Chapter 25: The White Cow
The stone lay prone on the grass beside the hole that the next day would house it. It had been scrubbed clean of the dirt that had enclosed it for nearly half a millennia, buried by pious men seeking to undo the work of the devil; now, it had once more been brought to the light of day, and its original socket excavated. Beside it lay piles of large wooden poles and ropes with which it would be levered into place.
Sir Flinders Petrie cast a cold eye on the scene; crude stone and mud and damp; he shivered and pined for his home in Jerusalem. At least there’s no sand, he thought – recalling his own excavations in Egypt; sand that covered everything, got into your eyes, your hair, the food you were eating; and the infernal heat – but the stuff they had dug up – finely carved stone, bearing hieroglyphs, so much more advanced than this primitive temple, here on the remotest edge of the civilised world. And that idiot Keiller jumping around like an excited puppy; how could he get so excited about such a barbarian edifice? All his hangers on, jumping at his every word simply because he is rich. This one, though, he thought, isn’t impressed by him, this sallow-faced small man, Tolkien, I think he said his name was.
Tolkien too had approached the stone, and laid a small hand on the brushed sarsen. He turned to Petrie, coughed, and began to mumble.
‘If you’ll excuse me, am I to understand that you excavated Silbury at some time in the past?’
Petrie nodded, and stroked his beard.
‘Indeed. In the hope of finding a tomb or such-like inside, but all we chanced upon was dirt.’
Tolkien hesitated before answering.
‘It’s a strange thing; the hill, I mean. Strange they should build something so immense and yet, empty…’
‘My thoughts exactly; I had, of course, dug many pyramids in Egypt before coming here, and crude though it was, I thought perhaps we might find that it was built in imitation of such colossal tombs… even that an emissary from the east had come and died here. But we are supposing a grandeur that simply was not present. The people who built these monuments were not civilized in the way you or I think of the Ancient Egyptians, for instance. No Cheops resides in Silbury Hill because, alas, these barbarians possessed no Cheops…’
Tolkien sniffed against the cooling late afternoon. And yet they possessed the wherewithal to build this immense circle, he thought, ‘Maybe civilization is not to be rated by its physical works, but by its artistic achievements, its stories, its myths…’
‘Yes, but where are the myths of the people that built this circle or the hill?’ Petrie scoffed. ‘Where is the artistry in these rude blocks of unworked stone, say, in comparison to the art of Egypt, to the temples of finely worked columns bearing inscriptions to the gods? No! Civilization was brought to such places at a later date… Egypt included – you think the height of pharaonic art the work of such primitives? No – they were brought in from outside.’
‘Egyptian civilization was foreign, not indigenous?’
‘Of course! Nothing of worth could have emerged from Black Africa; its peoples are lazy, primitive – no we are seeing the importation of civilization from further north, from Europe…what of worth ever came out of Africa?’
Tolkien reddened and bit his tongue. I came out of Africa, he thought, thinking of his first few years of life in Bloemfontein. Absolute poppycock! This was the sort of idea now breeding war in Europe, he thought angrily.
‘There’s a grandeur in Egyptian civilization that is absent from the primitive mind,’ Petrie was continuing, ‘and clearly has origins elsewhere. Do you imagine the shaven-headed priests watching for the rising of Sirius over their sublime temples to be on par with tribesmen living in their mud-huts as they still do today?’
‘Sirius?’
‘Sirius, yes, Sopdet, in the Egyptian tongue – there is one fact that stands out above all else – their astronomical sophistication; their reckoning of the year based on an accurately observed event…where is the accuracy here?!’ he scoffed, waving his stick around him. ‘Yet in Egypt, pin-point precision…’
‘Pray, go on…’
‘The Egyptian year began with the helical rising of Sirius, that is its first appearance in the sky after disappearing from view for some 70 days. This event was of acute importance as it heralded the flooding of the Nile.’
Tolkien forgot Petrie’s racism for a moment as these facts sank in. Sirius…the dog star… and the flood…. He thought of Boann and the flood that created the Boyne…of her dog, Dabilla, who drowned with the goddess, whose path across the sky was obviously a reflection of the river on earth.
Should I tell him, he wondered, that elements of his precious Egyptian myth are also found amongst such ‘primitives’ of prehistoric Britain?
‘And so, they built their temples oriented to the exact point of the rising of this star on that date…’ Petrie continued, ‘the herald of the Nile flood…which they saw represented in heaven as the Milky Way… beside which Sopdet majestically resides.’
‘And how was this Sop…?’
‘…Sopdet…’
‘Sopdet, depicted – a dog?’
