When the Bush Barrow which is part of the Stonehenge complex was first excavated in 1908 a number of highly significant artifacts were discovered which help to establish the Indo-European origins of the builders of phases II and III of Stonehenge[as we see it today]. Included within the find were two golden lozenges, one smaller than the other, three bronze daggers, a sheet gold belt plate, bronze rivets and a stone mace.
The lozenges, no doubt worn as breastplates are likely to be royal insignia as is the stone mace.
Readers may be puzzled as to why the mace head is made of stone and not a precious metal such as gold or bronze but the fact of the matter is that the stone head is precious in the sense of its symbolic significance. Even in the Bronze Age the Battle Axe wielding Indo-European warrior elite had not forgotten their origins in the Neolithic and whilst stone had been superceded by bronze as the material for axe heads it continued to have a special meaning for them.
Could this "special meaning" have to do with the stone axe of the Indo-European Thunder God? Followers of my blogs will recall earlier articles where I emphasised that Thunor`s hammer was originally an axe and prior to being made of Iron it was a stone weapon.
" Ryberg in his Teutonic Mythology volume 2[Investigations into Germanic Mythology Volume II Part 1] repeats this argument: "Thor`s oldest weapon is made of stone. The name itself says so, hamarr, and this is confirmed by the folk-idea of the lightning bolt as a stone-wedge."[Celto-Germanic blog, 17/1/10]
And again from the same article:
" "Thorr was brought up in Jotunheimr by a jarl named Vingnir, and when he was ten years old, he received the stone hammer, Vingnir`s Mjollnir."[Asatru Edda]
It may very well be that the stone mace head from the Bush Barrow burial signifies not only royal authority but religious as well. In Indo-European antiquity the two roles of priest and king were combined in one person and not yet divided. Anyone caring to explore European history over the last several thousand years will understand that one of the major causes of international conflict between Aryan peoples and tension within their own societies is the battle of primacy between the priestly and the warrior castes. This struggle continued even into the xtian Middle Ages. Only in India did the priestly caste dominate the warrior or royal caste. Ancient Aryans of course elected their kings from various noble families but this vote was not a universal franchise as is the case in our decaying and degenerate `democratic` western world. Only the nobles chose the king. They had not yet succumbed to the idiotic idea of primogeniture. Only the fittest should and must rule.
Leon Stover in his Stonehenge City A Reconstruction[2003] draws attention to the bone jagged lightning flashes that were fitments on the now perished original wooden handle. He compares this artifact with Agamemnon`s "lightning sceptre" in Homer`s Iliad. He also mentions a similar mace head found in Clandon Barrow in Dorset. This mace head is made of polished jet and has five gold studs inset. Also very significantly the Clandon Barrow contained a gold breastplate similar in style to the Bush Barrow ones. He speculates that this once belonged to one of the four former sub-kings of the Stonhenge Over-king[more on this subject in a later article].
Professor Stover interprets these royal stone maces as representing the "foundation stones of Indo-European cosmology, which everywhere posited a thunder-and-lightning god not unlike the well-attested Thor of Norse mythology."[2003]
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