Read Ebook: Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments Astronomically Considered by Lockyer Norman Sir

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 652 lines and 66203 words, and 14 pages

It will be obvious from Fig. 6 that in temples built to observe the solstices or equinoxes, if they were open from end to end, looking in one direction we should see the sun rising at a solstice or equinox, and looking in the other we should see the sun setting at the opposite one. I shall show later on that this statement requires a slight modification.

But temples so built interfered with the ceremonial, which required that the light should illuminate a naos--that is, the Sanctuary or Holy of Holies, only entered by the High Priest, and generally kept dark. Usually, therefore, two temples were built back to back, with a common axis, as at Karnak.

And here a very important point comes in; which time of the year and day of the year are most easy to fix by astronomical observation? As a matter of fact the summer solstice, the position of the sun on the longest day, is a point easily fixed. All we have to do is to observe the sun rising more and more to the north as the summer approaches, until at the very height of the summer we have the extreme north-easterly point of the horizon reached, and the sun stands still. We have the solstice. We can then put a row of stakes up, and so fix the solstitial line. Of course we find, as mankind has found generally, that the sun comes back next year to that same solstitial place of rising or setting. So that when we have once got such an alignment for the rising of the sun at midsummer, we can determine the length of the year in days, and therefore the beginning of each year as it comes round.

So much, then, for the chief points in what we may term the astronomical year, those at which the sun's declination is greatest and least. We see that they are approximately ninety-one days apart--say three months.

THE AGRICULTURAL DIVISIONS OF THE YEAR

The early peoples have been very much misrepresented, and held to have been uninstructed, by several writers who have not considered what they were really driving at. It was absolutely essential for early man, including the inhabitants of Britain as it was then--townless, uncivilised--that the people should know something about the proper time for performing their agricultural operations. We now go into a shop and for a penny buy an almanack which gives us everything we want to know about the year, the month and the day, and that is the reason why so few of us care about astronomy: we can get all we want from astronomy for a penny or twopence. But these poor people, unless they found out the time of the year and the month and the day for themselves, or got some one to tell them--and their priests were the men who knew, and they were priests because they knew--had absolutely no means of determining when their various agricultural operations should take place. So that we find all over the world temples erected in the very first flush of civilisation.

On this a point comes in of very considerable interest. If we study the civilisations in Egypt, we find that, so far as we know, one of the first peoples who used this principle of orientation for agricultural purposes was some tribe that came down the Nile about 6400 years B.C. They used the star Canopus, and their determination was that of the autumnal equinox, which practically was the time when the Nile began to go down, and when their sowing might begin. There was another race who, instead of being interested in the sun, and therefore in agriculture, at the time of the autumnal equinox, were interested in the year about the time of Easter as well. This race built the Pyramids about four thousand years B.C. There was an interval of about two or three thousand years between these races. As we shall see there were others, who at Thebes started the solstitial worship--that is to say, the worship of the sun at midsummer--and at Memphis in May, so as to enable them to go on with their agricultural operations with greater certainty. We must not forget that first of all the farmers tried to plough and sow by the moon. We can see how hopeless agriculture must have been under such conditions. The month, indeed, was the only unit of time employed, even of human life. We hear of people who lived 1200 years; that means 1200 months--there is no question whatever about that now.

When we study the history of our own country--when we come back from Egypt to Britain, leaving alone Greece and Rome--we find that in various times in our country we have had a year, a farmer's year, beginning in the month of May; we have had another farmer's year beginning in the month of August; we have had another farmer's year beginning at the longest day; and it appears that the year beginning at the longest day was really the last year to be introduced. So that while we have in Stonehenge a solstitial temple--that is to say, a temple to make observations of the length of the year by observing the rise of the sun on the longest day of the year--in other parts of England there were other temples observing the sun, not on the 21st of June, but early in May and early in August.

A very large part of mythology has sprung out of the temple cults, prayer, sacrifices and thanksgiving connected with these farming operations in different lands and ages.

I wish to show next that by studying the orientation of temples erected to watch the stars and sunrise and sunset at times other than the solstices or equinoxes, an immense amount of information may be gained if we endeavour to find the way in which the problem must have been attacked before the year was thoroughly established, and when it was still a question of grass- or corn-kings or gods who had to be propitiated; and we may even be enabled to understand why the particular divisions of the year were chosen.

In a solstitial temple the sun makes its appearance only once a year, when it reaches its greatest north or south declination; but in the temples dealing with lower declinations the sun appears twice, once on its journey from the summer to the winter solstice, and again on its return.

The first difficulty of the inquiry in the direction I have indicated arises from the fact that the products of different countries vary, and that identical farming operations have to be carried on at different times in these countries. We must, then, begin with some one country, and as the record is fullest for Greece I will begin with it.

The first thing we find is that the chief points in the farmer's year in Greece are about as far from the fixed points in the astronomical year as they well can be.

In the Greek information so admirably collated by M. Ruelle in the article on the calendar in Daremberg and Saglio's monumental "Dictionnaire des Antiquit?s Grecques et Romaines," the earlier Gregorian dates on which the seasons were reckoned to commence in ancient Greece were as follows:--

Summer May 6. Autumn August 11. Winter November 10. Spring February 7.

I may also add from the same source that in the calendars of the Latins the dates become:--

Summer May 9. Autumn August 8. Winter November 9. Spring February 7.

Now we see at once that these dates are, roughly, half-way between the solstices and equinoxes.

