their swords had been laid under their 

 heads. 



An instance of the practice of cremation is also recorded in the first 

 Book of Samuel, (chap, xxxi.), wherein it is stated that the bodies 

 of Saul and his sons were burnt after they had been taken down 

 from the walls of Bethshan, and the bones were buried under a tree. 

 There are also frequent allusions to the custom in the Homeric 

 poems. 



The sepulchral urns and cups of the ancient, that is to say the 

 Celtic and Belgic, Britons differ in many respects from those of the 

 Roman era, and from which they are in general easily distinguish- 

 ed. Those of the ancient British are coarsely formed at the wheel, t 

 without the lathe, and, in shape, bear some resemblance to a com- 

 mon flower-pot, or truncated cone ; the ornaments are rude, con- 

 sisting chiefly of zigzag and short diagonal lines, and many appear 

 to have been moulded merely by exposure to the sun, or blackened 

 by the funereal fire. Some were of the globular form, and others 

 of a cylindrical shape, the latter were of the most ancient descrip- 

 tion ; and although the cinerary urns and drinking cups of the 

 Romanized Britons and early Saxons were made after the Roman 

 mode, yet they generally corresponded in shape with those of the 

 ancient Britons, and the specimens discovered at Kempsey very 

 much accord with the above rules. 



About a dozen other cists, although not so large as the one 

 already described, were likewise discovered near the same spot, 

 whilst excavating for gravel, and contained various articles of pot- 

 tery, but they were either all destroyed by the workmen or lost. 

 These cists were situated near the northern side of a vallum, which, 



• Vide Bloxam, p. 7. 



+ The Prophet Jeremiah, in describing the Potter's tools in his time, says, 

 " then I went down to the Potter's house, and behold he wrought a work 

 upon the wheels." 



