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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
The countries washed by the Mediterranean have necessarily been the great field of research for investigating the remains of the older historic civilizations with which they are strewn; and I cannot doubt that the same shores, which, from their physical peculiarities, have ever been the seat of a large and active population, retain still for us most significant illustrations of that early substratum, the pre-classical culture, the widely spread relics of which are the elements of our primeval archaeology. To some of those elements I have on other occasions adverted; and here I propose chiefly to direct attention to another—a very remarkable group of cromlechs in Algeria, which I have had recently an opportunity of visiting and examining.
page 253 note a As I write of remains on French territory, it may be well to state that I do not use the word cromlech as applied in France, but according to its signification in England, where it designates that which the French call a dolmen, namely, a flat slab raised as a table, so to say, upon other stones set on edge. It is scarcely necessary to add that, according to French nomenclature, a cromlech means a circle of upright stones with or without another ortholith in the centre.
page 255 note a This portion of a calvarium is the upper part of the brain-case, and consists of the two parietal bones, one temporal, the frontal as far as the superciliary ridges, and the occipital to near the foramen magnum. It has belonged to a man, and, as the sutures are almost wholly effaced both inside and out, of probably sixty or more years of age. Although this calvarium is rather thick, it is not remarkably so. It does not present the long narrow Negro form, but when viewed vertically is ovoid and pretty regularly so. It therefore belongs to the so-called Caucasian series. The measurements, as far as they can be obtained, are: circumference 20-8 inches; occipito-frontal diameter 7·3 inches; oceipito-frontal arch, from the broken edge of the frontal to the foramen magnum, 12·8 inches; interparietal diameter, taken at the parietal bosses, 5.5 inches; and the arch from the edge of one parietal, across the bosses, to that of the other 10·7 in. [J. B. D.]
page 255 note b For this I was indebted to M. Berbrugger, the conservateur of the Museum, whose numerous works and papers, chiefly on the Koman remains in Algeria, testify his diligence and research.
page 256 note a Worsaae's Afbildninger fra det Museum i Kjb'benhavn, p. 44.
page 256 note b They are to be seen in most Etruscan collections; and faithful representations, chiefly of the more elaborate, may be found in the illustrations of the Museo Gregoriano.-Part 1, Tav. Ixxvii. et seq.
page 256 note c A few of the most finished are engraved in the work entitled Piccoli Bronzi del Museo Borbonico da Carlo Ceci; but there are numerous others, simpler and coarser.
page 256 note d Vol. ii. p. 485.
page 257 note a Urquhart's Pillars of Hercules, and Brooke's Spain and Morocco, ii. 36.
page 257 note b Revue Africaine, vol. i. p. 29.
page 257 note c There are several maps of Algeria which may be referred to for its topography: the one I have before me I find the best, being that executed on a large scale, under the direction of the well-known authority on matters Algerian, General Daumas, and affixed to the Report of the Ministère de la Guerre, viz.: Tableau de la Situation des Etablissements Français de l'Algérie, issued in 1857Google Scholar.
page 257 note d Revue Africaine, vol. i. p. 147.
page 258 note a I have referred to these remains, and the sources of information regarding them in the Archæological Journal, vol. xiii. p. 397.
page 258 note b It is also worth noting here, that M. Mérimée describes a cromlech in Corsica with a small trench or channel (rigole évidemment travaillée de main d'homme) in the upper stone.- Voyage en Corse, p. 27. Paris, 1840Google Scholar. The existence of these troughs tends to confirm the artificial character of some of the so-called Eock Basins observed in connection with ancient remains in Britain. See the careful discussion as to those on Dartmoor by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in the Journal of the British Archæcological Association, vol. xvi.
page 258 note c Shaw's Travels in Barbary, vol. i. p. 64.
page 259 note a Revue Africaine, vol. i. p. 29, et ibid. p. 138.
page 259 note b Revue Africaine, i. 29, note. I have just learned (October 1860) the existence of one or more cromlechs in Kabylia, which has been but recently brought under French rule. See Revue Africaine, No. 23.
page 259 note c Annuaire de la Société Archéologique de la Province de Constantine. Année 1853, p. 14Google Scholar.
page 259 note d Shaw, Travels in Barbary, i. 286.
page 260 note a Or perhaps the myth is in some way connected with one of those singularly perfect Roman towns, such as exist in the inland territory behind Tunis, and which a friend who made an enterprising expedition, there has described to me as in marvellous preservation. These petrefactive metamorphoses are, however, common beliefs among Arabs. See an instance in Belzoni's Narrative, p. 43.
page 260 note b Barth's Travels in Africa, vol. i. 58-62.
page 261 note a Revue Africaine, vol. i. p. 138.
page 261 note b Barbier, , Itineraire de l'Algerie, p. 107Google Scholar.
page 262 note a As to the character of the ruder stone monuments of the latter which are less known, see Le Perou avant la Conquête Espagnole; by Desjardins, E.. Paris, 1858, p. 131Google Scholar.
page 263 note a See, for example, Strabo's discussion on the Cabiri, those very prominent divinities in the Phœnician Mythology, lib. x.
page 263 note b Joshua viii. 31; also, Exodus xx. 25; and Deuteronomy xxvii. 5.
