354 Alary. 



mystic serpent passed. There have been found at Abury, the usual 

 Druidical relics of celts, anguina, etc. ; and a proof that this was 

 once a temple of very great resort is afforded by the immense quan- 

 tities of burnt bones, horns of oxen, and charcoal which have been 

 discovered in the agger of the vallum. These are indications of 

 great sacrifices. . . . The temple was the ophite hierogram, the priests 

 were Druids, whose religion recognized the sun as a deity and the 

 serpent as a sacred emblem; the name of that mystic serpent" 

 (in the Hebrew) " was Auh, and a title of the solar deity, Aur or Ur: 

 the whole temple represented the union of the serpentine with the 

 circular sanctuaries, that is of the ophite and solar superstition. 

 What name then could be more expressive than Aubur or Abur, 

 the * Serpent of the Sun'?"^ Silbury Hill, supposed by Stukeley to be 

 the sepulchral monument of the founder of Abury, " is doubtless," 

 says Mr. Deane, "a mound dedicated to the solar deity, like the Pyra- 

 mids of ancient Greece and Egypt; and corresponds with the 

 Opheltin of classical mythology, and the Mont St. Michel, of 

 Carnac. In connection with the Serpent temple, it identifies the 

 whole structure as sacred to the deity known by the Greeks as 

 Apollo. Its very name imports 'the hill of the Sun.' "^ 



The Rev. Edward Duke, says, "My hypothesis then is as follows : 

 that our ingenious ancestors portrayed on the Wiltshire Down, as a 

 Planetariima. or stationary orrery, located on a meridional line, ex- 

 tending north and south, the length of sixteen miles ; that the plane- 

 tary temples thus located, seven in nimiber, will, if put in motion, be 

 supposed to revolve around Silbury Hill, as the centre of this grand 

 astronomical scheme ; that thus Saturn, the extreme planet to the 

 south, would in his orbit describe a circle with a diameter of thirty two 

 miles ; that four of the planetary temples were constructed of stone, 

 those of Venus (the circles of stones at Winterbourne Basset), the 

 Sun (the southern circle at Abury), the Moon (the northern circle 

 at Abury), and Saturn (the circle at Stonehenge) ; and the remain- 

 ing three of earth, those of Mercury (at Walker's Hill), Mars (at 

 Marden), and Jupiter (Casterly Camp), resembling the 'hill altars" 



1 Deane "on the "Worship of the Serpent," pp. 32, 382, 383, 2ud edition, 

 1833. lb. = p. 379. 



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