Megaliths and popular traditions.
| Megaliths and popular traditions. The axe and the hammer of life and death. by Jean-Loïc Lequellec Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society Year 1996 93-3 pp. 287-297 |
This is an article by Jean-Loïc Lequellec which I found of interest after reading La Vrai Langue Celtique.
Boudet writes in La Vrai Langue Celtique a chapter called - THE HOLE STONE [Pierre de Trou] OR CELTIC ACHE.
He writes;
'The great stones erected throughout Gaul, ... have a religious sense of an indisputable truth. They were the symbol of pure religious science in evoking the memory of God who created the world ... If the religious system of the Gauls was limited to this Knowledge of a creative and rewarding God, without deducing no practical consequences for orderly actions of life, it would not have been complete. The Druids were too educated to ignore, or leave in the shadows the conclusions [so] in accordance with the principles issued ... they summarised, in the rigorous consequences of their doctrine the meaning imposed on polished stone. The polished stone, called Celtic axe [hache] made of jade, serpentine or diorite, affects various forms. The Languedocian dialect calls it Pierre de Trou. It represents that which we must believe, that is to say, the necessary lessons inscribed in the large raised stones - to trow (trô), Believe -. The hole stone [pierre de trou] appears with honour on the fireplace mantels in the houses of our mountains. A vague religious idea is still attached to this Stone, in the thought of a few it preserves from Lightning, others are inclined to believe that it rules out some misfortunes. These various imaginations are, in reality, a faithful remnant of the original meaning of the pierre de Trou. These polished stones found in abundance in the cromleck of Rennes-les-Bains and deposited at the Musée de Narbonne are generally made of jade. In our mountains, if not like stones proper, to shoot sparks and light a fire. We have in our possession a flint fourteen centimetres long & three centimetres wide, found in the field of the Haummoor, very close to the location of an old Gallic house. It's not, for us, a pierre de trou. The polished jade stones, not being very well known, it is quite possible that the religious idea attached to the Trou stone also affected the simple cut flint, which would still have represented in the mind these beliefs .... This thought is suggested to us by the discovery in Pressigny-le-Grand, department of Indre-et-Loire, from the flint manufacturing centre.
.....
The flints of Pressigny-le-Grand, as well as our Stones polished with jade, excellently deserved the name of Hole stone or stones of belief; because they contained in their meaning the most essential act of religion by which man recognises his dependence on God, the sovereign Dominator. It was not enough for the Gauls to believe the immutable truth: their belief had to break out in external actions of life, addressing through prayer to its eternal principle. The Celts would not always have and in all countries, before their eyes, the big stones raised to excite their willingness to be grateful to the Creator, to bring them to ask and thank, while the stone Hole, warned them persistently of the religious divine assistance to implored constantly, especially in trips full of adventures and of dangers that they loved to undertake.
The presence of flints and polished stones in the tombs of the Celts, fully confirms the religious idea with Trou stones. In the tomb of the Rhuis island (Morbihan), next to a human skeleton, probably that of an arch-druid, and under the stones of a Dolmen, thirty stones polished in jade were collected. In this regard, we invoke a very interesting passage of the Memoire of Mr. Leguay, on the burials of the Parisii, quoted by Mr. Louis Figuier. "All" these stones, says Mr. Leguay, are common to the three kinds of " burials, [and] have for me a votive attribution, that is to say "that they represent, for this time, the crowns of "immortality, such or other objects that even today "we pose on the graves of our parents and our friends, following a custom that is lost in the nights of Time'. For us, we go much further in the meaning of the cut or polished stones of the Celtic tombs. In our eyes, Pressigny flints and stones polished by Trou, placed in a tumulus next to the human remains, highly proclaim the unshakeable belief of the Gauls, to the immortality of the soul, and to the excellence of the Prayer addressed to God for those who had preceded them in eternity."
Plantard makes some interesting comments about this PIERRE DE TROU.
He wrote;
Only at this moment, the initiate becomes the "mat" or the "fool", "the bishop" whose bonnet is the mitra, "that covers the chimney". [Conference Plantard 6 Juin 1964, RLC]
but there are only two doors for accomplishing this jump from 64 to 1, (equerre) the square of 14 (temperance) or the square of 15 (the devil) according to the 22 arcanas of the TAROT de Marseille (Marceille) [Le Cercle page 75]
The 22 jump of the last journey are also the 22 arcanas of the Tarot of Marseille. Just one author - true, an initiate, Oswald Wirth has very well understood this question in one of his works. The 22nd jump doesn't have a number. [Conference Plantard 6 Juin 1964, RLC]
[...] the last arcane of the tarot, le Mat or the Fool or in plus the Bishop whose bonnet is the mitre "that appears with honour on the mantlepiece of the chimney" p256 )[Preface Plantard to LVLC] .
The Pierre du Trou appears with honour on the mantelpieces of the chimneys, in the houses of our mountains". [ Boudet pag 256]
*For Romans, Cardea (from latin "cardo", gond) was the goddess protecting the gates, more specific the HINGES. According to Ovid, she could open what was closed and close what was opened.
Plantard continues in the Preface to LVLC the following;
"Several phenomena must be associated in the mind of the reader. Thus, he becomes obsessed with repetition at various places [in LVLC] of "lightning and lightning". And in stopping at pages 119 and 124 he finds an invitation to bring these demonstrations closer to the previous totals. He notices that the ascending procession of the summits thus calculated makes it possible to draw a flash or, rather, the Fragments of a flash. The number 22 is then placed on the highest summit of Rennes, on the Cardou which must owe its name to the goddess of the hinges: Cardéa. He then thinks of the page 114 of the book and the 22 cards of the Egyptian Tarot. The result is encouraging:
altitude 796 (7+9+6) gives 22,
or the ultimate arcane of the tarot, the Mat Or the Fool or the Bishop whose cap is the mitre "Which appears with honour on the chimney coats" (P. 256). This arcane, let's not forget, does not have a number and the corresponding vertex can be Seen from the sky, the ideal point of the fall of lightning, or the Valley, the very origin of lightning. The Bateleur, beginning of This tarot, is located at the "Cap of l'homme", "it's the head".
Abbé Boudet discovered it while it was used as Target practise at the hands of the pick of a shepherd and, according to page 234, we have "been Forced, in December 1884, to remove this beautiful Sculpture from the place it occupied". This stone, transported to Alet, was cut in two; the back engraved with a Rotas square was preserved by Mr. Cailhol and the face was taken to the presbytery of Rennes-les-Bains [and attached to its wall] where it can still be seen.".
By chance I came across this article by Jean-Loïc Lequellec and was fascinated to read much more about the folklore attached to these 'stones'. In the article the bolded and underlined text are my additions to highlight what I think may be important!
Megaliths and popular traditions.
The axe and the hammer of life and death.
From the Bulletin of the FRENCH PREHISTORIC SOCIETY 1996 /TOME 93, No. 3
The main difficulty we encounter whenever we have to make researches into such a question: how to fill the gap between the prehistoric documentation on the one hand, and a number of traditions collected during the XIXth or XXth centuries on the other hand? After a review of the literature about the gallery grave art in Brittany with particular attention to the engraved axes, the Breton traditions associating the "holy mawle" with death are discussed and their great age is proven; then they are compared to the fulminating weapons used by several Indo-European thunder-gods to administer life and death, and the wavering between "axe", "mallet", "maul" and "club" is elucidated by their linguistic derivation from a single Pre-Indo-European lexical item "stone [weapon of -]", to be understood in a Neolithic context. We may assume that, as an instrument of the passage from existence to nonentity and conversely, such a weapon was the obvious one to be engraved at the transition points (inside-outside, passage-chamber) in the passage graves of Brittany, using a symbolism in accordance with very many popular traditions and archaeological finds.