Petrie chuckled. ‘A dog! No. Canis Major is the Roman name for the constellation. Sopdet, my good man, was depicted either as a female figure, usually interpreted as the goddess Isis, and otherwise a couchant white cow in a boat, such as depicted famously at Denderah.’
White cow… Boannd; Good Lord! Tolkien thought; as if the dog-star and flood wasn’t enough, here we find the Lady herself.
(author’s note: it wasn’t for another three decades after this event that archaeologists discovered Boann’s ‘dwelling’, the passage-grave of Newgrange, known in Irish as Bru na Boinne, ‘womb of the white cow’, was aligned on the winter solstice sunrise and the rising of Sirius – this would have been even more ammunition for Tolkien…as would the date - most of these British sites pre-dated the Pyramids; West Kennet predated them by 1100 years...)
‘Interesting; white cow…’ he said, trying to prod Petrie for more information. ‘What would be the connection between the cow and the stars, then, I wonder?’
‘The cow is a very important symbolic image in Egypt, and often associated with the sky; Isis, I have mentioned; the goddess Nut, who is the Goddess of the Milky Way, is also often depicted as a cow stretched out over the heavens with stars along her belly, or with each of her feet in the four corners of the sky… or there is the Goddess Hat-Hor, they are all related, Hat-hor appears with cow's ears and horns, and is probably the cow-goddess Ashtaroth or Istar of Asia; she swallows the sun each night and gives birth to it each morning at daw; her very name means ‘house of Horus’, that is House of the Sun, roughly speaking; what else is the sky but this, a house for the sun?’ he said, the corner of his mouth curling, enjoying his own deduction.
At mention of the sun he turned his sun-brown face heavenwards, frowning at the pale disc that still offered little warmth through the mist that still clung to the circle and river valley.
‘… and so,’ Tolkien asked, trying to keep composed, ‘as you had hoped to find evidence that Silbury had some connection to Egypt, how would you have felt if there had been survivals of myth here, and you had been able to link these sites here with, say, the flooding of a river, and a white cow, linked to the Milky Way and Sirius?’
‘My good man, I would have felt justified in my assumptions, and it would have been of unprecedented importance in my theory that culture had been spread wide by what I term the ‘Dynastic race’! But there is no such link. No such myth. No Pharaoh, I fear, lies in state in Silbury awaiting discovery, for all the tales of gold-clad kings buried within – though I continue to hope. And for all Keiller’s enthusiasm over this crude circle, this is a site of little importance in the history of western civilization… granted it is of local interest, but compared to Neqada, or Abydos or Tanis… ’ he grimly shook his head. ‘They couldn’t even align it properly north!’ he laughed, ‘it is skewed, as one might expect of such primitive work.’
Tolkien did his best not to smile as he bade Petrie adieu and shuffled away to re-join Lewis and Barfield.
‘Tell me, Jack’ he said ‘is it wrong to withhold what one believes to be a fact of great importance if one believes that fact will be misused by the recipient?’
Jack shrugged and coughed.
‘I don’t know, and I don’t feel well enough to really think about it either. It’s grown very cold and I think I may have to repair to bed; my throat is agony!’
Barfield looked over at Petrie and smiled.
‘I take it you mean your discoveries about the Kennet?’
‘Indeed. I fear they would be used in this instance to justify a rather racist and inaccurate interpretation of the site.’
‘Then I would say you are at liberty to remain silent.’ He clapped Tolkien on the back, but Tolkien’s frown remained.
Walking a few yards behind Lewis, Barfield turned to Tolkien with a look of concern on his face.
‘What is it, Ronald? Did what he say bother you that much?’
Tolkien shook his head. ‘No, foolish opinions don’t bother me; it’s just I was thinking of my work… you remember a little while ago when I read my Earendil poem at the Inklings?’
Barfield nodded.
‘And how I said it was an explanation of the appearance of a certain star – and how he came as a herald of a new birth to come, of hope after the flood…’
‘Yes, I recall that…the flood that drowned Numenor.’
Tolkien didn’t continue; he paused and prodded the ground before him with his walking stick
‘Ronald?’
‘It’s…it’s just… what when something you tell yourself is just a product of your imaginings…. rests on foundations…or seems to…’ he cleared his throat;
‘what if you were to invent a story only to discover it’s been told before, long ago, and not just once, but many times… what does that say about the source of your creativity, of the story? I mean it’s not exact – but the themes – the flood, the herald in the form of the star… even the star as a mariner…what if it’s not so much invention as uncovering, or remembering? Somehow hearing the distant echo of some ancestral voice?’
And Barfield suddenly understood Tolkien’s fraught expression was not so much that of concern but of bemused shock.
‘And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far; Ancestral voices prophesying war! Barfield said.
‘I think I need a pipe!’ Tolkien said., 'and a beer.'
