Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/106

84 after historical times, and indicated in the similitude of the New Jerusalem, too. Sometimes these figures are signified visibly; at others by number; and it may be mentioned that in the Oracle of old, not only the cube was obviously specified, but in the walls, too, the squaring-of-the-circle ratio very secretly enshrined. This was the glory of all, and the Jewish Shechinah, containing its Palladium or Coffer, and here, then, square and circle were combined indeed.

Secondly, Schick describes a strange round enclosure—very near Conder's "Holy Sepulchre"—which he has discovered by digging, of which the wall is elegant, and built in a very unusual manner, and the floor of which is rock. He shows that it was evidently not a reservoir, and most probably not a theatre, and, in fine, that it never bore a roof. And, to his surprise, it seems to have had nothing in the centre. He is fain, then, though in perplexity, to conclude it was most likely the base of a tower. If so, certainly we might expect parts of the wall to be higher than the rest, and the top level of it broken; but, as I understand, any irregularity in it is only what the uneven floor level required.

Now, may it not be that we have here a primæval temple of Jebusites, being a simple circle of vast antiquity, open to the heavens? Such would be identical with the Druidical circle, and is the original Llan. For this word (so constant in topography), the old and proper Welsh for a church, means a circle—showing how, originally, the Gorsedd of Druidism was a place of true worship; and it must be noted how no idol has ever been found in our ancient British religion. The same Circle is to be seen in other parts of the globe, and even in remote Polynesia, showing how very primitive was its source, in that it had thus extended throughout the world.

In Christendom there are a few instances of round temples—especially the "Temple Church," in London, named from that of Jerusalem; and the unexplained Round Towers of Ireland, open to the sky, I submit, may be of the same origin, especially as the ancient race that built and used them was Phœnician or Canaanite.

I would also refer to the figures of serpents the same explorer describes and delineates, and which he tells us are all of the same shape, though several and of different sizes. He says (p. 297, October Quarterly Statement, 1893) they all have two long ears and a beak—most strange adjuncts to a serpent, and which he is evidently at a loss to explain. He remarks, however, justly, that such figures "must have had some deep meaning."

The head he calls a dragon's; but surely we are better warranted in calling it a bird's?—while the drop(?) it holds in the eagle-bill suggests exactly a seed in a bird's beak just taken up. The ears may then seem anomalous, and, in fact, to demand the supposition of a horse. Is not the head which he figures one between a horse's and a bird's?

A precious antiquity in our own country may, I venture to think,