25th October 2026 - King Sil

 

Halloween is just around the corner but of course today's date heralds in other changes such as the hour going back and so left me hungry for an hour this morning.  Not strictly true, there were nuts.  Tom and Ellie come today to say farewell before their six months wander round Thailand, Japan and such places. I worry but of course parents or grandparents always worry.  I can hear the storm outside ,the trees still have their leaves on.  Autumn storms, even bought down part of the old Brighton pier.

I have been reading 'Silbury Treasure' by Michael Dames.  What do I believe??? He piles the goddesses on, fertility, those enormous breasted and hipped fertility clay figurines found at Catal Huyuk and other places in the Neolithic era, he is trying to makes us understand that the shape of Silbury Hill is a pregnant woman.  Yes I don't believe him.  Stories abound round prehistoric monuments.

 Silbury Hill has King Sil and his treasure for one story.  When an excavation took place at the top of the hill, one of many during the 19th century, human bones were found and a riding bit for a horse.  So of course a story arose that a king had been buried there with his treasure.  This story can be knocked on the head easily.  You would bury a body at the lowest part of the hill and the horse bit looked suspiciously like a later 17th century one.  So perhaps someone thought it a good place to get buried. A quote from Dames.

Who put King Sil into Silbury?  We did because we wanted him there - a superman with a super treasure hoard - a man (naturally) so vain, so aggressive, so successfully acquisitive, so preoccupied with eternal fame, that he could provide us with a standard of excellence so worthy of respect.  In defeating the obscurity of death, he carries our best wishes and gives us hope.  Without such men how would we stand vis-a-vis earwigs, elms or clods of mud?

So ironic ;) 

But it is very true that many barrows were only raided and dug into for the treasure they supposedly housed in the 19th century, think of the Egyptian pyramids how they revealed the ornate burials.  True we have filled our museums with such treasures and in the end it is good for us to see past cultures. but the capitalist mind is always looking for the next haul of money.

The question I wanted answered was is there a drawing of the 'plaited grass strings' that Dean Merewether saw.  Of course there isn't, Dames had made a drawing of the barrow that sits at the centre of the hill. (No bones inside).

A clay core with flints, wattle fencing and star shaped configuration of double stranded grass strings.  Now whether that is a true interpretation I cannot say but plaited grass reminds us of weaving and of course Dames attributes that to the pregnant female.  It also reminds me of the honeysuckle rope found at Sea Henge wooden circle in Norfolk.

Thinking about 'treasure', and Sutton Hoo comes to mind, as does the Mildenhall Roman silverware Both safely in the public eye.