Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894/Circle and Serpent Antiquities

by Palestine Exploration Fund

 

CIRCLE AND SERPENT ANTIQUITIES.

By C. Fox, M.R.C.S., F.S.S.

The very interesting new contributions of the indefatigable Baurath Schick furnish matter for inferences of no less interest, and set us several problems. Two or three of them I incline to remark upon thus, in case it may throw some light upon their meaning and use:

 

I.

The above-named explorer twice appears to present to our notice circular edifices, in his last paper:—1st. In the so-called "Church of St. Martin" {Quarterly Statement, October, 1893, p. 283) by the great synagogue north of the Mosque el-Omar. 2nd. On the knoll containing Conder's tomb of Our Lord {Quarterly Statement, October, 1893, p. 298).

In the first, as I read, there is a square and a cupola or dome above it, though whether this is the whole of the ancient structure—and even its shape, probably—is not yet quite ascertained. If it be as just stated, there is presented the combination of square and circle which is highly mystical, and signified in the Great or Sacred Pyramid, and in the Freemasonry of which this is probably the original. Both figures occur, as has been observed in these Statements already, in the Hebrew mysteries, but the circle least; and I am inclined to think this may be the older form—and, therefore, anterior to Judaism—causing it to be little seen under it. It is to be much remarked under Paganism, which is the corruption of the original worship and, therefore, hands down the primitive form of mysteries; but the square and cube are prominent in religion after historical times, and indicated in the similitude of the New Jerusalem, too. Sometimes these figures are signified visibly; at others by number; and it may be mentioned that in the Oracle of old, not only the cube was obviously specified, but in the walls, too, the squaring-of-the-circle ratio very secretly enshrined. This was the glory of all, and the Jewish Shechinah, containing its Palladium or Coffer, and here, then, square and circle were combined indeed.

Secondly, Schick describes a strange round enclosure—very near Conder's "Holy Sepulchre"—which he has discovered by digging, of which the wall is elegant, and built in a very unusual manner, and the floor of which is rock. He shows that it was evidently not a reservoir, and most probably not a theatre, and, in fine, that it never bore a roof. And, to his surprise, it seems to have had nothing in the centre. He is fain, then, though in perplexity, to conclude it was most likely the base of a tower. If so, certainly we might expect parts of the wall to be higher than the rest, and the top level of it broken; but, as I understand, any irregularity in it is only what the uneven floor level required.

Now, may it not be that we have here a primæval temple of Jebusites, being a simple circle of vast antiquity, open to the heavens? Such would be identical with the Druidical circle, and is the original Llan. For this word (so constant in topography), the old and proper Welsh for a church, means a circle—showing how, originally, the Gorsedd of Druidism was a place of true worship; and it must be noted how no idol has ever been found in our ancient British religion. The same Circle is to be seen in other parts of the globe, and even in remote Polynesia, showing how very primitive was its source, in that it had thus extended throughout the world.

In Christendom there are a few instances of round temples—especially the "Temple Church," in London, named from that of Jerusalem; and the unexplained Round Towers of Ireland, open to the sky, I submit, may be of the same origin, especially as the ancient race that built and used them was Phœnician or Canaanite.

 

II.

I would also refer to the figures of serpents the same explorer describes and delineates, and which he tells us are all of the same shape, though several and of different sizes. He says (p. 297, October Quarterly Statement, 1893) they all have two long ears and a beak—most strange adjuncts to a serpent, and which he is evidently at a loss to explain. He remarks, however, justly, that such figures "must have had some deep meaning."

The head he calls a dragon's; but surely we are better warranted in calling it a bird's?—while the drop(?) it holds in the eagle-bill suggests exactly a seed in a bird's beak just taken up. The ears may then seem anomalous, and, in fact, to demand the supposition of a horse. Is not the head which he figures one between a horse's and a bird's?

A precious antiquity in our own country may, I venture to think, throw light on this riddle thus left unsolved, and yet so evidently full of significance. In the accompanying figure I have compared Schick's drawing of the mystical serpent of Palestine with the great White Horse. This inestimable relic of British times and piety, at Uffington, will be, perhaps, noticed primâ facie to have some characters in common with these hybrid serpents.

Let the reader carefully notice the following features, and see if they do not justify an inference as curious and memorable—and in its consequences as important and as large—as we are often in a position to draw. For:—

1. Each has, apparently, a bird's head.
2. Yet each has the semblance of a horse's; or, if the upper one has not decidedly, it is plainly a horse itself.
3. Each, for body, has one very long thin sweep.
4. And this expressed in two continuous curves, and no more.