The stone lay prone on the grass beside the hole that the next day would house it. It had been scrubbed clean of the dirt that had enclosed it for nearly half a millennia, buried by pious men seeking to undo the work of the devil; now, it had once more been brought to the light of day, and its original socket excavated. Beside it lay piles of large wooden poles and ropes with which it would be levered into place.
Sir Flinders Petrie cast a cold eye on the scene; crude stone and mud and damp; he shivered and pined for his home in Jerusalem. At least there’s no sand, he thought – recalling his own excavations in Egypt; sand that covered everything, got into your eyes, your hair, the food you were eating; and the infernal heat – but the stuff they had dug up – finely carved stone, bearing hieroglyphs, so much more advanced than this primitive temple, here on the remotest edge of the civilised world. And that idiot Keiller jumping around like an excited puppy; how could he get so excited about such a barbarian edifice? All his hangers on, jumping at his every word simply because he is rich. This one, though, he thought, isn’t impressed by him, this sallow-faced small man, Tolkien, I think he said his name was.
Tolkien too had approached the stone, and laid a small hand on the brushed sarsen. He turned to Petrie, coughed, and began to mumble.
‘If you’ll excuse me, am I to understand that you excavated Silbury at some time in the past?’
Petrie nodded, and stroked his beard.
‘Indeed. In the hope of finding a tomb or such-like inside, but all we chanced upon was dirt.’
Tolkien hesitated before answering.
‘It’s a strange thing; the hill, I mean. Strange they should build something so immense and yet, empty…’
‘My thoughts exactly; I had, of course, dug many pyramids in Egypt before coming here, and crude though it was, I thought perhaps we might find that it was built in imitation of such colossal tombs… even that an emissary from the east had come and died here. But we are supposing a grandeur that simply was not present. The people who built these monuments were not civilized in the way you or I think of the Ancient Egyptians, for instance. No Cheops resides in Silbury Hill because, alas, these barbarians possessed no Cheops…’
Tolkien sniffed against the cooling late afternoon. And yet they possessed the wherewithal to build this immense circle, he thought, ‘Maybe civilization is not to be rated by its physical works, but by its artistic achievements, its stories, its myths…’
‘Yes, but where are the myths of the people that built this circle or the hill?’ Petrie scoffed. ‘Where is the artistry in these rude blocks of unworked stone, say, in comparison to the art of Egypt, to the temples of finely worked columns bearing inscriptions to the gods? No! Civilization was brought to such places at a later date… Egypt included – you think the height of pharaonic art the work of such primitives? No – they were brought in from outside.’
‘Egyptian civilization was foreign, not indigenous?’
‘Of course! Nothing of worth could have emerged from Black Africa; its peoples are lazy, primitive – no we are seeing the importation of civilization from further north, from Europe…what of worth ever came out of Africa?’
Tolkien reddened and bit his tongue. I came out of Africa, he thought, thinking of his first few years of life in Bloemfontein. Absolute poppycock! This was the sort of idea now breeding war in Europe, he thought angrily.
‘There’s a grandeur in Egyptian civilization that is absent from the primitive mind,’ Petrie was continuing, ‘and clearly has origins elsewhere. Do you imagine the shaven-headed priests watching for the rising of Sirius over their sublime temples to be on par with tribesmen living in their mud-huts as they still do today?’
‘Sirius?’
‘Sirius, yes, Sopdet, in the Egyptian tongue – there is one fact that stands out above all else – their astronomical sophistication; their reckoning of the year based on an accurately observed event…where is the accuracy here?!’ he scoffed, waving his stick around him. ‘Yet in Egypt, pin-point precision…’
‘Pray, go on…’
‘The Egyptian year began with the helical rising of Sirius, that is its first appearance in the sky after disappearing from view for some 70 days. This event was of acute importance as it heralded the flooding of the Nile.’
Tolkien forgot Petrie’s racism for a moment as these facts sank in. Sirius…the dog star… and the flood…. He thought of Boann and the flood that created the Boyne…of her dog, Dabilla, who drowned with the goddess, whose path across the sky was obviously a reflection of the river on earth.
Should I tell him, he wondered, that elements of his precious Egyptian myth are also found amongst such ‘primitives’ of prehistoric Britain?
‘And so, they built their temples oriented to the exact point of the rising of this star on that date…’ Petrie continued, ‘the herald of the Nile flood…which they saw represented in heaven as the Milky Way… beside which Sopdet majestically resides.’
‘And how was this Sop…?’
‘…Sopdet…’
‘Sopdet, depicted – a dog?’