Introduction
Let us first of all recall that the megalithic art of Western Europe is present on monuments in Ireland, England, France, Spain and Portugal; however, the subject that interests us here appears only in the Armorican artistic whole, moreover the richest and best studied. The motifs used in this art mainly include: cups, nesting arches, jug-forms (isolated or parallel), crosses (isolated or parallel), crosses, chevrons, "cuffs" (aka "scuti-forms" or "idols"), spirals, radial circles, grids, pectin-shapes (alias "ships"), serpentine shapes and axes (slegged or not). From a corpus of thirty-five Armorican corridor tombs, B. Maisonneuve (1983) established for each of these signs a slab association coefficient that reveals completely unequal association faculties. The tables show in particular that the sted axe is most often only associated with itself; when it is associated with another sign, it is usually the butt. As for the latter, it is with the axe that it is preferably associated. The pair [axe + butt] is therefore the most frequent of all, followed equally by the following: [jugiform + axe], [jugi-form + crosse] and [serpentiform + axe]. The monument associativity coefficient confirms these results, since the most frequent association concerns the axe and again the butt. Finally, axes (thirty-nine copies) and crosses (seventeen copies) are not only the most frequent signs, but also those that have the greatest number of associations with the other signs, and especially between them.
Of the repertoire of signs engraved on megalithic monuments, only two could be unanimously interpreted as figurations of real objects: the bow accompanied by the arrow (very rare), and the axe or herminette. It is sometimes added that the angular motifs in "7" could be considered as extremely stylised inlet axes (Shee Twohig, 1977: p. 23); the same goes for some long-stem crosses, while the crosses have been brought closer to the axe handles with curved ends. Although this last rapprochement is reinforced by statistics, specialists preferred to compare the cross to certain shale objects of similar shape discovered during the excavations of the large corridor tombs of the southern provinces of Portugal, in a cultural framework of the Middle Neolithic concordant with that of the documents of western France. These two types of elements were themselves compared, on the one hand, to a series of pottery (groups of Alentejo, Montbolo, Fa-guien, Chambon, Matignons, Salz-munde) decorated with double crosses (Cassen and L'Helgouac'h, 1992: p. 229) and, on the other hand, gold leaf and marble crosses discovered on the Chalcolithic sites of Varna and Dolnoslav (Bulgaria), as well as the clay statuette of a kind of "god with the cross", found in Svegvar-Tuzkôves (Hungary) and belonging to the Tisza culture (Cassen and L'Helgouac'h, 1992: p. 227).
In their synthesis of this complex subject, these two authors conclude that "two representations of objects, an axe and a butt cannot be confused". However, it seems to me that in reality, the confusion thus condemned does not take place between "two representations of objects", but rather between two elements, one of which is indeed a representation of an object that is perfectly known and recognised (the polished axe, an artifact often discovered in the engraved corridor tombs of Armorique), while the other is only a symbol whose attestation as a real object is still questionable (Gimbutas even sees it as a "hook"). Indeed, the elements of comparison of Central Europe date back only to the Hungarian Late Neolithic in one case, or to the Bulgarian Chalcolithic in the other two. As for the báculos of Portugal, currently known in about forty copies dated at the earliest to the middle of the third millennium, not only their generally thick profile distances them morphologically from the engraved crosses, but the interpretation proposed by Portuguese authors links them "ao culto do ma- chado encabado", that is to say "to the cult of the axe" (Da Veiga Ferreira, 1985: p. 89). As for the crosses represented by symmetrically opposite pairs on the pottery, especially in the habitat level prior to the Cairn des Marchands, there is no evidence that it is correct to bring them closer to the crosses engraved on the monuments; the latter appear, according to this arrangement, only at the Mane-er-Hroeg, in the Mane-Lud, and on the main face of the Kermarquer menhir; the examples of the "cross stele" of the Table des Marchands and the slabs of Gavrinis are abusively associated with this theme, since these are no longer opposite pairs, but a large number of figuratives organised symmetrically. THE monuments thus operated may therefore be purely formal, as it happens regularly when we compare very simple symbols, and outside their semantic context.
We cannot insist too much on the plurivocity of symbols which, by nature, always carry several meanings in interaction: overdetermination (several meanings that can be attached to each of them) and over-symbolisation (the same meaning that can be carried by several symbols) mean that their motivation can justify any coupling afterwards, but does not make it possible to predict any of them with certainty. However, it seems desirable to go beyond the banal observation of the existence of a probable symbolism of the listed signs although, since the attacks on ethnographic comparatism by A. Leroi-Gourhan, this project is generally unfeasible. It is true that, to the extent that any symbol is a mediator between partners referring to a common tradition, it seems hardly possible to grasp its meaning in ignorance of it, or by trying to compensate for this ignorance by access to other supposedly related or comparable traditions. Yet this is what even the authors least inclined to speculative reveries do, by evoking, about the báculos and engraved crosses, sometimes the cross of the pastors (and that of the bishops), sometimes the lituus of the augures (Patte, 1932: p. 26-27), or the scepter of the pharaohs (Cassen and L'Helgouac'h 1992: p. 234), or even cultural elements borrowed from Syria, Crete or the Badarien (Veiga Ferreira, 1985: p. 90-91). But in this matter, the accumulation of such comparisons cannot serve as a demonstration.
The discussion therefore remains open, and the only indisputable elements we currently have about megalithic engraved art concern the recurring association of the cross and the axe. This observation goes far beyond the Armorican framework, since it is found at the Grotte de la Hache in Buthiers (Seine-et-Marne), an exemplary site by the association of a cross and a triangular axe with "cross handle" quite comparable to the sleeves discovered in the Neolithic deposits of the Swiss lakes (Beaux, 1982: fig. 1). This graphic assembly is all the more remarkable because the isolated butt close to the handled axe bears, in the lower part, an "eyelet" identical to the one at the end of the handle of several engraved axes (cover slab of the Table des Marchands in Locmariaquer, orthostat C1 with Three- Skeletons, RS4 cover slabs by Grah Niaul and CS1 of Dissignac).
If subsequent research were to confirm the semantic relationship between the axe and the cross, or even consider it as a euphemisation of the first, and if the signs in "7" were indeed axes, the latter object would dominate the theme of Armorican art by an overwhelming majority. But in the current state of knowledge, there is still no certainty in this regard: we must simply admit that the axe is the most often represented identifiable object and that it is also the most common figuration of megalithic art. It can be added that the frequent representation of the isolated blade (without indication of the handle) allows us to think that the lithic part of this object was sufficient to carry the meaning, or, perhaps, that it was the only significant element.
