Silbury Hill Artificial Mound View all content for Silbury Hill

Hecateus of Abdera, a Greek writer writing in the 4th century BCE, wrote of a large island to the north of Gaul populated by a race called the Hyperboreans. Their chief god was Apollo, and they had a city dedicated to him, with a "remarkable round temple". The large island is thought to be Britain, and the round temple has previously been identified as Stonehenge. However, the Greek word translated as "round" is "sphairoeides" which actually means "spherical" and not round. Geoffrey Ashe in his "Mythology of the British Isles" suggests that the word in question has been misspelled at some point in the past, and originally may have been "speiroeides", meaning "spiral". Ashe discusses the possibility of a "spiral temple" being a labirynth of some kind, or even rock art, but surely there's a chance that Hecateus' "remarkable round temple" - when "spiral" is substituted for "round" - could actually be Silbury Hill, with it's spiral path?

Posted by BigSweetie 1st September 2004ce

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