Possible Discovery at West Kennet Long Barrow? Chambered Tomb : The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map:

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Submitted by AngieLake on Tuesday, 07 August 2007 Page Views: 22116

Neolithic and Bronze AgeCountry: England County: Wiltshire Type: Chambered Tomb

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**West Kennett Long Barrow Stone 22** submitted by AngieLake : Stone 22 in the end chamber of WKLB. The recent heavy rains must have seeped through, as this one was very wet indeed on 12 July 07, highlighting the detail of the stone. (The EH/NT Avebury booklet has a reproduction of an excavation plan by Piggott and Atkinson in 1955-56, showing numbered stones. ?Don't think I'm allowed to copy it for Meg.P. use??) (Vote or comment on this photo)

When posting photos of the end chamber of West Kennet Long Barrow onto The Megalithic Portal website today (3rd August 2007), I was struck by the symbolism of the two stones that face you on entry to this western, and largest, open chamber.

If the original builders had hoped to please the 'gods' and cause the spirits of the dead to re-generate, what better than to erect two stones that represented the images of human fertility - an erect penis and an open vulva?

If you look at the two images my camera captured inside the chamber on 12 July you will see that the feminine symbol appears as the indentation on the large left-hand stone facing you (Stone 21), and the phallic symbol is the 'whole' of the stone to the right facing you (Stone 22).

Studies of 'Megalithic Style' have for a long while associated 'Female' stones with diamond-shaped, or lozenge-shaped stones, and 'Male' stones with taller, straighter, pillar-style stones.

Stone 21 here is lozenge shaped, its right hand side like the wing of a stingray, (or 'delta-wing' as I christened it earlier).

Stone 22 is upright and masculine, and in this latest shot - where the wetness has enhanced its appearance - unmistakably phallic.

(A second look at the protuberance above the vulva-like cleft in Stone 21 makes me wonder if this could be seen as another 'closed' vulva-symbol.)

On the right-hand (north) wall of the chamber is Stone 23, which, at the angle captured on 12 July, looks a little like a face.

This is only incidental, and not necessarily of any importance to the ritual symbolism shown by the fertility-style stones straight ahead in the western end chamber.

[Stone numbers taken from Piggott and Atkinson's plan of their 1955-56 excavations of WKLB, shown in EH/NT booklet on Avebury.]

NB: Not forgetting that I am sure that Stone 16, SW of the Great Trilithon, at Stonehenge is a similar Feminine fertility symbol with a vulva-mark showing up on its inner face at dawn on 6th December, and its reverse side looking like a pregnant belly when viewed from SE.

This is my theory, what do you think? Maybe you'll be delighted to 'read it here first' - maybe you'll dismiss it with a smile?

(Copyright: Angela Lake, 3rd August, 2007)

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