page 263 note c This was not, probably, a barbarous fetishism, as indeed what little we know of Phoenician cultus would serve to indicate. Compare the Peruvian worship of stones at Cuzeo, which coexisted with what i s stated to have been the rendering of homage to an immaterial divinity: “Honorait-on (les pierres) comme des souvenirs, loin de les adorer comme des Dieux.”—Desjardins, , Le Perou avant la Conquête, p. 101Google Scholar.
page 263 note d Baron Alexander von Humboldt has incidentally referred to Bsetylia, as forming “an important part of the meteor worship of the ancients.” (Cosmos. Sabine's ed. vol. i. p. 125.) And the marvellous accuracy in almost illimitable details which that illustrious philosopher evinces in his last great work may well beget hesitation in supposing that any of his statements of fact are not substantially founded. It is true that among the Phoenicians Boetylia appear to have been held as sacred stones which had come from heaven (Münter, , Religion der Karthager, 119et passim). Whether they were actual aerolites, and first worshipped because thus seemingly divine emanations, or whether in their character of dwelling-place of God a divine origin was ascribed to them, is by no means plain. But to assume the former and apply this idea universally as explanatory of the primitive conception which led for instance to the religious use of unhewn stones among the Jews, as at Bethel, and in the construction of the altar, and inferentially among the Semitic Phoenicians, would involve casuistical reasoning not to be readily admitted in such investigations, as requiring the argument to lead up to a supposititiously pre-existing but forgotten esoteric conception, of which even the special external symbol (of all things in matters religious apt to be the most permanent), the meteoric stone, had ceased to be a necessary adjunctGoogle Scholar.
page 264 note a It is remarkable that yet another branch of the Semitic race has and retains to this day a relic of this early reverence, and under the very same name. The goal of Mohammedan pilgrimage, the Kaaba at Mecca, which covers the sacred stone, is known as Beit Allah, the House of God.-Travels of Ali Bey (Burckhardt), vol. ii. 50.
page 264 note b See Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 272. A very interesting sketch of a cromlech near Gadara, east of the Jordan, is now in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, having been presented by Mr. Eobertson Blaine. See Proceedings, 1st Series, vol. iv. p. 308.
page 264 note c Another has recently arrived in England; and from Mr. Davis' researches at Carthage some few probable traces of old, though not the oldest, time have appeared.
page 265 note a M. Pulszky, in Nott and Gliddon's Indigenous Eaces of the Earth, p. 135, et seq.
page 265 note b See those referred to in Birch's elaborate History of Ancient Pottery, vol. i. p. 154.
page 266 note a Josephus, Antiq. viii. 2, quoting Menander and Dius, and apud eund. Cont. Apion, lib. ii. cited in Ancient Universal History, vol. ii. 5. Compare Silius Italicus, lib. iii.
page 266 note b 2 Chronicles ii. 7.
page 266 note c Herodotus (ii. 86) and Diodorus mention the fact; and specimens of the knives have been found. Compare the similar religious use of a stone knife retained by the Jews in the rite of circumcision: and another curious instance existed in Peru, where a knife of silex was used to cut the hair of the heir to the throne of the Incas, at the ceremony of his being weaned.
page 266 note d Ezekiel, xxxii. 23.
page 267 note a See view in Allen's Dead Sea.
page 267 note b Stanley (Sinai and Palestine, p. 272), who cursorily alludes to this monument, adds with unsatisfactory brevity: “there are other broken stones in the neighbourhood.” It is greatly to be regretted that, so far I know, it is impossible to find anything like a detailed account of the monuments in Phoenicia. I have often examined many books of travels with a very intangible result in this respect. Those who have treated of matters specially Phoenician would seem to have had no greater success; and there is no adequate information on this point to be found for example in Mover's laborious work Die Phonizer, which has not yet, however, reached the strictly Archæological branch of the subject; or in Gerhardt's Die Kunst der Phonizer (Abhand. der Konig. Akad. zu Berlin, 1846), where monuments of more than doubtful ascription, and in other countries than Phoenicia, are mostly dealt with; or in Kenrick's careful volume, Phoenicia, whose Archæological data are indeed chiefly derived from the two works which have just been named.
I regret that, when in those parts about three years ago, an insurrection at Nablous, and other circumstances, prevented my reaohing that portion of Palestine. I was once not without hopes of finding a future opportunity; but I venture to suggest to those who may have it in their power, that a search, not only in Phoenicia, but elsewhere in Syria, not only for megalithic, but all other primitive vestiges, and careful descriptions of them, would be of very great interest and use.
page 268 note a Blakesley's Four Months in Algeria, p. 407.
page 268 note b See Histoire de l'Academie des Inscriptions, vol. xlii. pp. 55, 87.
page 268 note c See brochure, Vassallo's, Monumenti Antichi nel Gr'uppo di MaltaGoogle Scholar.
page 269 note a Such as are skilfully developed in Worsaae's Zur Alterihumskunde des Nordens; and in his brochure, Die Nationale Alterihumskunde in Deutschland.
page 270 note a See Marmora's, De laLe Isole Baleare, and Voyage en Sardaigne, passimGoogle Scholar.
page 270 note b Memoria sobre el Templo Druida hallado en las cercanias de la ciudad de Antequera, by Mitjana, Don Rafael. Málaga, 1847Google Scholar.