Silburyhenge
February 5, 2010 - 2:47 am
“Imagination takes us to worlds that never were, but without it, we go nowhere.”
As far as I’m aware, the images in this post are those that no human eyes have ever seen before, while the structure they depict never existed. However, as I pointed out in the previous post, I’ve long wondered at the relative dimensions of the top of Silbury Hill and the sarsen circle at Stonehenge, so I’m extremely grateful to my friend Juris Ozols for taking the time and trouble to create the images that show how these dimensions match up.
The sarsen circle at Stonehenge is 33 meters in diameter, while the top of Silbury Hill is roughly 30 meters across, or less than ten feet smaller. My 1968 copy of the the BBC’s Silbury Hill booklet, published to accompany Professor Atkinson’s ill-fated excavation, goes into some detail about Silbury Hill’s cubic volume:
“Today, the apparent volume of the mound is about 12.5 million cubic feet….Originally, however, the mound must have been larger than this, because the huge ditch around its base is mostly filled with silt eroded from the mound by frost and rain. This silt at present amounts to about 5 million cubic feet, and it is safe to say that when it was originally built, the mound must have been about one-third larger than it is today, with a wider base and with sides sloping at a narrower angle.”
So, by my unscientific calculations, the sarsen circle of Stonehenge could have fitted very well atop the mound of Silbury Hill. As far as we’re aware, Silbury Hill was completed about a century before the sarsen circle at Stonehenge, while the structures are only separated by twenty miles or so. Both are surrounded by large ditches, one of which was certainly a moat, but there are many other similarities, to my mind.
On of the earliest known names for Stonehenge was the ‘Chorea Gigantum’, or Giants’ Dance, and as I pointed out in the previous post, we’ve recently learned not only of possible dancing on the site of Silbury Hill when it was in its earliest stage, but we’ve also learned of a 40 feet high post that could have been a ‘totem pole’ or even a form of Maypole, at a push, erected at roughly the same time. Given the sheer size of this pole and the possibility of what kind of ceremonies the locals may possibly have indulged in to produce the hardened layer that apparently exists beneath Silbury Hill, then the idea of a Giants’ Dance of some kind isn’t completely out of the question.
All of which brings something else to mind, because a month or so ago, Dr Robin Melrose wrote in, saying “I’ve just been puzzling over the following description of Kai (Sir Kay) one of Arthur’s earliest companions, taken from “Culhwch and Olwen” (11th century):
Kai had this peculiarity, that his breath lasted nine nights and nine days under water, and he could exist nine nights and nine days without sleep. A wound from Kai’s sword no physician could heal. Very subtle was Kai. When it pleased him he could render himself as tall as the highest tree in the forest. And he had another peculiarity – so great was the heat of his nature, that, when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand; and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which to light their fire.
I thought he might be a sun god, but when I saw this post about the moon as the Land of the Dead, I wondered if there could be a lunar connection. Do you or anyone else on this site know of any connection between the moon and nine days/nights, or between any heavenly body and the number “nine?”
Again, it’s something I learned a long time ago, but I’ve just remembered that there’s every likelihood that Silbury Hill was once a nine-sided pyramid, an observation you can read for yourselves on this English Heritage link and elsewhere.
Does this have anything to do with Kay? I have no idea, but if anyone else has any thoughts they’d like to share, I’d be interested to hear them, while as I said at the beginning “Imagination takes us to worlds that never were, but without it, we go nowhere.”
One Response to “Silburyhenge”
Care to comment?
Dennis’s “unscientific calculations” seem pretty close to the mark. The BBC text gets itself tied in arithmetic knots, but the 5 million extra cubic feet seems clear enough. As the slope of the sides will almost certainly have stayed constant over the millennia (soil mechanics and Angle of Rest, if I remember correctly) then the linear dimensions will simply scale as the cube root of the increase in volume (+40%), giving around +12%. That means the current diameter of the table top (30m approx) would have scaled up to around 33.5m, which fits Dennis’s theory nicely. (Assuming, of course, that English Heritage’s claim that the top was sliced off for mediaeval fortifications is completely wrong!)
The reference to Sir Kay is puzzling, because the Wikipedia entry speaks of him in very far from flattering terms, with virtually nothing on the Welsh references quoted above. But there is one intriguing sentence: “Kay and Bedivere … aid Arthur in defeating the Giant of Mont Saint Michel.” Maybe it’s just coincidence, but Mont St Michel looks a lot like Silbury Hill and is surrounded by water that ebbs and flows (presumably the Silbury Hill waters used to ebb and flow as they were mainly seasonal). Take a look at the 10th century visualization on the Wikipedia website and click on the image to see the spiral pathways. Looks to me like a larger Silbury.
I’ve stayed overnight on Mont St Michel, and it is undoubtedly a highly charged place that leaves an indelible impression on visitors. I’m sure the same would have been even more true in prehistoric times, and a connection with Silbury doesn’t seem out of the question, especially considering its sheltered position on the coast. There was a well established trade route between the Cherbourg area and St Catherine’s Point on the Isle of Wight (a route that meant navigators need never be out of sight of high land) and thence up the Solent.
The reference to the Giant maybe a coincidence too, but an intriguing one.