All this is mainly seen on monuments containing one or more chamber and corridor tombs; their distribution is centred on Morbihan (twenty-nine monuments) with two extensions in Finistère (four monuments) and Loire-Atlantique (two monuments). With regard to the chronology of these Armorican corridor tombs, three phases are usually distinguished: the first, in the fourth millennium, concerns single corridor and round-chamber tombs; the second, at the beginning of the third millennium, includes quadrangular and compartmental tombs; the third, which ends with the end of the third millennium, is characterised by bent planes (in T or V) and burials with side entrance approaching the covered alleys, to the extent that the burial chamber is no longer differentiated from the access corridor (Maisonneuve, 1983: p. 74-75). No correlation could be established between these various architectural types and the choice of signs or their location; on the other hand, it is clear that the spatial distribution of the decorations is not due to chance; as a general rule, they are located on the one hand at the entrance or at the bottom of the corridor, on the other hand at the entrance or at the back of the chamber, which can be interpreted as follows: the entrance to the corridor is a place of transition between the outside world and the inside of the monument, the back of the corridor and the entrance to the chamber indicate the passage between these two parts, and the bottom of the chamber marks the place from which the progression must stop.
Above - Haches miniatures en métal. 1 : Island Bridge près de Dublin (Irlande), 15 cm :4 : Burgberg Talsen (Lettonie), 38 mm: 5: Hollande, 56 mm : 6: Environs de Kiev (Ukraine), 53 mm : 10 : Ormehoj (Danemark), 41 mm; 14 : Ormehoj (Danemark),|39 mm: 15: Lettonie: 16 : Ultuna (Suède), 35 mm.
"Marteaux de Thor" découverts dans des sépultures médiévales. 2 : Indvik (Norvège), diamètre 28 mm; 3: Gilton (Angleterre), longueur 29 mm; 12: Svarta (Suède)diamètre 17 mm.
Haches-marteaux miniatures découvertes dans des sépultures mégalithiques.7: Ormehoj (Danemark), longueur 50 mm; 8-9 : Egby (Suède), longueur 33 et 26 mm.
Gravures rupestres de personnages ithyphalliques maniant une hache. 11 : Simrislund (Suède), le personnage tient une hache géante : 13: Tanum (Suède), un géant ithyphallique brandit une hache au-dessus d'un couple in coitu. (1-6, 12, 15-16, d'après P. Paulsen: 7-10 et 14, d'après M. Herity : 11 et 13 d'après O. Almgren).
Above - replica of passage tomb @ Gavrinis - you can see the patterns and designs on the monoliths. Below are more examples with axes etc;
This is particularly noticeable in Gavrinis, where there are more than thirty axe figurations, sleeveless or not. However, with the exception of the C3 bedside slab, all are engraved between two "thresholds" that mark on the one hand the entrance to the most decorated part of the corridor, on the other hand the entrance to the room: it is therefore a sign of the passage and the culmination. The symbolic function of the corridor, already assumed in several megalithic monuments of France and Ireland (Joussaume, 1985: p. 101; Masset, 1993: p. 123), is here confirmed by the detailed analysis of the decor: for example, the fact that the chevron sign is only between these two thresholds, individualises the particular status of this portion of the corridor. In addition, immediately to the right of the first threshold, a seaming stone surmounting the R6 orthostat bears the figuration of a slinged axe, while the two orthostats that exactly face it present, one the representation of an axe blade (L6), the other that of a cross (L5): everything therefore happens as if the constituent elements of the right sign (cross handle axe) had been dissociated on the two opposite slabs. These elements are also found on the R8 orthostat, the richest in signs in this monument: we can clearly recognise the sledge axe, but also the blade alone, and the butt alone.
Overall, the study of engraved monuments confirms that the choice of slabs bearing the signs has practically never been made between room and corridor, but by favouring on the one hand the back of the room and on the other hand the places of transition outside-interior or corridor-bedroom. Thus, by the mere distribution of the engravings, and without lending to them of particular significance, B. Maisonneuve (1983: p. 82) was able to conclude that their locations "evoke rituals of passage or culmination".
In summary, our certainties are reduced to the presence of the majority of the axe sign on these megaliths, according to a provision that connotes the passage. As these monuments are graves, the question that arises is: what role can the axe play during the passage par excellence that is death?
Mallet, death, axe
Here come the popular traditions associated with death and the axe, starting with the mel beniguet or "blessed mallet", composed of the following stories, all collected in the area of greater density of chamber and corridor tombs. Aveneau de la Grancière reports that in 1830, a paralytic from the village of Poulharff (municipalite of Malguénac), asked a neighbour to go and borrow from the bedeau of the village of Saint-Maltro, which was the depository, a spherical stone "hammer" preserved in a closet in the chapel. This object obtained, an old woman raised it above the dying man's head, and lowered it on his forehead, praying that the old man rest in peace by the Holy Trinity, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; immediately, he surrendered the soul (Le Rouzic, 1939: p. 27-29). In 1892, E. Enaud points out that, in the country of Caurel, an object locally called "mast" was kept in the hollow of an oye near the church door, where customers came to take it for their needs"; this large wooden hammer was used to abbreviate the agony of the ancients, hence the saying sometimes pronounced in the region about the elderly and infirm: "poor old man, he has been forgotten; if this continues, it will be necessary to look for Caurel's blessed mast" (Enaud, 1892; Bonnemère, 1892 a). This saying is very close to others, cited in Breton by Z. Le Rouzic: "Re vou kemiret er mel bé- niguet ei vet i achiú". "It will be necessary to take the blessed hammer to finish it" and by G. Le Menn (1983: p. 94): "Re Vo mont da vennigo an horzh da Gorel". "We'll have to go and have the mallet blessed in Caurel." According to another deposition, this object called maël was burned by an old woman from the town of Saint-Aignan (Bonne-mère, 1892 b). Finally, at the beginning of the century, F. Loth reports that in Quel- ven-en-Guern, there was "a mel beni- guet, a kind of granite stone ball that is placed on the head of the patient whose agony is to be shortened" (Loth, 1903-1904). According to Z. The Rouzic, the inhabitants of several villages owned such "hammers", and he particularly examined that of the Notério and the two of the chapel of Saint-Germain in the municipality of Brech: they were stone balls of about 12 cm in diameter, preserved in an old buffet of the sacristy; the maguillier of the place, questioned in 1893, said that they were in high demand in the past (Le Rouzic, 1939: p. 29-30). These documents can be compared to a quote from Cayot-Delandre, reporting that "on the eastern side of the mountain of Mané-Guen, in Gesnin, there is a chapel of the Virgin, under the name of N.-D. du Mané-Guen. The inhabitants of the country claim that in remote times the old people tired of life went to the top of the mountain, so that one of the druids who were staying there could get rid of it and hit them with his sacred club" (Sébillot, 1892).
