LexiLine Journal #97 - 2002 : Stonehenge : Breastplate of the High Priest

Welcome!

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To our LexiLine Files in the Ancient Britain folder I have added

breastpl.gif and
breastpl.tif

showing the largest gold object ever found in the Stonehenge environs.

It was found on the breast of a skeleton in Barrow 158 about one- half mile south of Stonehenge in a barrow which - according to my decipherment of the barrows of Stonehenge previously posted to the LexiLine Ancient Britain files - is placed exactly in the "cup" of the Big Dipper, i.e. Ursa Major, thus giving it a very special significance.

This breastplate is in my analysis clearly the Stonehenge Breastplate of the high priest or druid - marking a 24-hour astronomical clock around its perimeter - and I regard it - very speculatively of course - to be the predecessor to the later Breastplate of the Cohen Gadol, as used by the Hebrews. According to F. Graham Millar, the Hebrew breastplate goes back to astronomical origins in the Zodiac of stars.

This Zodiac - as we see in the middle of nine squares - was originally nine and not twelve (as in the later case of the Hebrews). This is confirmed in Latvian mythology - nine being the older number of Zodiacal divisions in the Dainas - the Nine Sons of God. See also the Sumerian Sons of God.

The basic astronomy measurement system used I have already long ago uploaded to the Ancient Britain file as astrgeom.tif showing how such a square system would look. For Stonehenge, which may date to ca. 1750 BC, the major axis then would however be along the Milky Way and not along the Solstices. It all depends on when the breastplate or a previous model was made - and this could be much further back in time. This is unclear for now.

Also unclear is how many lines (if any on the original at all) are actually carved into the gold breastplate - the woodcut can not be used to know this - one would have to examine the original gold object. The corners seem to have 30, so 12 x 30 would be 360, but the woodcut has fewer lines than that. I would imagine that each line on the breastplate represented a day, but I might be wrong. I would at least count the lines on the original Stonehenge Breastplate to check this out.