Petrie chuckled. ‘A dog! No. Canis Major is the Roman name for the constellation. Sopdet, my good man, was depicted either as a female figure, usually interpreted as the goddess Isis, and otherwise a couchant white cow in a boat, such as depicted famously at Denderah.’
White cow… Boannd; Good Lord! Tolkien thought; as if the dog-star and flood wasn’t enough, here we find the Lady herself.
(author’s note: it wasn’t for another three decades after this event that archaeologists discovered Boann’s ‘dwelling’, the passage-grave of Newgrange, known in Irish as Bru na Boinne, ‘womb of the white cow’, was aligned on the winter solstice sunrise and the rising of Sirius – this would have been even more ammunition for Tolkien…as would the date - most of these British sites pre-dated the Pyramids; West Kennet predated them by 1100 years...)
‘Interesting; white cow…’ he said, trying to prod Petrie for more information. ‘What would be the connection between the cow and the stars, then, I wonder?’
‘The cow is a very important symbolic image in Egypt, and often associated with the sky; Isis, I have mentioned; the goddess Nut, who is the Goddess of the Milky Way, is also often depicted as a cow stretched out over the heavens with stars along her belly, or with each of her feet in the four corners of the sky… or there is the Goddess Hat-Hor, they are all related, Hat-hor appears with cow's ears and horns, and is probably the cow-goddess Ashtaroth or Istar of Asia; she swallows the sun each night and gives birth to it each morning at daw; her very name means ‘house of Horus’, that is House of the Sun, roughly speaking; what else is the sky but this, a house for the sun?’ he said, the corner of his mouth curling, enjoying his own deduction.
At mention of the sun he turned his sun-brown face heavenwards, frowning at the pale disc that still offered little warmth through the mist that still clung to the circle and river valley.
‘… and so,’ Tolkien asked, trying to keep composed, ‘as you had hoped to find evidence that Silbury had some connection to Egypt, how would you have felt if there had been survivals of myth here, and you had been able to link these sites here with, say, the flooding of a river, and a white cow, linked to the Milky Way and Sirius?’
‘My good man, I would have felt justified in my assumptions, and it would have been of unprecedented importance in my theory that culture had been spread wide by what I term the ‘Dynastic race’! But there is no such link. No such myth. No Pharaoh, I fear, lies in state in Silbury awaiting discovery, for all the tales of gold-clad kings buried within – though I continue to hope. And for all Keiller’s enthusiasm over this crude circle, this is a site of little importance in the history of western civilization… granted it is of local interest, but compared to Neqada, or Abydos or Tanis… ’ he grimly shook his head. ‘They couldn’t even align it properly north!’ he laughed, ‘it is skewed, as one might expect of such primitive work.’
Tolkien did his best not to smile as he bade Petrie adieu and shuffled away to re-join Lewis and Barfield.
‘Tell me, Jack’ he said ‘is it wrong to withhold what one believes to be a fact of great importance if one believes that fact will be misused by the recipient?’
Jack shrugged and coughed.
‘I don’t know, and I don’t feel well enough to really think about it either. It’s grown very cold and I think I may have to repair to bed; my throat is agony!’
Barfield looked over at Petrie and smiled.
‘I take it you mean your discoveries about the Kennet?’
‘Indeed. I fear they would be used in this instance to justify a rather racist and inaccurate interpretation of the site.’
‘Then I would say you are at liberty to remain silent.’ He clapped Tolkien on the back, but Tolkien’s frown remained.
Walking a few yards behind Lewis, Barfield turned to Tolkien with a look of concern on his face.
‘What is it, Ronald? Did what he say bother you that much?’
Tolkien shook his head. ‘No, foolish opinions don’t bother me; it’s just I was thinking of my work… you remember a little while ago when I read my Earendil poem at the Inklings?’
Barfield nodded.
‘And how I said it was an explanation of the appearance of a certain star – and how he came as a herald of a new birth to come, of hope after the flood…’
‘Yes, I recall that…the flood that drowned Numenor.’
Tolkien didn’t continue; he paused and prodded the ground before him with his walking stick
‘Ronald?’
‘It’s…it’s just… what when something you tell yourself is just a product of your imaginings…. rests on foundations…or seems to…’ he cleared his throat;
‘what if you were to invent a story only to discover it’s been told before, long ago, and not just once, but many times… what does that say about the source of your creativity, of the story? I mean it’s not exact – but the themes – the flood, the herald in the form of the star… even the star as a mariner…what if it’s not so much invention as uncovering, or remembering? Somehow hearing the distant echo of some ancestral voice?’
And Barfield suddenly understood Tolkien’s fraught expression was not so much that of concern but of bemused shock.
‘And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far; Ancestral voices prophesying war! Barfield said.
‘I think I need a pipe!’ Tolkien said., 'and a beer.'