In the last text, the allusion to the "druids" obviously suggests some pseudo-Celtoman tradition as it flourished so much in the last century; before any discussion, it should be ensured that the whole of this small file corresponds to a deeply popular tradition, and not to the folklorisation of erudite remarks. To do this, it would be necessary to have testimony prior to the important wave of "druidism" that aroused the investigations of the Celtic Academy founded in 1804. To my knowledge, such a document unfortunately does not exist in Brittany or in France, but the solution to the problem is delivered by a passage from the Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, by John Aubrey (1626-1697): it quotes "The Holy-mawle Wich [they] hung behind the Church dore, Wich when the father was seaventie, the sonne might fetch, to knock his father in the head, as effaete, and of no more use", that is to say "the sacred hammer that they suspend behind the church door, and that the son can go get, when his father reaches seventy years old, to hit him on the head, Since arrived at the end, and became useless" {Oxford English Dictionary, s. v. "aul"). The date of composition of Aubrey's book, whose manuscript was deposited at the British Museum in 1688; it was used by Thoms in 1839 and published in full in 1881; it was never translated into French (Dorson, 1968: p. 9-10). Thus, unless one believes, against all likelihood, that Sébillot, Enaud and Bonnemère, who wrote eleven years after this date without knowing, apparently, the works of the Anglophones, all had access to this text, it must be admitted that the tradition mentioned by these authors for the Morbihan of that time had a counterpart in 17th century England, which escaped the celtomaniac wave. If the cited text proves that it dates back to the 17th century and if, on the other hand, French folklorists could not borrow it from English documents, it is because, in both cases, this tradition is inherited from earlier conceptions. One cannot assume, for such a complex set, the effect of a phenomenon of convergence. In the opposite case, it would be necessary explain how, as early as 1893, a tradition known to local scholars for just ten years had already been folklorised to the point that a village marguillier affirmed in Le Rouzic that the mel beni- guet was "in the past" widely used. Aveneau de la Grancière wrote more than fifty years before the posthumous publication of John Aubrey's text and nine years before that of Thoms, both supposed to make this tradition known; moreover, Le Rouzic says he also witnessed it "as a child", in the company of his master Miln, who died seven years before the publication of Aubrey's book. The cause is therefore heard on this side, and the allusion to the druids, in the text of Cayot-Delandre, corresponds only to a late erudite graft updating a truly ancient tradition by sacrificing to the fashions of the day.
At the very beginning of this century, an English folklorist, Miss Ella Leather, wondered about the meaning of an inscription engraved in a retirement home in Leominster, just under the rough representation of a man wearing an axe. This inscription said "He that gives away all before he is dead I Let'em take this hatchet and knock him on ye head", "He who gives everything before his death, let him be hit on the head with this axe"; popular opinion linked it to the legend of foundation: this retirement home would have been founded in 1736 by a widow who, ruined by this action, would have been forced to end the rest of her days there. Wrongly or rightly, Miss Leather brought these facts closer to the tale entitled The Man with the Hatchet, referring to G's study. L. Gomme, another folklorist who concluded, in 1908, that this story must have dated back to the time when a mallet was used to kill the elderly (Leather, 1912: p. 171-172).
Thus, in France as in England, the first folklorists took this tradition literally, and did not doubt for a moment that in the past, old people would have been killed in this way. Without following them on this point, we can summarise the file as follows: in England in the 17th century, in Morbihan in the 19th century, a tradition associated the death of the ancients with the action of a mallet generally made of stone, sometimes made of wood.
We will not fail to object that, in all these references, there is almost never any question of axe, and that we seem to be dangerously moving away from our subject. To answer this, it is necessary to make some linguistic remarks.
First, the object mentioned in Breton traditions is called mel or maël (Frenchised in a mast), a word whose English mawle or maul seems very close. These terms are all related to the Latin malleus, "hammer, mallet", also at the origin of the French words mail, "big carrier or blacksmith hammer, mallet", malh in the 12th century, таи, "forge hammer" in the fifteenth century, and their derivatives mailleau, malloche, mallochon, mailler, "hit hard", mallocher, "beat, grind the linen", malleable, chamiller, chamailleur, etc.
The old Slavonic mlatû, derived from the Russian mólot, "hammer", can also be compared to these terms: the same family also includes the Romanian maiu, the Italian maglio, the Friulan mai, the Provençal malh, the Catalan mail, the Portuguese malho, the Basque mailu, the Middle English meallen, the English mal- let/mail and the Dutch malie "mallet", as well as the Italian derivatives magliare, French mailler, Provençal mallar, Catalan mallar, Spanish majar, Portuguese malhar "hammer" (Meyer-Lùbcke, 1935, s. v. v. malleus; Ernout-Meillet, 1951: p. 677).
The Breton mel is more closely related to the Middle Irish mell and the modern Irish meall, "ball, ball, small hill"; the Breton vannetais mell, "pestle, blacksming's hammer", has an Irish derivative maoilin, "hammer hammer"; all these comparisons suggest the existence of a common Celtic radical designating "an object of rounded shape without protrusion or tip, of more or less large dimension" (Loth, 1927), a description that suits the balls mentioned in the Breton narratives, and called mel beni- guet. However, the balls in question are made of stone, which is found in the sense of "big pebble, rock, rocky cliff" attested in the Pyrenean area for mail, mailloque, maillas, malheda, mallarrou, mallo (Wartburg, 1969, 6/I: p. 119-120). The hypothesis of an original meaning "stone hammer" is reinforced by the study of the English word hammer; given in the year one thousand as a synonym for malleus, its ancient forms are hamor,homer, hamer, hamyr, hamur, ha-mere, hamour, hemmir, to be compared to the Old Saxon hamur, the Middle Dutch and the Dutch hamer, the Old High German hamar, the German Hammer, and the Old Norwegian hamarr. One of the meanings of the Norwegian word being "stone", this reinforces the kinsent with the Slavic kamy and the Russian КаМеНб, "stone", suggesting that originally the word meant "stone hammer" {Oxford English Dictionary, 1991, s. v. "Hammer").
Stone axes, celestial axes.
But how to go from the hammer to the axe? The linguistic file must here be enriched with mythological elements: Thor's hammer, sometimes called hamarr and sometimes Mjollnir, is itself a relative of the Russian mólnija, the Old Prussian mealde, and the Welsh mellt, all three of which mean "lightning", as well as the Old Icelandic mylln, which means "fire"; in the North, lightning is still often called mjôln (Paulsen, 1939: p. 192). We are therefore in the presence of a case where the object characterising this god is designated by two terms, one of which belongs to the hammer series, and the other, mel-lmal-, brings together the meanings of "stone hammer" and "lightning". However, the linguist J.-P. Maher showed that the Old Icelandic hamarr, "hammer [stone] of Thor", goes back to a pre-Indo-European radical Haek'm-n/r- which had two meanings: "acute, sharp thing" (see the Lithuanian asmens, "shringing", hence a development in "axe [stone]": the Sanskrit amanç, "projectile [stone weapon] of Indra", the pre-Germanic *ahmon I *akmon, "axe [of stone] fulminant", the old Icelandic hamarr already mentioned, and the Lithuanian loan akômu, "axe [stone] of Perkunas", as well as the Slavic kamen- "stone" and "stone to be sharpened" in Carinthia, are all linked to this radical (Maher, 1973).
It is remarkable that in Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Baltic and Slavic, all these words meaning "stone" and by extension "axe, hammer, hammer", also designate the sky, and sometimes the lightning gods. This polysemy is evident in the Greek aK/xwv, "pestle,clume", but also glossing ouranos, "sky"; in the Sanskrit asman, "stone, projectile [in stone] of Indra" but also "sky"; in the pre-Germanic *ahmon, "axe [of stone] fulminant" but still "sky"; in the Asman Astic, "stone, sky"; in the Gothic himins, "sky", and in the old Icelandic himin, "sky". This association of the sky and the projectile (hammer, axe) in stone is explained by the main characteristic of the lightning gods, which is to launch lightning in the form of a stone weapon: thus Thor sending his hamarr, Indra launching Vàçman, "lightning", and Perkunas launching the akmuô axe, "lightning", as indicated by the name of Perkuno akmuô where the second term, borrowed from Germanic, designates "the stone of Perkunas", but also the god himself.
These appearances dating back to a pre-Indo-European heritage, it is necessary to consider *Haek'mon in the cultural context of the Neolithic: it is a nominalisation of the adjective *Haek'- {*ak'~ without laryngelae, hence for example the Latin acus), "axe, pointed thing", necessarily having a stone instrument as a referent. By neutralization of the "acute" or "stone" onomasiological features, this term has come to designate sometimes the stone in general - and it was then used to designate by metaphor the sound and destructive effects of thunder on trees - and sometimes the axe, hence the dazzling connotation of the latter. By metonymy, this particular aspect of the sky that is lightning was used to designate the firmament in general, hence the meaning of "sky" in another series of derivatives of *Haek'mon including the English heaven, the German Himmel, the Old Norse himenn (Gothic himins), as well as the Sanskrit açman, the Avestic asman and the Greek aK/xcov, already mentioned (Hamp, 1967: p. 85; Maher, 1973: p. 449).
This lexical and mythological constellation is at the origin of popular traditions that consider lightning as a stone axe thrown by the god of the storm, hence the names given in Europe to the polished axe: "stone of lightning" in French and the Occitan variants Peyres de toun, Peiro de troun, Pei- ros de Trouneire, etc., men gurun en piedras breton, de rayo, "stones of lightning" in Spanish, ascia de raju in Italian, Donnerstein, Donnerbeile, Donneraxt and Donnerkeil in German, thunderstone and Thenderbolt in English, donderkeil and dondersteen in Dutch, Tordensten in Danish, Thornkilen, Thorkil, Thorensten and Thorsten, "Thor's Stone", in Swedish, ukonnuoli, "Ukko trait" in Finnish, Perkúno Akmuô in Lithuanian, kámen hromový, "thunderstone" in Moravia, Bajan-gœ ge in Lap, astropeleki, "sky axe", in Greek, tela louis, "projectiles of Jupiter" in Latin, etc. (Blinkenberg, 1911; Saintyves, 1934 and 1939; Patte, 1954; Haussig, 1973; Maher, 1973: p. 446). The antiquity of this type of name emerges from the expression asmadidyu, attested in the Rg-Veda and formed with didyut, "lightning", on the term asman whose lithic connotations have already been cited (Lommel, 1955: p. 264-sq.). As for the name of střela given to the weapon of the god Perun, it usually means "arrow" in Common Slavic, but the střely are also the polished axes still called piorunowy klin, "traits of Perun", in Poland and gromovye střely, "thunder projectiles", in Ukraine (Gimbutas, 1973 b).So, and in a few words, the name of the lightning divine weapon meant simply at the beginning "stone weapon"; it was on the one hand expanded to the meanings of "sky" and "lightning", and on the other hand specialized in those of "hammer" and "axe". By semantic wear, the primary motivation of these different meanings was forgotten, the developments of technology have made it impossible to name the axe and hammer by a single word... Thor therefore handles an object called "hammer" (hammarr) and not "axe" (old Icelandic ox, ox, related to the Latin ascia for *acsia and the Gothic aqizi see the German Axt and the English axe), but which is none other than the lightning bolt which is precisely called "axe".
The axe that kills and resurrects
Here is the hammer/axe ratio clarified. But we must now close the loop, by elucidating those of the connotations of this object that predisposed it, from the Neolithic, to make it a funerary symbol. First of all, it should be remembered that, in Nordic mythology, Thor's "hammer" is used by the latter not only To kill, but also to resurrect, for example his goats Tanngniost and Tanngrisnir in the Gylfa- ginning (Sturluson, 1991: p. 77). Mjollnir is also used to consecrate the funeral pire of Baldr; it is again he who evokes in the runic inscriptions of the type of the stele of Virring Randers in Jutland: Thur uiki thisi kuml, "May Thor consecrate this tumulus". In this context, the verb vfgja means both "consecrate" and "kill": the magical power of Mjollnir, which is also that of lightning, consecrates everything it touches, whether by resurrecting (for example the goats) or by killing (for example the king of the giants, in the formula Thur uigi thik trutin, "May Thor consecrate you, king of the giants"). On the Lundbo stele in Norway, a variant of the representation of the hammer is accompanied by an inscription that says: "May Thor, the very powerful god, take with him the body that lies under this stone" (Paul-sen, 1939: p. 129-130).
In ancient India, Indra is equipped with a ritual weapon comparable to that of Thor and called vajra, "the burning stone weapon", i.e. "lightning", imagined in the form of a club or a stone axe: when Indra uses it against Vrtra, the Rg-Veda compares the god to a lumberjack hitting a tree with his axe. This vajra corresponds to the avestic vazra (the "massue" of ViBra), whose name was given by the Persian gurz "massue" (Dumézil, 1948: p. 138; Lommel, 1955: p. 269-270). We can find a confirmation of what was said above about the original kinship between axe and hammer, in the fact that this Persian word gurz itself became in snot uzer, vizier meaning "axe", while in Finnish, it became vasara which means "hammer" (see the Lapn vœcer, which has the same meaning). Thus, the word that, in ancient India, designated Indra's "mace" or "axe" came to designate Thor's "hammer" (Renauld-Krantz, 1972: p. 128).Thor and Indra have a correspondent within the pantheon of the island's Celts, in the person of the Dàghdha Ollathair, ithyphallic "Universal Father" armed with a wonderful and thundering club, which allows him to kill the living and resurrect the dead, that is, according to the formulation of Cl. Sterckx (1986), "to regulate the transitions from virtuality to existence and from being to Cipe". It has as a counterpart in Gaulle the indigenous Jupiter called Taranis, "the Tonnant", or Sucellos, "The Good Striker", also Ouran, Ithyphallic, and endowed with the Masue (Duval, 1976: p. 29, 62-64; Sterckx, 1986: p. 55). The name of Taranis, to be compared to the Welsh taran and the old Irish torann, "thonner" (Lambert, 1994: p. 60), evokes an alteration by metathesis of the theonym Tanaros attested on an inscription of 154 AD (Renauld-Krantz, 1972: p. 111, n° 2); it is similar to the common Germanic *Thunraz from which the names of Thunor in Old English, Thunœr in Old Saxon, Donar in Old High German and of course Thor, or Thorr in Old Norse Thorr come. All these names are built on an Indo-European root designating thunder. In addition, on the Welsh side, the Mabinogi (*Ma- poniaca: "Stories relating to Ma- ponos") reports that this God-Father of Celtic mythology had a son Pryderi, alias Mabon, who corresponds to the Gallic Apollo Maponos, a theonym built on the term *mapos "son" using the suffix -onos (Gruf- fyd, 1912). Some texts also call him Mabon ab Mellt, that is to say "son of Mellt" (Lambert, 1993: p. 1 57). Mellt being the Welsh name of lightning, this "Mabon son of lightning" is comparable to the Gallic god Taranuc-nos, "son of Taranis" or "Son of Thunder" (Sterckx, 1989). However, this name of Mellt is linked to the same Indo-European root as Mjollnir and mel beniguet, namely *mel- whose first meaning is "crush", but which also has connotations related to the genetic power (Sadovszky, 1973: p. 88) found for example in the Breton mel- lek, "manly", and referring to the motif of the lightning brandished by an ithypahl- lic god. This same root can also be recognized in the name of the milna, weapon of the lightning god of the Balts Perkunas (Laton Perkons) crossing the sky in a cart pulled by a goat: like that of Thor, it returns in his hand of itself after he has launched it (Gimbutas, 1973 a).The Dàghdha's club has "a violent end and an amiable end", and placing the first on the head of nine men killed them in the blink of an eye, while placing the other on it immediately resurrected them (Le Roux,1960: p. 361-363; Guyonvarc'h,1961: p. 345). But this double aspect of the god's weapon, dispenser of death and life, is not typical of Celtic mythology, since the Mjollnir that Thor uses against Hrungnir, the snake or the giants, also allows him to resurrect his goats, and that it is also launched into the fold of the bride to "consecrate" her and fertilise her, according to a conception that was Christianised, as evidenced by the words lent to the Virgin Mary by a medieval German text: Der smit ûz Oberlande warf sînen hamer in mîne schôz, "The blacksmith from up there threw his hammer into my breast" (Renauld-Krantz, 1972: p. 131). And the dorje which, in Tibet, designates the vàjra stolen from Indra by Buddha, has similar connotations, since a coitus is mimed during its ritual use (Blinkeberg, 1911:p. 45).
