Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, and Articles. 355 



perhaps the long barrows, are of a date long subsequent to the original 

 Stonehenge. This was a Temple of the Sun, built by a people who knew 

 that the 3-ear consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days. They offered 

 sacrifice before each of the stones of the outer circle, successively, com- 

 pleting the circle each mo'nth of thirty days— the five odd days having 

 each of them a trilithon dedicated to it. The four principal days of the 

 year would be the longest and shortest and the days of the vernal and 

 autumnal equinoxes — when the principal sun festivals would take place. 

 The longest and shortest days could be fixed by the rising and the setting 

 of the sun — observed in connection with the Hele Stone — but the equinoxes 

 could not. They must be fixed by observation of the stars — and the two 

 mounds and two stones inside the earth circle were for this purpose — that 

 the transits of the stars, at the moment of sunrise might be observed 

 over them. " If we could satisfy ourselves as to what those four stars 

 were and what were the stations in the temple from which they were 

 observed, then since their right ascensions must at this time have coincided 

 with the angles from the East made by those stones and mounds, we 

 should be able, knowing what those angles are now and must then have 

 been, to say decidedly what the right ascensions of these stars were, 

 when the stones and mounds were placed in position, and from these 

 data to calculate exactly the date of that event." To the objection that 

 the number of the stars are innumerable from which to make his selection 

 he answers that practically there are only about twelve stars answering 

 the requirements of the theory from which the four can be selected. The 

 author selects his four stars, and by calculating the difference between 

 their present right ascension and that which must have been theirs when 

 they fitted into his plan, he obtains as the probable result the date of 

 1000 B.C. Again, he regards the line of picked holes across the corner 

 of the prostrate Slaughter Stone as intentionally made to mark the spot 

 where a staff was set up in a line between the Hele Stone and the Altar 

 Stone for the observation of the Midsummer sunrise. This was the 

 original use of the structure, as built by the Phoenicians, B.C. 1000. 

 About B.C. 400 the Greeks supplanted the Phoenicians in their trade with 

 Britain. Owing to the alteration in the position of the stars in the 

 intervening six hundred years, Stonehenge no longer answered its original 

 purpose. It was therefore re-formed by the Greeks, and the inner 

 horseshoe of blue stones, numbering nineteen, was added to represent the 

 Metonic Cycle. 



The Phoenicians were the only people who possessed sufficient science 

 to erect such a structure. The trilithon is connected with the Phoenicians. 

 They traded with Britain and would want such a temple at this place — 

 because the Britons must have brought the tin along the coast in coracles 

 to Poole or Christchurch, whence it was shipped by the Phoenicians. 



Such is the author's theory as set forth in this pamphlet, which contains 

 the substance — with the exception of some alterations in the calculations 

 — of the paper read at the Amesbury Meeting, 1899. 



Setting aside the astronomical calculations, is it conceivable that 

 Phoenicians and Greeks should have erected and used for seven hundred 



VOL. XXX. NO. XGH. 



