EGYPTIAN ORIGIN

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 105, 27 January 1933, Page 3

EGYPTIAN ORIGIN

Builders of Stonehenge THEORY BY SCHOLAR Startling New Explanation The famous archaeologist and Biblical scholar, Dr. Rendel Harris, lecturing recently in England, propounded a startling new explanation of , Stonehenge, the age-long mystery of Salisbury Plain. It was built, he says, by the Egyptians, 1800 to 2000 years before Christ, for the joint worship of t he Sun. and of the Dead. Accepting the popular chronology of the Bible. Jacob built Bethel about the same time. It is a second Abydos. Abydos was the great Egyptian sanctuary of the dead and, after Thebes, was the most important town in the ancient kingdom of Upper Egypt, Its architect and builder was probably named Meri-An, meaning the Beloved of Osiris, who is no other than Merlin, the wizard of Arthurian legend.

Going even further than this last fascinating statement, Dr. Harris says that King Arthur himself, hero of mythological romance, was either Osiris (the Egyptian god of the dead) or someone whose story has I wen coloured by the Osiris legends ; while Arthur's beautiful queen, Guinevere, was really Isis, queen of the gods of Egypt. Close to Stonehenge lie two mysterious'barrows. known as Robin Hood and Robin Hood's Ball. What are they doing on the . Wiltshire Downs, beside these tremendous standing stones? If rightly named, their proper home, as Dr. Harris says, is in Sherwood Forest.

But write Ra-Bennu for Robin Hood, and we shall have the Sun-God and the Sun-Bird of Egypt. Ra was the Sun-God. Bennu, the Phoenix (from which England’s Robin is derived), was the herald of the rising sun, and was also the living symbol of Osiris, the god of the dead., - Brought by Giants.

The Egyptian myth declared that the morning sun (and Stonehenge has long been regarded as a solar temple, witness the Midsummer Day observations there) rose in tile form of a Bennu, and Sir Ernest Wallis Budge, the great Egyptologist, declared that the sanctuary of the Bennu was the sanctuary of Ra and Osiris. This is one of the keystones in the extraordinarily interesting structure which* Dr.: Harris has built up. He produces arguments, mostly in the form of place names, to show that the Egyptians had colonies in England —in Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset. Then he quotes the assertion of Geoffrey of Monmouth that tbe stones of Stonehenge were brought , from Ireland by Merlin, the wizard, having previously been brought to Ireland by giant colonists from ‘‘the farthest coast of Africa.” Prescell.v, in Pembrokeshire, whence , archaeologists say they came, was only an intermediate stage in their transportation. • ~ Egyptian Sanctuaries. Five Egyptian sanctuaries, more or less closely linked together, says Dr. Harris, have recently been discovered in England, , . . Among them are St. Knighton’s Kieve, near Tintagel, Cornwall, St. Nectan’s Church. South Cornwall, and St. Veep’s, on tbe east side of the Fowey. Veep, he says, is Wip. or Anubis, tbe dogdieaded attendant of Osiris. Due north of Stonehenge lies Knighton Down, and among its Long Barrows is one known as Doghill Barrow. Evidently, says Dr. Harris, it is "significant of the presence of the faithful Dog, companion of Osiris and the Opener of the Way to his Kingdom.” .Chis phrase Opener of the Way is peculiarly interesting. Wip means opener, and in a longer form is written Wip-Wat, the opener of the way. Dr. Harris finds Wip, as be does Nectan or Knighton, in all sorts of places, most particularly at Ebbsfleet, in Kent, which place, he points out, was formerly spelt Wipjiedsfleet. Ebbsfleet, or Wippedsfleet, was the entrance to Watling Street. Watling Street is the equivalent of an inland waterway along which souls were believed to make tbeir pilgrimage to the Islands' of tbe Blest and the Kingdom of Osiris. And Ebbsfleet was the Opening of the Way, for Winped is Anubis the Dog (liis very name preserved for us to-day in the racing “whippet”), A Central Chapel. Supported by q great volume of etymological evidence, Dr. Harris imparts his-belief that these Egyptians whom he brings to England’s coasts erectedStonehenge under the direction of a master-mind such as could not suddenly have arisen among the ancient Britons. . - At Amesbury, near Stonehenge, be tracks his Meri-An down. Meri-An, or Merlin, he tells us, is Melian, Duke of Cornwall, father of Meldr, or Melior. Amesbury’s patron saint. Amesbury was a centre of Egyptian religion. The student is made to . see, in this •■second Abydos’’ of Stonehenge, a place where two religions lines of thought were amalgamated, representing the two Egyptian ways of expounding the doctrine of immortality and ’ the life after death.