The Astronomy QuarterlyVolume 2,1978€) by the Pachart Corporation

IS THE STONEHENGE HEEL STONE A SUN GOD?

George Reed

I They come from all over the world. By automobile or tour bus, it is a trip ofess than 100 miles from central London. The ride out is made more pleasant bythe beautiful English countryside, but the anticipation still increases as the milesPass. At Amesbury they turn north after going three quarters of the way around~e "round about". One more small hill and they finally see it sitting alone intune and place. Stonehenge, a mecca for the curious.

Stonehenge is a three dimensional rock and dirt puzzle whose origin andPUrpose has challenged the best of both the amateur and" academicarchaeological sleuths. The astronomer, Gerald Hawkins, excited the world inJ963 by convincingly showing that Stonehenge was, among other things, anastronomical calendar and perhaps an eclipse computer as well. His book,Stonehenge Decoded, was a best seller and the subject of a television~ocumentary. The work at Stonehenge, however, was not finished with.aWkins' discoveries, and it will never be finished. More is certain to be

diScovered if the correct questions are asked.Everyone who has ever been to Stonehenge has looked at the famous Heel

Stone. This is the stone over which the sun is seen to rise on the first day ofsummer. The Heel Stone is a large upright rock that is stationed 100 feet awayfrom the main Neolithic stone and earth structure of Stonehenge.

The exact origin of the "Heel Stone" nomenclature is unknown. The namehas been traced back to a 17th Century archaeological investigator named JohnAUbrey. It was he who stated that a certain stone had a large depression shaped

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like a "friar's heel". There is some doubt as to whether the stone known todayas the Heel Stone is the one to which he referred. There is also some question asto what a friar's heel is supposed to look like. The Stonehenge authority, RJ.C.Atkinson, has suggested that the naming comes from the Welsh word meaningsun. The word is "haul". It is pronounced liked "hayil" and therefore is veryclose to the pronunciation for "heel". In either case, the origin of the modernname seems to reveal little additional information about the stone.

Since Stonehenge is the second most popular tourist attraction in England, (itranks second only to the Tower of London), it is probably safe to say that theHeel Stone is the most photographed rock in all of England. Many StonehengeVisitors, upon returning home and looking at their souvenir photographs, haveprobably remarked that the Heel Stone seems to possess facial features. This is apoint that would elicit little argument. The turned down mouth is quiteprominent as are the eye indentations and the slightly protruding nose. Of morefundamental importance is the question as to whether the face is there bychance or by design.

If the face is there by chance, there is little to be learned from it. However, ifthe face is there by design, then it may be possible to use it to unravel even moreof the mystery of Stonehenge. How can we decide today, thousands of yearsafter the fact, if the Heel Stone was chosen and placed as it was, because of thefacial characteristics that it bears? We have to look to the other stones and thehistory of the Stonehenge monument for our answer.

The Heel Stone, interestingly enough, is the only stone at the site that is stillin its natural shape. Unlike the seventy-five other sarsen stones present atStonehenge, the Heel Stone shows no chip marks or scrape marks. The HeelStone face was present when the stone arrived. It seems highly improbable thatthousands of years of weathering could account for the facial features. In fact,weathering would tend to have the opposite effect. Excessiveweathering wouldsmooth the sandstone rock features. It could therefore be suggested that thisstone , because it was not altered in any way, was purposely selected andtransported the necessary 20 miles from its source in Marlbourgh Downs becauseit contained the distinct facial features seen today.

The Heel Stone is also different from the other stones in terms of its positionand its estimated length of service on Salisbury Plain. The Heel Stone is believedto be one of the first stones erected during that phase of the building that isreferred to as Stonehenge 1. Recent radioactive carbon-l-l dating methods haveindicated that Stonehenge was started some time around the year 2750 B.C. Itconsisted of large circular ditch and bank that was left open to the northeast. Itis speculated that two upright stones were placed slightly inward of thisentrance. The Heel Stone was placed approximately 100 feet up the avenue thatleads from the opening of the circular ditch. These three stones seem to be theonly large stones used at Stonehenge 1. Four much smaller stones, called stationstones, are also thought to be part of the initial construction.

A narrow ditch was dug around the Heel Stone and later filled in with chalkto inhibit plant growth. No evidence of ditches has been found around thepositions of the other two stones, in fact, the other two stones are no longer

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there.Stonehenge II consisted of the transport of 80 four-ton bluestones over a land

and water distance of 250 miles from the Prescelly Mountains of southern Wales.These stones were probably meant to form a double circle in the center of thecircular earth structure. The circles were never completed on the west side.Stonehenge II came into existence at some time in the vicinity of 2000 B.C.

Stonehenge III was a radical reconstruction of Stonehenge II that started notl~ng after the building of Stonehenge II. The two bluestone circles were~ISmant1ed and replaced by 80 sarsen stones. These stones were placed in antelled circle and a horseshoe of trilithons..The dismantled bluestones were used again to form a circle and horseshoe

WIthin the sarsen circle and horseshoe. Stonehenge III was completedapproximately 1000 years after Stonehenge I was begun. With the exception of afew stones that have disappeared and the number that have toppled from theiroriginal positions, this is the Stonehenge of today. It seems to be significant thatthe Heel Stone endured in its original position during this long period ofextensivemodification.

If we can assume that the purpose for the building of Stonehenge remainedthe same throughout the different periods of construction, then the original?utline of the site was most important. The following years served only to:prove and elaborate upon the original design in order to achieve that purpose,ur not to significantly alter it.The 35 ton Heel Stone is 20 feet long, 8 feet wide and 7 feet thick. It is

bUried 4 feet into the ground. It was not just buried anywhere however. It wasP?t into the position required for the summer sun to be seen to rise over it as~ewed from the circular stone enclosure on the first day of summer. This is theongest sun-filled day of the year.. Changes in the obliquity of the ecliptic and tilting of the Heel Stone make it

d1fficult to make precise statements concerning the rising point of the sun on theStonehenge horizon at the time of the placement of the Heel Stone. Calculationsnow seem to indicate that, when the Heel Stone was originally placed inPosition, the sun rose slightly to the left of it. It !Day not have been importantfor the early builders to have seen the summer solstice sun rise directly behind orover the top of the Heel Stone. Perhaps they were only interested in identifying~he general direction of the summer soltice sun rise point, or perhaps they werelUterested in some less obvious positioning of the early morning sun with respectto the Heel Stone. Whatever position of speculation is chosen, it seems fairly safeto assume that the early builders of Stonehenge had the position of the summersolstice sunrise point in mind when they placed the Heel Stone in position.

The Heel Stone was also placed so that the mute stone face could be viewedfrom the center of the stone circles. At first glance, this view is somewhatdisappointing. You would expect the Heel Stone face, if it was supposed torepresent a face, to be staring straight into the Stonehenge structure. It does not.It faces to the right as seen from the Stonehenge center. This may be significanthowever, because the face is actually looking almost directly south, thus one sideof the face is illuminated in the morning hours, while the other side of the face is

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illuminated in the after noon hours. At noon time, when the sun is at its highestdaily altitude, the entire front of the face is illuminated. Is this an accident? Or,could the Heel Stone have been a crude form of sundial that indicated themorning and afternoon times of day. Certainly there were easier ways of makingsuch a sundial, but then, almost anything that Stonehenge does as anobservatory or a temple, could have been done more easily. Notre Dame did nothave to be built in order to provide Parisians with a place of worship. Big Bendid not have to be built in order to provide Londoners with the correct time.Stonehenge has enjoyed a long reign of popularity because of the tremendouswork that was involved in building a structure that seemed to have rathermysterious yet simple ends. The Law of Parsimony does not always apply tohuman endeavors.

If it is assumed that the Heel Stone was chosen because of its resemblance to aface and if it is further assumed that it was purposely placed as it is seen today,then the next logical question is - why? What did the Heel Stone face represent?The quick and obvious answer is a god, and in particular, a sun god. Imagine theexcitment that would be generated by the view of the sun rising over the face ofthe sun god on the day that the sun is in the sky for the longest period of time.At the Stonehenge latitude of 510 North, the summer solstice sun is above thehorizon for 18 hours.

The superpositioning of a face and the sun to indicate a deity is a timehonored tradition that has been carried out in many civilizations. Christian art,for instance, represents holy people with halos that are a form of sun disk. Thecustom of placing the sun behind or above a head figure to indicate divinity is acustom that did not originate with Christianity. It goes back to the Egyptiansand farther. Stonehenge may have been a monument, that took the form of astone calendar, that was dedicated to, or at least commemorated, anall-important sun god.

The people who built Stonehenge and the other stone structures of Englandand the continent had a highly sophisticated knowledge of astronomy andgeometry. These were the practical arts so they were developed first. Thisstatement can be supported by the very existence of Stonehenge and the otherstone circles that are suspected of having astronomical alignments. Theiraccomplishments in the representational fine arts however, were not at acomparable level. The builders of Stonehenge could cut and shape rock intoaesthetic geometric form, but they could not use it for aesthetic expression.They were engineers, not artists. They did not produce statues like those onEaster Island, nor did they produce the intricate designs of the Maya. The onlyartistic work discovered at Stonehenge consists of faint imprints, that can onlybe seen under the proper light. Two such imprints on the side of a large uprightboulder are said to represent Mycenaean daggers. When the builders ofStonehenge arrived at the need for a permanent monument to celebrate their sungod, they may have used what was available. In this case it could have been ahuge, multi-ton slab of rock that strongly suggested a face. The face of the sungod.

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Perhaps the Heel Stone face represents a beginning in the art of the culturethat produced Stonehenge. Perhaps from their proposed trade contacts withother civilizations they had heard stories and seen drawings of gods captured in~tones. Perhaps they wished to duplicate these aspects of the foreign cultures.erhaps not.

Stonehenge itself does not provide enough. clues to answer the question as toWhether the Heel Stone represented a god. What is needed is a secondStonehenge with a second Heel Stone.

There are over 900 other stone circles in the British Isles alone and many onthe European continent. None of them are as imposing as Stonehenge, but one is~f particular interest. It consists of a flattened stone circle and an outlying 12oat high "Heel Stone" called Long Meg. The setting point of the winter solstice

SUn is in the direction of Long Meg as viewed from the center of the stone circle.long Meg, interestingly enough, has distinctive facial features that include atUrned down mouth. Does this mean that the Heel Stone and Long Meg are sungod symbols? It is difficult to be sure, but the evidence indicates that it is astrong possibili ty. .h If the construction of Stonehenge was influenced by a foreign culture and if

S at cUlture were known, perhaps its artifacts would help to answer the Heeltone - sun god question. The Mycenaean daggers can not help because they

represent a culture that flourished centuries after the erection of the Heel Stone.Our problem lies in the fact that we can collect, measure and analyze the

~oducts of ancient minds, but we can not look into those minds. We know what. ey did at Stonehenge but we do not know why. The book of astroarchaeologyIS disappointing in that the answers to the problems are not found in anappendix.

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The face on the Heel Stone?

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