42 
ON THE CONTENTS OF CERTAIN ANCIENT TOMBS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF 
ANET, IN SWITZERLAND. 
I mentionepD to the Academy on a former occasion that I had received 
a letter from M. le Baron de Bonstetten, of Berne, making some inquiries 
respecting the earthenware pipes, several specimens of which are pre- 
served in our Museum. My answer to him was, that I could not regard 
these pipes as more ancient than the sixteenth century, and, consequently, 
that the idea of supposing them in any way connected with the Celtic race 
was wholly untenable. 
The Baron has since been kind enough to send me an account of the 
opening of some ancient tombs at Anet, near Berne, in Switzerland, 
which is of considerable interest, as tending to establish some funda- 
mental principles of archeological investigation. 
First, however, let. me say that the Baron has fallen into the very 
common error of supposing that the small wedge-like hatchets, com- 
monly called Celts, are peculiar to the Keltic race. The name Celt 
ordinarily given to them has propagated this error; but that word is 
only the Latin Celtes, or Celtis (from celare, to carve or engrave), which 
occurs in the Latin Vulgate, Job, xix. 24:—‘‘Quis mihi det ut [ser- 
mones mei] exarentur in libro stylo ferreo, et plumbi lamina vel Celte 
sculpantur in silice?’* But the name of the Keltic family of nations, 
in its correct orthography, is wholly different, Gaorohel, Tadazaz, 
Gadelii. 
Thus M. de Bonstetten records it as a fact which he appears to think 
inconsistent with his own very just conclusion of the non-Celtic origin 
of the tombs, of which I shall speak presently, that M. Miiller, of Nidau, 
in the year 1848, opened a tomb on the hill of Jolimont, near Anet, in 
which were found a small bronze figure, ‘‘ dont la costume bizarre n’a 
rien de romain;” a stone hammer, ‘‘ et une de ces haches, ou coins en 
bronze communement appelés haches celtiques.”” If continental anti- 
quaries call these implements ‘ haches celtiques,’’ it is evident that they 
have fallen into the error of imagining that the name Celt (i. e. Celtes, 
a chisel) is connected with the Celtic, or more properly Keltic, family 
of the human race. 
The opinion of M. de Bonstetten, in which I entirely concur, is, that 
the tombs opened by him in the neighbourhood of Anet are to be as- 
signed to a period subsequent to the introduction of Christianity into that 
country, that is, subsequent to the latter part of the sixth century; and 
I am inclined to believe them, for the reasons I shall give presently, 
very much later. 
The real importance of the Baron de Bonstetten’s discoveries, in re- 
ference to the science of Archeology, does not appear to have been fully 
perceived by himself. But I shall be better able to explain what I 
* It is curious that some MSS. and printed editions of the Vulgate (as that of Rob. 
Stephanus, Paris. 1528) have ‘‘ vel certe sculpantur,” a reading which is, no doubt, the 
true one, as being in accordance with the LXX. and with the Hebrew. 