Finally, we must admit an apparently deep between the of life and death of Sucellos or the Dághadha and the mjollnir of Thor, themselves to be compared to the milna of Perkûnas, the střela of Perun, the bipenne of Jupiter Doli- chenus and the vajra of Indra (Gimbu- tas, 1973 a: p. 475; Sterckx, 1986: p. 61).
Let's summarize: the axe and the great passage
Let's summarize again: the Indo-European conception of the lightning god combines genetic and deadly connotations, this ithyphallic being and/or universal God-Father wielding a thundering and dazzling stone weapon (sledgehammer, axe, mallet or hammer) capable of both passing from life to death and bringing the dead back to life. Therein is apparently the key to the problem posed at the very beginning. To the extent that this weapon is the instrument of consecration and passage par excellence, it is predestined to become a symbol of this great passage that is death conceived as the birth of a life in the afterlife. The multiple concordances mentioned above demonstrate the inherited character of such a conception, which has left, in European languages and traditions, traces of which the examples are so numerous that only a sample of them can be delivered here.
The life-supping weapon is found in Lithuania, where it is said to have been launched by the lightning god Perun. In the form of a polished axe, it is placed under the bed of the parturients to help births, or it is reduced into a powder that is made to drink diluted to facilitate childbirth. In Poland, "thunder stones" are used for the same purposes (Blinken-berg, 1911: p. 100; Saintyves, 1934: p. 230); in Sweden, a polished axe is placed in the bed of women in childbirth (Sébillot, 1990: p. 23), while in Ukraine, women in childbirth must sit on a polished axe (Gimbutas, 1973 b: p. 476) In Hesse and Lithuania, one is placed under the bridal bed to have robust children (Patte, 1954: p. 13). In France, similar customs are reported: in Gironde as in Alsace, the belly of parturients is rubbed with a polished axe (Harmois, 1928: p. 142; Sébillot, 1990: p. 23), while in Geay (Deux-Sèvres) women in gizla are made to take their powder (Archives départementales de la Vendée 59-J-25-5).
According to the Thrymskvida, a text by poetic VEdda, the fruitfulness of the new unions was obtained by consecrating them with Mjolnir, according to a theme illustrated at least two millennia earlier not only on cave engravings of Scandinavia - in Tanum a man brandishes an axe over a couple (fig. 13) - but also on those of the upper course of the Irtych in the Altai (Tchernikov, 1947). In Simris (Schonen), the ithyphallism of the axe bearer (fig. 11, 13) recalls that of the god, and shows that it is a representation related to a fertility rite. Moreover, in the last century, in Norway and Sweden, a real axe was given to the groom right after the wedding.In Celtic countries, death is personified by YAnkou in Brittany, VAncow in Cornwall or VAnghau in Wales. These names assume an Old-Celtic *ankauos, where -л/с- represents the reduced state of the root *nek-, found in the Greek vskpos, and the Latin nex, necare (Even, 1951: p. 168)
However, the Ankou was originally armed not with a scythe, but with a club (Le Roux, 1951: p. 166; Le Menn, 1979: p. 8-23) still visible on the few sculptures that escaped the common medieval cross-dressing; it hit the head of the dead of the coming year (Gricourt, 1955: p. 158, Cadic, 1922:p. 22-33). The noise made by the turlet when gnawing the wood is an intersign of death in Scotland, Wales and Brittany, where this insect is called morzholig an Ankoù, "little hammer of death" (Even, 1951: p. 168; Le Braz, 1994: p. 1184) Moreover, the most frequent intersign of death (spermant) in Brittany and Wales is a hammer noise (Cadic, 1914: p. 288; Le Braz, 1994: p. 1185, No. 24). Among the Russians of the Kerensk region, during burials, an old woman hit with an axe the place where the body had rested (Gimbutas, 1973 b: p. 477) In 20th century Ireland, the custom of putting a hammer in coffins was justified by a Christian argument, stating that it was "to knock on the door of Purgatory" (De Vries, 1975: p. 101). In 19th century Lithuania, the dead were provided with an axe in order to defend themselves against evil spirits (Gimbutas, 1953: p. 53); a 17th century text testifies to a similar custom practiced by the Laps (Scheffer, 1667: p. 100). In France, especially in Vendée, at the beginning of this century, a polished axe was still placed in the coffins or in the mouths of the deceased, stating that "the dead used it [...] to recognise his road when he returned among his relatives", or that it would prevent him from "discussing too vividly before his sovereign judges" (La Chesnaye, 1906). In Brittany, a man from Corseul himself asked to be buried with, in his hands, his rosary and a polished axe; another inhabitant of the same village held from his ancestors a polished axe that he regularly lent to his neighbors so that the dying people could kiss it (Harmois, 1928: p. 124-125).
The last tradition cited is strongly reminiscent of that of the mel beniguet: the mistake of most folklorists who talked about it is to have believed that this "blessed hammer" really served to finish off the dying. It is enough to reread the testimonies to realise that such a practice is inconceivable; the use of this instrument was integrated into a framework of beliefs; in reality, it was not used to give death, but to allow the "good death" to which every Christian aspires, which in no way prejudges a different motivation at high times. We have seen enough that the essential property of *mel- is to allow the passage from life to death and vice versa therefore, from a Christian perspective, to allow death on earth to be immediately followed by birth in Heaven. One would doubt, that it would be enough to cite the well-known ritual that follows the death of the pope, and which was still practiced for Pius XI and Pius XII: upon his death, the Camerlingus cardinal struck three times the pontiff' forehead with a small silver hammer calling him by his baptismal name, then, turning to the assistants, he said: "// papa è realmente morto"; after which the seal he used to seal his official documents is broken... We could not find more beautiful Christianisation of the *mel- provider of life and death, especially since Tertullink (ad Nation. 1.10.47) reports that in Gaulle, it was already used at the death of the defeated gladiators, since they were similarly hit with a small mallet.
Archaeological confirmations of all of the above would be sought in three directions: persistence of the tradition of depositing hammers or axes in viatic in burials; persistence of the custom of appearing axes on graves; and finally, persistence of the custom of placing amulets in the form of axes in the graves.
For several millennia and until the 19th century in France, Ireland and Lithuania, polished axes were deposited as a viatic in burials, as a guarantee of survival. Let us simply recall that they were found in Phaistos, in Mycenaean tombs, (Blinkenberg, 1911: p. 22-23, 108), but also in Gallo-Roman burials (Patte, 1954: p. 3); bronze axes with fine edges were discovered in the tombs of Woodhenge in Mount Pleasant (Dorset); the flat bronze axe of Carrowlis- dooaun, in the Irish county of Mayo, was found at the bottom of a tomb (Schmidt, 1980: p. 312); in Syracuse, a polished axe was placed on the chest of the skeleton of a Christian woman named Epiphania, whose grave was dated 350 AD (Blinkenberg, 1911: p. 101); in tombs in Denmark, polished axes are often accompanied by rubefied stones, which has been compared to the passage of VEdda where Thor uses Mjollnir to consecrate the funeral fire of BaldrBerg, 1911: p. 83, n° 73); a fragment of axe polished in amphibiolite was carefully stored in an escarcelle within a Merovingian burial of Meurthe-et-Moselle (Salin and France-Lanord, 1946: p. 225 and fig. 32); evolved flat axes appear in large numbers in the Wessex tombs of the Bush-Barrow group; in the tomb of Moot Low (Derbyshire) an axe with fine edges and "rain pattern" decoration was discovered at the head of a deceased, with the upward-edge (Schmidt, 1980: p. 312), etc. The documents, too numerous to be all mentioned, have probably not always sufficiently attracted the attention of observers, and no argument is ever used to justify the claim that they are indeed prestige marks or the personal property of the deceased. Regarding this type of custom, we can still recall the four fibrolith axes discovered in Gavrinis, one of which was deposited under the threshold of the corridor chamber and another at the entrance of the latter, places that we have already noticed that they connote the passage.The persistence of the custom of appearing axes on tombs is illustrated by Armorican burials, but also by many more recent examples. The best known are, for the final Neolithic of the Paris Basin, the covered alleys of Marly-le-Roi (Peek, 1975: p. 108) and especially Aubergenville (Peek, 1975: p. 34): in this last monument, two axes, one of which is aisle, are engraved on the slab marking the transition between the anteroom and the chamber, according to a layout that recalls that of the decor of Morbihan tombs. In Germany, a slab of a tomb with Schnurkeramik (roped ceramic) in the Merseburg region was engraved with an axe (Pigott, 1939: p. 296). In Scotland, on a slab of Ri Cruin's central tomb, a "pectiniform" engraving interpreted as a neighboring boat with at least six representations of metal axes to be compared to the Irish type of Killha (Craw, 1930: fig. 16). In Nether Largie, the cover slab of another tomb bore the engravings of fourteen flat axes typologically comparable to the copper axes of the Lough Ravel type (Craw, 1931: fig. 4). In England, we know the case of the Badbury tumulus (Dorset) at the edge of which a slab of stoneware decorated with five "cup marks", two daggers and two axes typologically close to those of Ri Cruin, all engravings about which we have spoken of "sub-megalithic tradition" (Pigott, 1939). In Sweden, Kivik's tomb bears two engraved axes that have been brought together with the two pairs of axes, the recent Bronze from Brondsted Skov near Vejle in Denmark, and Eskilstuna in Sweden: these were perfectly unusable for practical purposes, since they were composed of a terracotta heart covered with bronze and gold, with amber inlays (Jankuhn, 1973). Finally, the theme of Yascia, as a funerary symbol, was perhaps not unshrathed from the influence of such imagery, which could be said "of the axe inscribed on the tomb".
The custom of placing amulets in the form of tiny and non-functional axes in the tombs (fig. 1, 4-6, 14-16) is attested in the Grave Passage of Ireland and Denmark, where tiny imitations of hammer axes were found (fig. 7-10) measuring generally one to three centimeters long and of the same type as the real axes: they are very similar to each other, although the amber used for Danish specimens allowed a better finish of these. This similarity is one of the arguments put forward by Mr. Herity to assume a Breton influence transmitted before or after "the fashion of depicting axes in the mural art of Brittany" (Herity, 1973: p. 134, fig. 2). In addition, at the end of the Neolithic, limestone "models" of axes, which surely had no practical function, were deposited in the "henges" of Llan- degai, Woodhenge and Stonehenge (Schmidt, 1980). A tiny chalky stone hammer evoking a type of the late Neolithic comes from a tomb from the recent Iron Age of Gotland (Paulsen, 1939: fig. 100-1). In Germany, miniature axes are still sporadically found in Hallstatt burials and, for the Roman period, we can mention the axe-shaped gold and silver pendants in the tombs of Hassleben and the cemetery of Marosszen-tanna (Jankuhn, 1973: p. 565, fig. 125). In Sweden, Denmark, Germany, many small pendants in the shape of "Thor's hammers", sometimes in amber and fixed to a neck chain, accompany the dead of the viking era (fig. 2, 3, 12). A proof of the very long persistence of this practice is given to us by the fact that the pendants in the form of small axes, called "Thor's hammers" and frequent in the burials of the 10th and 10th centuries of Russia, Norway, Denmark and especially Sweden, have been gradually stylized and then modified into Christian crosses in the Xle-Xlle (Paulsen, 1939:p. 172-180)
Conclusion
On examination of this complex file, the axes depicted on the Armorican corridor tombs seem to fit well into the vast set of lightning weapons by which the transition from being to non-being takes place, and vice versa. Such an observation suggests the idea of the possibility of life in the other world, in full consistency with the enormous effort made by the living for the construction of the "houses of the dead". Certainly, the preceding developments are essentially based on Indo-European elements that cannot be transposed to the Neolithic. But it is striking to note that, by two independent channels, similar conclusions are reached.1 The location of the polished axes engraved on the places of exterior-interior transition or corridor-chamber of the Armorican tombs connotes the passage, and their funerary context suggests that they had something to do with the "great passage".2 The study of the Indo-European file shows that the stone axe is closely associated with the transition from being to non-being, but also with the reverse passage, i.e. to resurrection. Then arises the hypothesis that conceptions associating the axe with death and survival would have taken place since the Neolithic. They would then have been "Indo-Europeanised" by populations who probably only re-motivated them from very close conceptions, while adding their own developments.
The critical examination of such a bold hypothesis would take us far too far, but the present ordering of the connotations associated with the axe will at least have shown how reductionist are the interpretations that are content to see in this object only an ensign of power and prestige, or that usually limit themselves to associating it with "the idea of destructive power" (Le Roux, 1985: p. 65). Finally, such a "reading", however widespread it may be, is a fine example of ethnocentrism, since it takes into account only one aspect of the symbolic meaning of the axe in Europe: although the destructive and deadly image of the axe seems a priori confirmed by widely popularized exotic data, the interpretations that unduly favor this symbolism at the expense of a genetic meaning associated with the idea of resurrection are only built in echo of our own vision of this instrument.
- L'emplacement des haches des haches polies gravées sur les lieux de transition extérieur-intérieur ou couloir-chambre des tombes armoricaines connote le passage, et leur contexte funéraire suggère qu'elles eurent quelque rapport avec le "grand passage".
- L'étude du dossier indo-européen démontre que la hache de pierre est étroitement associée au passage de l'être au non-être, mais aussi au passage inverse, c'est-à-dire à la résurrection. Naît alors l'hypothèse selon laquelle des conceptions associant la hache à la mort et à la survie auraient eu cours des le Néolithique. Elles auraient été ensuite "indo-europeanisées" par des populations qui ne firent sans doute que les remotiver à partir de conceptions très proches, tout en leur ajoutant des développements propres. L'examen critique d'une hypo- thèse aussi hardie nous entrainerait beaucoup trop loin, mais la présente mise en ordre des connotations as- sociées à la hache aura au moins montré combien sont réductionnistes les interprétations qui se contentent de ne voir en cet objet qu'un insigne de pouvoir et de prestige, ou qui sebornent usuellement à l'associer à "l'idée de puissance destructrice" (Le Roux, 1985 : p. 65). Il ressort finale- ment d'une telle "lecture", aussi ré- pandue soit-elle, un bel exemple d'ethnocentrisme, puisqu'elle ne prend en compte qu'un seul aspect de la signification symbolique de la hache en Europe : bien que l'image destructrice et mortifère de la hache paraisse a priori confirmée par des données exotiques largement vulga- risées, les interprétations qui privilé- gient indüment ce symbolisme aux dépens d'une signification génésique associée à l'idée de résurrection ne se construisent qu'en écho à notrepropre vision de cet instrument.
1] The location of the axes of the polished axes engraved on the exterior-interior or corridor-chamber transition places of the Armorican tombs connotes the passage, and their funerary context suggests that they had something to do with the "great passage".
2] The study of the Indo-European file shows that the stone axe is closely associated with the transition from being to non-being, but also with the reverse passage, i.e. to resurrection. Then arises the hypothesis that conceptions associating the axe with death and survival would have taken place in the Neolithic. They would then have been "Indo-Europeanised" by populations who probably only remotivated them from very close conceptions, while adding their own developments. The critical examination of such a bold hypothesis would take us far too far, but the present ordering of the associated connotations with the axe will at least have shown how reductionist are the interpretations that are content to see in this object only a badge of power and prestige, or that usually associate it with "the idea of destructive power" (Le Roux, 1985: p. 65). A beautiful example of ethnocentrism finally emerges from such a "reading", however widespread it may be, since it takes into account only one aspect of the symbolic meaning of the axe in Europe: although the destructive and deadly image of the axe seems a priori confirmed by widely popularized exotic data, the interpretations that unduly favour this symbolism at the expense of a genetic meaning associated with the idea of resurrection are only built in echo of our own vision of this instrument.
Discussion
Paul-Louis Van Berg
Megalithism and the Indo-European current are two independent phenomena, and it is therefore difficult to admit the proposed demonstration.
Jean-Loïc Lequellec
Of course, my purpose was not to link megalithism and Indo-Europeans, but to go back in time, as far as possible, from sub-current Armorican traditions, in order to show that in some cases the chronological hiatus between these and the Neolithic can be considerably reduced.
The investigation has indeed shown that the Mel Benniguet ritual represents an inherited Indo-European conception, making the axe and the hammer objects associated with death and resurrection. However, the linguistic file associated with this set explains the transition from the hammer to the axe by the semantic evolution of the pre-Indo-European term *Haek'mon designating a "stone weapon". The initial connotations of this word can only be understood in a Neolithic cultural context, but its meaning evolved later, here towards that of "blunt instrument" (hammer), and there towards that of "sharp instrument" (axe), regardless of the raw material of these objects, and while preserving the ref-Mythological rents that made them instruments of death, consecration, and resurrection.I note that this fits perfectly with the existence of representations of axes in corridor graves (axe = instrument of death and resurrection), especially since these figurations are preferentially located at the thresholds and passages (axe = instrument of the transition from being to non-being, and vice versa). Therefore, we can only assume, from the construction of these monuments, the existence of conceptions comparable to those that would then be widely disseminated by the Indo-European currents. That they are comparable to them obviously does not mean that they are due to them, but it is likely that they then underwent remotivation, according to a common phenomenon in this kind of situation. This is only a hypothesis that can certainly be discussed, but it remains at least that unlike the interpretation it proposes, the usual "reading" of axe figurations in terms of male insignia, power or prestige, does not in any way account for their presence in collective graves. I conclude that, from an epistemological point of view, the hypothesis presented is, for the moment, more "powerful" than the previous ones.
Serge Cassen
In the interpretation of the signs and figurations observed on the monuments, we must not neglect the work of archaeologists who increasingly show the architectural rearrangements, the reuses and the displacement of the figured blocks.
Jean-Loïc Lequellec
Indeed, this contribution, one of the most important of recent works, is likely to provide a touchstone to the proposed interpretation. But the observation of reuse does not oblige to speak of iconoclasm: in the Romanesque churches, there are any examples of reuse about which no one would think of speaking in this way. Re-employment can indicate a "cultural revolution" as well as syncretism, remotivation or continuity. To ruin the hypothesis proposed here, it would therefore be enough to show, for example, that the manufacturers of Dolmens did not take into account the decor of the reuse elements, when they already carried the pattern of the axe. However, in the current state of documentation, it is precisely the opposite that appears, since these blocks have been used in the conceptual framework associating the axe with the passage in general, and with this "great passage" that is death in particular.Indeed, if we except the cover slabs, which do not concern our problem, the only known documents are the following: in Petit-Mont III, a fragment of slab bearing an engraving of an emâché axe was reused as a threshold at the entrance of the room and, in Gavrinis, a stone bearing an engraving of the same type was reused as a sting stone at the first threshold. As for the example of Barnenez's tomb H, it is not certain that the stele engraved with axes and a bow responds well to reuse, but whether this is the case or not, it is in any case just in the passage between the two chambers.So, with regard to axe engravings, the documents, far from contradicting my hypothesis, confirm it, to the extent that the elements o
f reuse bearing these figurations have not been placed anywhere, but precisely at the thresholds. This shows that their decor has been taken into account, and that it has been correctly integrated into architectural ensembles, according to still dominant canons, and not in rupture with them.
Sylvie Coquerelle
Regarding the meaning of the axe motif, it is necessary to recall its attachment to the idea of fertility in the Scandinavian tradition as well as in Ireland, Lithuania and Sweden.
Until the beginning of the century, in Dalecaslia, province of Sweden, there was a custom that an axe was placed under the mattress of the newlyweds so that their marriage was fruitful.
Note, still in Sweden, a rock engraving depicting a lying couple and a man raising an axe above their heads. This is indeed a blessing and not a statement of infidelity.
Jean-Loïc LEQUELLEC:
I suppose that the rock engraving mentioned here is that of Tanum, whose counterparts are known in Scandinavia and Altai. The relationship of the axe to fertility is all the clearer as the giant who brandishes it is ithyphallic. It has often been compared to Nordic mythological texts that show that Thor could use Mjollnir to "bless" marriages to make them fruitful. But I did not want to make an exhaustive inventory of the customs using the axe as a life provider, because this would have gone far beyond the scope of this essay: I limited myself to citing data from Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Hesse and France - while knowing that there are others - in order to show that I was not relying on an isolated example, but on a set of facts that testify to the existence of an ancient inherited cultural trait, with a wide current distribution.
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