This, then, at once brings us back to the orientation problem, which was to fix by means of a temple in the ordinary way dates nearer to these turning-points in the local farmer's years than those fixed by the solstitial and equinoctial temples.

It must be borne in mind that it is not merely a question of stately piles such as Karnak and the Parthenon in populous centres, but of the humblest dolmen or stone circle, in scattered agricultural communities, which was as certainly used for orientation purposes, that is, for recording the lapse of time at night or return of some season important to the tiller of the soil. The advent of the season thus determined could be announced to outlying districts by fire signals at night.

I have already pointed out that any temple, dolmen or cromlech oriented to a sunrise or sunset at any dates between the solstices will receive the sunlight twice a year.

from March 22, we have in--

What, then, are the non-equinoctial, non-solstitial days of the year when the sun has this declination?

They are, in the sun's journey from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice and back again,

May 6 and August 8 Sun's decl. N. 16? 20?.

Similarly, for the journey to the winter solstice and return we have

November 8 and February 4 Sun's decl. S. 16? 20?.

We get, then, a year symmetrical with the astronomical year, which can be indicated with it as in Fig. 7; a year roughly halving the intervals between the chief dates of the astronomical year.

With regard to the dates shown I have already pointed out that farming operations would not occur at the same time in different lands; that ploughing and seed time and harvest would vary with crops and latitudes; and I must now add that when we wish to determine the exact days of the month we have to struggle with all the difficulties introduced by the various systems adopted by different ancient nations to bring together the reckoning of months by the moon and of years by the sun.

Another cause of trouble was the forsaking by the Jews of the solar year, with which they commenced, in favour of the Babylonian lunar year, which has been continued for the purposes of worship by Christians, giving us "movable feasts" to such an extent that Easter Day, which once invariably marked the spring equinox, may vary from March 22 to April 25, and Whit Sunday from May 10 to June 13. It is at once obvious that no fixed operations of Nature can be indicated by such variable dates as these.

Hence in what follows I shall only deal with the months involved; these amply suffice for a general statement, but a discussion as to exact dates may come later.

To sum up, then, the astronomer-priests had to watch the time at night by observing a star rising near the north point of the horizon. This star would act as a warner of sunrise at some time of the year.

To watch for the rising or setting of other stars in various azimuths warning sunrise at the other critical times of the May or Solstitial years.

To watch the sunrise and sunset.

To mark all rising or setting places of the warning stars and sun by sight-lines from the circle.

THE VARIOUS NEW-YEAR DAYS

With regard to the astronomical year it may be stated that each solstice and equinox has in turn in some country or another, and even in the same country at different times, been taken as the beginning of the year.

Solstitial Feb. 4 Feb. 7 Feb. 7 Beginning of Spring } ,, Summer May 6 May 6 May 9 End of Summer } Aug. 8 Aug. 11 Aug. 8 Beginning of Autumn } ,, Winter Nov. 8 Nov. 10 Nov. 9

In the table I also give, for comparison, the dates in the Greek and Roman calendars .

There is no question that on or about the above days festivals were anciently celebrated in these islands; possibly not all at all holy places, but some at one and some at another; this, perhaps, may help to explain the variation in the local traditions and even some of the groupings of orientations.

The earliest information on this point comes from Ireland.

Cormac, Archbishop of Cashel in the tenth century, states, according to Vallancey, that "in his time four great fires were lighted up on the four great festivals of the Druids, viz., in February, May, August and November."

I am not aware of any such general statement as early as this in relation to the four festivals of the May year in Great Britain, but in spite of its absence the fact is undoubted that festivals were held, and many various forms of celebration used, during those months.

From the introduction of Christianity attempts of different kinds were made to destroy this ancient time system and to abolish the so-called "pagan" worships and practices connected with it. Efforts were made to change the date and so obliterate gradually the old traditions; another way, and this turned out to be the more efficacious, was to change the venue of the festival, so to speak, in favour of some Christian celebration or saint's day. The old festivals took no account of week-days, so it was ruled that the festivals were to take place on the first day of the week; later on some of them were ruled to begin on the first day of the month.

When Easter became a movable feast, the efforts of the priests were greatly facilitated, and indeed it would seem as if this result of such a change was not absent from the minds of those who favoured it.

The change of style was, as I have before stated, a fruitful source of confusion, and this was still further complicated by another difficulty. Piers tells us that consequent upon the change "the Roman Catholics light their fires by the new style, as the correction originated from a pope; and for that very same reason the Protestants adhere to the old."

I will refer to each of the festivals and their changes of date.

Before the movable Easter the February festival had been transformed into Ash Wednesday . The eve of the festival was Shrove Tuesday, and it is quite possible that the ashes used by the priests on Wednesday were connected with the bonfires of the previous night.

It would seem that initially the festival, with its accompanying bonfire, was transferred to the first Sunday in Lent, February 8.

I quote the following from Hazlitt:--

"Durandus, in his 'Rationale,' tells us, Lent was counted to begin on that which is now the first Sunday in Lent, and to end on Easter Eve; which time, saith he, containing forty-two days, if you take out of them the six Sundays , then there will remain only thirty-six days: and, therefore, that the number of days which Christ fasted might be perfected, Pope Gregory added to Lent four days of the week before-going, viz., that which we now call Ash Wednesday, and the three days following it. So that we see the first observation of Lent began from a superstitious, unwarrantable, and indeed profane, conceit of imitating Our Saviour's miraculous abstinence. Lent is so called from the time of the year wherein it is observed: Lent in the Saxon language signifying Spring."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet