Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race Part 4

Photograph by R. Welch, Belfast

*The Ship Symbol at New Grange*

Another remarkable and, as far as Ireland goes, unusual figure is found sculptured in the west recess at New Grange. It has been interpreted by various critics as a masons mark, a piece of Phoenician writing, a group of numerals, and finally (and no doubt correctly) by Mr. George Coffey as a rude representation of a ship with men on board and uplifted sail. It is noticeable that just above it is a small circle, forming, apparently, part of the design. Another example occurs at Dowth.

[Solar Ship (with Sail?) from New Grange, Ireland]

Solar Ship (with Sail?) from New Grange, Ireland

The significance of this marking, as we shall see, is possibly very great.

It has been discovered that on certain stones in the tumulus of Locmariaker, in Brittany,(47) there occur a number of very similar figures, one of them showing the circle in much the same relative position as at New Grange. The axe, an Egyptian hieroglyph for G.o.dhead and a well-known magical emblem, is also represented on this stone. Again, in a brochure by Dr. Oscar Montelius on the rock-sculptures of Sweden(48) we find a reproduction (also given in Du Chaillus Viking Age) of a rude rock-carving showing a number of ships with men on board, and the circle quartered by a crossunmistakably a solar emblemjust above one of them.

That these ships (which, like the Irish example, are often so summarily represented as to be mere symbols which no one could identifiy as a ship were the clue not given by other and more elaborate representations) were drawn so frequently in conjunction with the solar disk merely for amus.e.m.e.nt or for a purely decorative object seems to me most improbable.

In the days of the megalithic folk a sepulchral monument, the very focus of religious ideas, would hardly have been covered with idle and meaningless scrawls. Man, as Sir J. Simpson has well said, has ever conjoined together things sacred and things sepulchral. Nor do these scrawls, in the majority of instances, show any glimmering of a decorative intention. But if they had a symbolic intention, what is it that they symbolise?

[Solar Ship from Loc mariaker, Brittany]

Solar Ship from Loc mariaker, Brittany

(_After Ferguson_)

[Solar Ship from Hallande, Sweden]

Solar Ship from Hallande, Sweden

(_After Montelius_)

*The Ship Symbol in Egypt*

Now this symbol of the ship, with or without the actual portrayal of the solar emblem, is of very ancient and very common occurrence in the sepulchral art of Egypt. It is connected with the worship of Ra, which came in fully 4000 years B.C. Its meaning as an Egyptian symbol is well known. The ship was called the Boat of the Sun. It was the vessel in which the Sun-G.o.d performed his journeys; in particular, the journey which he made nightly to the sh.o.r.es of the Other-world, bearing with him in his bark the souls of the beatified dead. The Sun-G.o.d, Ra, is sometimes represented by a disk, sometimes by other emblems, hovering above the vessel or contained within it. Any one who will look over the painted or sculptured sarcophagi in the British Museum will find a host of examples.

Sometimes he will find representations of the life-giving rays of Ra pouring down upon the boat and its occupants. Now, in one of the Swedish rock-carvings of ships at Backa, Bohusln, given by Montelius, a ship crowded with figures is shown beneath a disk with three descending rays, and again another ship with a two-rayed sun above it. It may be added that in the tumulus of Dowth, which is close to that of New Grange and is entirely of the same character and period, rayed figures and quartered circles, obviously solar emblems, occur abundantly, as also at Loughcrew and other places in Ireland, and one other ship figure has been identified at Dowth

[Egyptian Solar Bark, XXII Dynasty]

Egyptian Solar Bark, XXII Dynasty

(_British Museum_)

[Egyptian Solar Bark, with G.o.d Khnemu and attendant deities]

Egyptian Solar Bark, with G.o.d Khnemu and attendant deities

(_British Museum_)

In Egypt the solar boat is sometimes represented as containing the solar emblem alone, sometimes it contains the figure of a G.o.d with attendant deities, sometimes it contains a crowd of pa.s.sengers representing human souls, and sometimes the figure of a single corpse on a bier. The megalithic carvings also sometimes show the solar emblem and sometimes not; the boats are sometimes filled with figures and are sometimes empty.

When a symbol has once been accepted and understood, any conventional or summary representation of it is sufficient. I take it that the complete form of the megalithic symbol is that of a boat with figures in it and with the solar emblem overhead. These figures, a.s.suming the foregoing interpretation of the design to be correct, must clearly be taken for representations of the dead on their way to the Other-world. They cannot be deities, for representations of the divine powers under human aspect were quite unknown to the Megalithic People, even after the coming of the Celtsthey first occur in Gaul under Roman influence. But if these figures represent the dead, then we have clearly before us the origin of the so-called Celtic doctrine of immortality. The carvings in question are pre-Celtic. They are found where no Celts ever penetrated. Yet they point to the existence of just that Other-world doctrine which, from the time of Csar downwards, has been a.s.sociated with Celtic Druidism, and this doctrine was distinctively Egyptian.

