By William. Long, Esq. 95 



However probable it may be that the Phasnicians carried on a 

 direct trade with the south western portion of Britain, it is not an 

 established historical fact that that they did so,' and any such inter- 

 course would probably have been confined to the sea-coast. If any 

 Phoenician influences reached the interior of Britain it would probably 

 have been through the Veneti, who inhabited Armorican Gaul, the 

 district in which Karnac is found, and who, in the time of Csesar, 

 were carrying on a brisk trade with the British. 



Aylett Sammes ^ [^inadvertently omitted at page 40), appears to have 

 b<^en the first who broached the opinion that the Phoenicians were 

 connected with Stouehenge. In vol. i., of his " Britannia Antiqua 

 Illustrata,^' 1676, p. 395, is a treatise of the ancient monument 

 called Stonehenge. It is very prosy, and the gist of it is, that he 



and to the Druids ; under the sanction of whose names we shelter ourselves, 

 whenever we are ignorant and bewildered. But they were the operations of a 

 very remote age ; probably before the time when the JDiuids or Celtse were 

 first known. I question, whether there be in the world a monument, which is 

 much prior to the celebrated Stone-Henge. There is reason to think that it 

 was erected by a foreign colony ; one of the first which came into the island. 

 Here is extant at this day, one of those rocking stones, of which I have been 

 speaking above. [?] The ancients distinguished stones erected with a religious 

 view by the name of amber; by which was signified anything solar and divine. 

 The Grecians called them ' Jlerpai Afi^poaiai,' Petrte Ambrosiae ; and there are 

 representations of such upon coins. . . . Stonehenge is composed of these 

 amber-stones ; hence the next town is denominated " Ambrosbury : " not from 

 a Roman Ambrosius ; for no such person existed ; but from the Ambrosiae 

 Petrae, in whose vicinity it stands." 



1 Mr. C. T. Newton, of the British Museum, concluded a lecture on Pheeni- 

 cian Art in Britain, given at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute, 

 at Dorchester, in 1865, " by reverting to the question whether the Phoenicians 

 had ever landed on the coast of Britain. This question it will be better to 

 consider still in abeyance. What is wanted for its ultimate solution is a dili- 

 gent notation of facts. The examination of barrows in the southern counties 

 should be carried on with the most minute care, and the names of places along 

 the coast should be analyzed by the tests of modern philology ; for, if the 

 Phoenicians frequented any portion of the British Coast, it is probable that they 

 would have given names to the more important harbours and promontories, as 

 they did in Africa and Spain." — Builder, August 26th, 1865. 



* Aylett Sammes was of Christ's College, Cambridge, and of the Inner 

 Temple. Wood in his " Athenae Oxonienses " states that the real author of 

 the work was Robert Aylett, L.L.D., a master in chancery, who was Sammes' 

 uncle, and left him his papers. 



