[Footnote 234: In the plain of Troy, and on the higher grounds around
it, various barrows still remain, and have been described from Pliny,
Strabo, and Lucia down to Lechevalier, Forchhammer, and Maclaren. In
later times, Choiseul and Calvert have opened some of them. Homer gives
a minute account of the obsequies of Patroclus and the raising of his
burial-mound, which forms, as is generally believed, one of those twin
barrows still existing on the sides of the Sigean promontory, that pass
under the name of the tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus. Pope, in
translating the passage describing the commencement of the funeral pyre,
uses the word pyramid. For
... "those deputed to inter the slain,
Heap with a rising _pyramid_ the plain."
Professor Daniel Wilson, in alluding, in his _Prehistoric Annals_, vol.
i. p. 74, to this account by Homer of the ancient funeral-rites, and
raising of the funeral-mound, speaks of the erection of Patroclus'
barrow as "the methodic construction of the Pyramid of earth which
covered the sacred deposit and preserved the memory of the honoured
dead."]
[Footnote 235: Colonel Pownall, while describing in 1770 the barrow of
New Grange, in Ireland, to the London Society of Antiquaries, speaks of
it as "a pyramid of stone." "This pyramid," he observes, "was encircled
at its base with a number of enormous unhewn stones," etc. "The pyramid,
in its present state, is but a ruin of what it was," etc. etc. See
_Archaeologia_, vol. vi. p. 254; and Higgins' _Celtic Druids_, p. 40,
etc.]
[Footnote 236: In his _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, Dr. Daniel
Wilson states (vol. i. p. 87), that "the Chambered Cairn properly
possesses as its peculiar characteristic the enclosed catacombs and
galleries of megalithic masonry, branching off into various chambers
symmetrically arranged, and frequently exhibiting traces of constructive
skill, such as realise in some degree the idea of the regular pyramid."
He speaks again of the stone barrows or cairns of Scotland as
"monumental pyramids" (vol. i. p. 67); of the earth barrow being an
"earth pyramid or tumulus" (p. 70); of Silbury Hill as an "earth
pyramid" (p. 62): and in the same page, in alluding to the large
barrow-tomb of the ancient British chief or warrior, he states, "in its
later circular forms we see the rude type of the great pyramids of
Egypt." The same learned author, in his work on _Prehistoric Man_,
refers to the great monuments of the American mound-builders as "earth
pyramids" (p. 202), "huge earth pyramids" (p. 205), "pyramidal
earth-works" (p. 203); etc.]
[Footnote 237: In his _History of Scotland_, Mr. Burton speaks of the
barrows of New Grange and Maeshowe (Orkney), as erections which "may
justly be called minor pyramids" (vol. i. p. 114).]
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