Stonehenge news

Stonehenge has been in the news twice recently. Both a new view and a new interpretation of the monument have been announced.

The new view is a tiny medieval drawing, only a couple of inches across, noticed in a scala mundi or “world ladder”, a chart of universal chronology from the Creation onwards. The document was in the municipal library of Douai, in northern France, probably taken there from England by Catholic refugees in the 16th century; Professor Christian Heck catalogued it there six years ago without at that stage thinking more about its importance.

The document dates from the 1440s, not the oldest depiction of the monument — which dates from around 1342 and is on a similar scala mundi at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge — but one of very few known. “Medieval representations of Stonehenge are extremely rare,” Professor Heck says, and this one is “the first known design to represent Stonehenge not just as a symbolic image, but with precise observations on its form and construction techniques. It bridges perfectly the worlds of medieval myth and Renaissance observation.”

Posted by David on January 2, 2007 11:49 AM