24 CUP-SHAPED AND OTHER LAPIDARIAN SCULPTURES. 



According to Mr. Friedel, cup-cuttings occur on megalithic monuments 

 in the Island of Riigen, situated in the Baltic Sea, opposite Stralsund, Prus- 

 sia, and on rocks in different parts of Silesia. He refers to a rock called 

 the Bischofs-Stein (Bishop's Stone), at or near Niemegk, in the Province of 

 Brandenburg, Prussia, upon which are sculptured, on one side a Maltese 

 cross and the date 1590, and on the other a chalice, a cross, and several 

 cups, while its top shows a trough-shaped cavity.* The communications 

 of that gentleman relative to the cup-like cavities executed on the walls of 

 many churches in Germany and Sweden, and thus bearing witness to the 

 practice of cup-cutting Avithin comparatively recent times, are of great in- 

 terestf But as I shall revert to this subject in another section of this essay, 

 I refrain from enlarging on it in this place. 



Though of late years much has been said in Germany concerning 

 cupped atones, it appears that two of them, long ago bi'iefly descril)ed and 

 figured by Samuel Christoph "VVagener, have recently escajied the notice of 

 German archaeologists. One of them is tlnis mentioned by Wagener among 

 the antiquities in the neighborhood of Ober-Farrenstadt, near Querfurt, in 

 Prussian Saxony : "There was also found in this district the memorial stone, 

 Fig-. 89.5, with many drill-holes" {Audi f and sich in hiesiger Gegend der Denk- 

 stein, Fig. 895, mit vielen Bohrluchern) f The illustration, a very rude out- 

 line sketch, of which Fig. 18 is afac-simile, evidently represents a cup-stone. 

 The size of the stone is not indicated. The other cupped stone, represented 

 in an equally rude manner by Fig. 1367 in Wagener's work, is a granite 

 block near Zadel, in the neighboi'hood of Meissen, Saxony. The people of 

 the neighborhood call it Biesenstein or Giant Stone. It is six feet high and 

 seven feet broad, and marked with many cup-excavations, of which the 

 upper ones, placed in rows, are oval, three inches long, from one inch to an 

 inch and a half wide, and from a fourth of an inch to half an inch in depth. 



1880, in Tvbich sho enumerates the cup-stones whicb have become known in the duchies of Sclilcswig 

 and Holstein up to the year 1880. There are eighteen in all, of which the last in the list has not yet 

 been described. It was discovered at or near Bunsoh (Holstein), is conical in shape, sixteen centimeters 

 high, and shows twenty-seven cups, three of which are surrounded by single rings. 



* As early as 1751 mention is made of cupped boulders in the Province of Brandenburg iu a his- 

 torical work on that province by J. C. Bekmann. The author calls Ihem Napfclwnstcinc. 



t Verhandlungen der Berliner Anthropologischen Gesellschaft ; Sitzung vom 16. Febrnar 1878, 

 S. 23. 



t Wagener : Haudbuch der vorziigliehsten iu Deutschland entdeckteu Alterthiimer aus heidnischer 

 Zeit ; Weimar, 1842, S. 479. 