[Egyptian Bark, with figure of Ra holding an Ankh, enclosed in Solar Disk.

XIX Dynasty]

Egyptian Bark, with figure of Ra holding an _Ankh_, enclosed in Solar Disk. XIX Dynasty

(_British Museum_)

*The ****Navetas***

In connexion with this subject I may draw attention to the theory of Mr.

W.C. Borlase that the typical design of an Irish dolmen was intended to represent a ship. In Minorca there are a.n.a.logous structures, there popularly called _navetas_ (ships), so distinct is the resemblance. But, he adds, long before the caves and _navetas_ of Minorca were known to me I had formed the opinion that what I have so frequently spoken of as the wedge-shape observable so universally in the ground-plans of dolmens was due to an original conception of a ship. From sepulchral tumuli in Scandinavia we know actual vessels have on several occasions been disinterred. In cemeteries of the Iron Age, in the same country, as well as on the more southern Baltic coasts, the ship was a recognised form of sepulchral enclosure.(49) If Mr. Borlases view is correct, we have here a very strong corroboration of the symbolic intention which I attribute to the solar ship-carvings of the Megalithic People.

*The Ship Symbol in Babylonia*

The ship symbol, it may be remarked, can be traced to about 4000 B.C. in Babylonia, where every deity had his own special ship (that of the G.o.d Sin was called the Ship of Light), his image being carried in procession on a litter formed like a ship. This is thought by Jastrow(50) to have originated at a time when the sacred cities of Babylonia were situated on the Persian Gulf, and when religious processions were often carried out by water.

*The Symbol of the Feet*

Yet there is reason to think that some of these symbols were earlier than any known mythology, and were, so to say, mythologised differently by different peoples, who got hold of them from this now unknown source. A remarkable instance is that of the symbol of the Two Feet. In Egypt the Feet of Osiris formed one of the portions into which his body was cut up, in the well-known myth. They were a symbol of possession or of visitation.

I have come upon earth, says the Book of the Dead (ch. xvii.), and with my two feet have taken possession, I am Tmu. Now this symbol of the feet or footprint is very widespread. It is found in India, as the print of the foot of Buddha,(51) it is found sculptured on dolmens in Brittany,(52) and it occurs in rock-carvings in Scandinavia.(53) In Ireland it pa.s.ses for the footprints of St. Patrick or St. Columba.

Strangest of all, it is found unmistakably in Mexico.(54) Tyler, in his Primitive Culture (ii. p. 197) refers to the Aztec ceremony at the Second Festival of the Sun G.o.d, Tezcatlipoca, when they sprinkled maize flour before his sanctuary, and his high priest watched till he beheld the divine footprints, and then shouted to announce, Our Great G.o.d is come.

[The Two Feet Symbol]

The Two Feet Symbol

*The *_Ankh_* on Megalithic Carvings*

There is very strong evidence of the connexion of the Megalithic People with North Africa. Thus, as Sergi points out, many signs (probably numerical) found on ivory tablets in the cemetery at Naqada discovered by Flinders Petrie are to be met with on European dolmens. Several later Egyptian hieroglyphic signs, including the famous _Ankh_, or _crux ansata_, the symbol of vitality or resurrection, are also found in megalithic carvings.(55) From these correspondences Letourneau drew the conclusion that the builders of our megalithic monuments came from the South, and were related to the races of North Africa.(56)

[The Ankh]

The _Ankh_

*Evidence from Language*

Approaching the subject from the linguistic side, Rhys and Brynmor Jones find that the African originat least proximatelyof the primitive population of Great Britain and Ireland is strongly suggested. It is here shown that the Celtic languages preserve in their syntax the Hamitic, and especially the Egyptian type.(57)

*Egyptian and ****Celtic**** Ideas of Immortality*

The facts at present known do not, I think, justify us in framing any theory as to the actual historical relation of the dolmen-builders of Western Europe with the people who created the wonderful religion and civilisation of ancient Egypt. But when we consider all the lines of evidence that converge in this direction it seems clear that there was such a relation. Egypt was the cla.s.sic land of religious symbolism. It gave to Europe the most beautiful and most popular of all its religious symbols, that of the divine mother and child(58). I believe that it also gave to the primitive inhabitants of Western Europe the profound symbol of the voyaging spirits guided to the world of the dead by the G.o.d of Light.

The religion of Egypt, above that of any people whose ideas we know to have been developed in times so ancient, centred on the doctrine of a future life. The palatial and stupendous tombs, the elaborate ritual, the imposing mythology, the immense exaltation of the priestly caste, all these features of Egyptian culture were intimately connected with their doctrine of the immortality of the soul.