[Stones] Earliest (detailed) sketch of Stonehenge
littlestone
littlestone at supanet.com
Tue Dec 19 12:30:33 GMT 2006
is this the bird's eye view from the 1400's...
Yes, it's a little sketch (only 23x17mm) in the Scala Mundi manuscript believed to date from 1440 or 1441.* The manuscript is thought to be English in origin so there's a good chance that whoever drew the sketch had seen Stonehenge firsthand but didn't bother to climb the trilithons to check whether the tenons went right through the lintels. The inscription under the sketch, "That year Merlin, not by force but art, brought and erected the giants' round from Ireland, at Stonehenge near amesbury." is interesting as it can be interpreted as the trilithons being brought to an already existing Stonehenge.
I don't know of any Anglo-Saxon reference to Stonehenge but would be interested for any info on that (there's the Anglo-Saxon poem, The Ruin, but that's generally thought to be about Roman Bath.
* http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/ (scroll down to the bottom of the page).
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