It may be added that in both forms not only are the curves beautifully designed—which, in the case of the White Horse, on the steep hillside in vast dimensions, is truly wonderful—but in every part of the figure the curves are admirable and almost perfect, however rude may be the shape. Let them be minutely observed.

On the serpent are excrescences not found in nature, two, with knobs on the ends; these might seem to answer, occultly, to the double dividing to form the horse's limbs. And the great thinness of the latter's body and neck—making them hardly wider than the tail with which they are drawn so continuous—is now explicable. For thus it makes the beast a serpent with legs; nay, the imperfection of these last may be thus explained, perhaps, too. It is, certainly, to be thought that the ancient Britons could have drawn the width of a horse's body in better portion than it is in here, and that any people who could so boldly and admirably' design the length, general proportions, and attitude of the creature must have made the thick parts also wider, or could not so egregiously have failed in this. No facts would be more salient, and it would be the easiest measure to express; it is impossible these parts could, unless intentionally, have been made so thin, as they would certainly have about reached to the dotted line.

By the hypothesis the strange serpent of Schick now enables us to form, the anomalous fact of so preposterous a body, when the rest is so beautifully figured, is explained; it is a serpent as well as horse. (I have tried to be accurate in my figure,^[1] but it is not perfect.)

Now there is no doubt, though it is perhaps very little known, that the great White Horse is a sacred symbol—of Ceridwen, the type again of the Holy Spirit. The same hybrid conception is to be seen on Ancient British coins. Christ, again, has been set forth mystically, or His Spirit, in Scripture, in connection both with a white horse, a serpent, and a dove; and here all may, perhaps, be combined, as in figures of Osiris, &c., in Egypt, forms or ideas are, and as the strength, spirituality, and wisdom of the Deity were in the majestic, human-headed, winged bulls which stood on each side the entrance of the Palace of Nineveh, in the advanced civilisation of the earliest times.

Hence, we may actually still say, with Baron UstinofF, that the centauric serpents were, perhaps, copies of Moses' brazen one made and exhibited indubitably as a type of Christ! And, in such a possibility—now credible, how interesting to conceive of that symbol as actually thus mystical and compound! Yet, certainly, there is much reason to think these found in Canaan were no other; and it is worthy of note how, while the "Brazen Serpent" had to be destroyed because it was worshipped or made a charm of, these copper ones must have been very abundant—i.e., would seem to have been exactly so used.

Indeed it might well be that, troubled and angered to lose their Nehushtan, the people who had grown attached to symbols made these copies of it at once abundantly so as to continue to worship the sign, of which still six have been found.

 

III.

To recur, lastly, to the former subject, it is of much interest here to notice how the Serpent was designed as passing through the Circle of the Druids, as may still be seen, or both were found together—as we seem now again to have found them in the last report of Baurath von Schick. Tin's figure came to be worshipped, even by a sect of Christians, doubtless because of its reference to Christ; and He was expressed by it because He came and took sin's curse—which had come in by the serpent. So, too, He bade His followers to be " wise as serpents," but with His or the dove's innocence, too, now—not as when it tempted man by its subtlety alone. And here let us notice the serpent and dove united, which very two I read in the strange figure—if not plainly in one, in the other, for the lower one has the serpent more evidently, and the upper the dove, and thus, by both together, we may find what is meant. The great stone Serpent of the Gorsedd^[2] typified the Holy Spirit flying forth over all the earth from God—the circle, or unity, in His heaven; and the dove was divinely used as its emblem, being even made its vehicle—as the serpent was that of the Evil Spirit; so that we find both creatures united in one symbolism, and that to the Holy Ghost.

When, then. He who is represented in the Apocalypse as going forth a Victor on the White Horse came to conquer sin and death, the Holy Spirit, which was the power of this ministry, descended on Him at its beginning as a Dove.

Cowbridge, S. Wales,

11th Month, 1893.

 

 

the so called Sarcophagus of alexander.

1. Vide Plenderleath.
2. I have myself discovered several of these, and not a few enormous serpents' heads (great rocks), not known of or known as such. Hakpen Hill, Wiltsh., as the name denotes, was devoted to the delineation only of the head of the vast serpent of which the finely winding roads to and from Abury (the circle) are now almost the only trace.—C.F.