Re: Possible discovery of Pytheas' Lost City of Apollo near Stonehenge

"Doug Weller" <dweller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:urq4d3pajmrlii0rgvk4qrrcab5cent5po@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 26 Aug 2007 23:14:48 +0100, in sci.archaeology, Douglas Clark
wrote:

"Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthicum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1188066625.354174.67240@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The team painstakingly deciphered the works of an ancient Greek
mariner named Pytheas of Massilia.

Dennis Price explained that Pytheas was known to have visited Britain
in around 325 BC and in his chronicles he wrote of the lost city of
Apollo and a site similar to Stonehenge.

He said: "Just a mile or so to the east of Stonehenge is a gigantic
prehistoric earthwork called Vespasian's Camp, named in later years by
William Camden, after the same Vespasian who subjugated the south west
of England during the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD.

Lost city found at Stonehenge
By Chris Hooper


Could Stonehenge be the site of the lost city of Apollo? DB2685

A RENOWNED archaeologist, who shot to national prominence last year
with his amazing discovery of Stonehenge's lost alter stone by a
roadside in Berwick St James, now claims to have found the famed lost
city of Apollo in the land around Stonehenge.

Dennis Price, who is an expert on the history of Stonehenge and who
used to work with Wessex Archaeology, believes the lost city of Apollo
is located at King's Barrow Ridge, overlooking Stonehenge.

The lost city is believed by many to be mythical but, after working
with language experts at Exeter University, Mr Price is convinced the
city exists and that it is right here on the outskirts of Salisbury.

The team painstakingly deciphered the works of an ancient Greek
mariner named Pytheas of Massilia.

Mr Price explained that Pytheas was known to have visited Britain in
around 325 BC and in his chronicles he wrote of the lost city of
Apollo and a site similar to Stonehenge.

He said: "There is a passage that apparently refers to Stonehenge
which has long fascinated people, but there is also a repeated
reference made to a city sacred to Apollo which has gone completely
unremarked upon."

It was this which first intrigued Mr Price and led him to look a
little harder at Pytheas' text. And this deeper investigation allowed
him to find the exact location of the city.

He said: "Just a mile or so to the east of Stonehenge is a gigantic
prehistoric earthwork called Vespasian's Camp, named in later years by
William Camden, after the same Vespasian who subjugated the south west
of England during the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD.

"It is invariably described as an Iron Age hill fort, yet excavations
there have shown the existence of far earlier Neolithic pits, while
there still exist the remains of early Bronze Age funeral barrows,
showing the site was in use while nearby Stonehenge was being
constructed.

"Vespasian's Camp lies at the bottom of a slope occupied further up by
what is known as the King's Barrow Ridge, overlooking Stonehenge,
while this is further divided into the New King Barrow and Old King
Barrow.

"Vespasian's Camp cannot be seen from Stonehenge, but it lies to the
east of the ruins, in the direction of the rising sun. As Apollo had
largely become thought of as a Sun god by the time Pytheas was
writing, it is an obvious connection.

"Given the huge scale of the earthworks at Vespasian's Camp, it is not
unthinkable that Pytheas may have thought of Troy, another city sacred
to or beloved of Apollo, as some later versions of the stories of this
place speak of Apollo building the walls there along with Poseidon.

"We cannot know precisely how Pytheas came to equate the sanctuary,
the temple and the city with Apollo, but it is not unthinkable that
some future excavation at Stonehenge might provide evidence of this."

For more on this discovery see www.eternalidol.com.

8:40am Friday 24th August 2007
http://www.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1638952.mostviewed.lost_city_found_at_stonehenge.php


Sorry to be so late in posting but I have been lazy in digging out my copy
of Barry Cunliffe's 'The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek'
(Penguin, 2002). In the hardback (2001) he doesnt mention the Temple of
Apollo (or Stonehenge etc) only saying that he must have penetrated inland
on the West Coast . But in the 2002 Postscript he briefly discusses this
temple of Apollo favouring Aubrey Burl's 1993 theory that Pytheas was
talking about Callanish.

For those interested in Pytheas I would recommend Barry Cunliffe's book.


http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba63/column2.shtml

"About four years later, I was reading a book called The Sphinx and the
Megaliths by John Ivimy, who had the belief that Stonehenge was put up by
Egyptian astronomer-priests because they wanted an observatory in a part
of the world with uncluttered skies! Anyway, this book contained a
reference to the 1st century BC Greek writer Diodorus Siculus, who had
described a 'spherical temple' where Apollo (the sun or moon) 'skimmed the
earth at a very low height'. Ivimy assumed that Diodorus was writing about
Stonehenge, referring to an eyewitness report of an explorer who had
actually seen the place.

But as soon as I read about Apollo skimming the earth I knew this couldn't
be Stonehenge, because at Stonehenge's latitude both the sun and the moon
are always very high above the horizon. To see that phenomenon (the moon
or sun hardly rising above the horizon between rising and setting) you
have to go about 500 miles further north, and I wondered if Diodorus might
have been referring to Callanish.

Then Diodorus goes on to say: 'In that temple, at the rising of the
Pleiades, the sun is seen to set at the equinox'. And those two phenomena
do also occur uniquely at Callanish. The ENE stone row at Callanish was in
line with the rising of the Pleiades in the early Bronze Age, and the
western stone row does point towards the setting of the sun at the
equinox. So three independent lines of astronomical evidence point to
Callanish; and that is very convincing.

It is accepted that Diodorus took his information about Britain from the
earlier, lost, writer Hecataeus of Abdera, who himself drew on the lost
writings of the 4th century BC Greek explorer Pytheas. Now what is
remarkable is that by the time Pytheas got to Callanish, the Pleiades
would have risen a few degrees to the north-east of the ENE stone row. The
Pleiades - whose movements can be dated - had risen in alignment with the
row for a few centuries after about 1700 BC (which is presumably when the
row was built), but since then had edged away.

So Pytheas seems to have been reporting a folk memory of the connection
between the circle and the Pleiades that had survived at Callanish for at
least 1,000 years, long after the circle had gone out of use. This may
seem incredible but we know from other societies that oral traditions can
survive for many, many centuries even though their original use has long
since been abandoned."
--
Doug Weller --
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk
Amun - co-owner/co-moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/

Thanks for the Aubrey Burl link.


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