Book Summary
h/t to Mrs. Heritage History, she’s the bomb, and her website is an international treasure.
The Phoenician Origin of the Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons (1924) by L. A. Waddell advances an amazing claim: early Britain formed a colonial extension of a sea-moving Aryan Phoenician world, and the book recovers that connection through inscriptions, coin legends, monuments, and inherited names that Waddell interprets as documentary survivals of a pre-Roman literate culture.
The starting evidence comes from a stone monument in Scotland that Waddell dates to about 400 B.C. and treats as a bilingual record in Aryan Phoenician and Ogam. He presents it as a votive Sun-Cross to Bil or Bel, the Sun-Fire god, and he frames the monument as the first decisive foothold for his reconstruction because its author identifies himself through titles that Waddell aligns with Briton and Scot identity. Waddell’s method proceeds by reconciling script forms, repeated symbols, and transliterated name elements, then extending those agreements outward into chronicles, archaeology, and place-name layers.
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The Newton Stone and the Cilician Briton
Waddell centers the narrative on the Newton Stone inscription, which he sets alongside an Ogam rendering on the same monument to argue for a shared meaning across the two scripts. He prints a line-by-line comparison and translates the record as an explicit dedication of a Cross to Bil by a named Phoenician from Cilicia who also bears Brit and Scot identity. In his rendering, the text states that a Sun-Cross or Swastika Cross “was raised to Bil” by a figure he calls “Ikar of Cilicia,” and it places that donor within a sequence of group designations that Waddell treats as ethnic and political titles: Kassi, Kast, Siluyr or Silur, and Khilani, which he glosses as Hittite “palace-dwellers.” That cluster lets him connect the monument to wider labels that recur throughout the book: Cassi kings and coins in Britain, Silures in Roman-period geography, and a Hittite–Phoenician homeland that he locates in Syria-Phoenicia and Asia Minor. He also uses the inscription to anchor an argument about writing practice, claiming that the Phoenician script behaves like Pali and Sanskrit in its handling of inherent vowels and ligatures, which he then uses to justify the way he prints and vocalizes names and titles.
How could a pre-Roman monument in Scotland carry legible political self-description unless an educated scribal habit already operated within the ruling group? Waddell answers by treating the stone as proof of literacy, cult practice, and long-range movement, and he treats its donor as an agent who imports Mediterranean sun-cult forms into Britain with an explicit act of dedication.
Part-olon, the Scots, and the Credibility of Chronicles
From that inscription, Waddell leaps into the traditional figure of Part-olon, “king of the Scots,” and treats the Newton Stone's author as the historical original behind that name. He ties Part-olon to the Irish-Scot settlement legends that describe a fleet arriving from the Mediterranean, cruising past the Orkneys, and reaching Erin, and he uses the geographic proximity of Orkney waters to the monument’s location as an enabling detail that makes the story’s route feel concrete within his reconstruction. He also uses the same move to rehabilitate Geoffrey of Monmouth and Nennius as chroniclers whose king-lists preserve genuine early material. The logic hinges on a tight chain: a deciphered inscription supplies a real-named actor; the actor fits a legendary narrative frame; the fit validates the chronicles; the validated chronicles then supply earlier names and dates that Waddell treats as workable history.
Waddell builds further identity structure through clan titles that he reads on coins and in name survivals. He links Cassi-Vellaunus and Cadwallon to a deeper Phoenician and Hitto-Phoenician onomasticon, and he claims that local survivals of Part-olon persist in later British and Irish names such as Barthol and Bartle, which he treats as forms molded from the same root cluster.
Brutus-the-Trojan and the Founding of Tri-Novant
Once Waddell grants the chronicles’ historical standing, he uses them to stage a major migration wave under “King Brutus-the-Trojan,” which he dates to about 1103 B.C. He frames Brutus as a Mediterranean leader whose fleet crosses past the Pillars of Hercules toward the tin and gold resources of Albion, and he positions Brutus as the organizer who imposes law, civic order, and names that preserve memory of homeland geography. A key episode centers on London. Waddell states that Brutus founded a city on the Thames called “New Troy,” and he links that to the later name Tri-Novantum and then to Kaer-Lud and London through a chain of successive renamings. He reinforces the plausibility of “New Troy” naming by invoking Trojan naming habits in Epirus, where Helenus, son of Priam, rules and establishes Troy-associated place references that Virgil and Ovid describe in classical literature; Waddell treats these classical citations as cultural context for why Brutus would impose a Troy-name again on British soil.
Waddell ties the river itself into the same cultural practice. He claims that “Thames” derives from “Thyamis,” a major river of Epirus, and he extends the pattern by pointing to a tributary called Cadmus and a nearby port called Phcenice as corroborating name echoes. He also brings in Selsey as an “island-port” whose name he reads as “Isle of the Cili-cians,” so that a Cilician identity on coins and a Cilician identity in the Newton Stone inscription occupy the same southern–northern arc in his reconstructed Phoenician Britain.
Place-Names as a Mapped Archive of Settlement
The book repeatedly treats the map as a ledger of early settlement. Waddell scans old place, river, and ethnic names for patronymic tags that he associates with Barat or Brihat, which he treats as the tribal root behind Brit-on, Brit-ain, and Brit-annia. He argues that later town and village names overlay these older strata, yet he still claims recoverable patterns through persistence in major rivers, ancient ports, and regions that retain prehistoric remains. He uses these patterns to sketch a distribution of early settlements that aligns, in his view, with megalith sites, trading stations, and lines of maritime movement from the Mediterranean beyond the Pillars of Hercules toward Britain.
Britannia as Barati, a Phoenician Sea-Tutelary
A large, named set-piece comes from coin evidence that Waddell attributes to Phoenician “Barats” in Lycaonia. He cites coins of the third century A.D. from Barata and Iconium that show a seated goddess labeled Barati, and he identifies her as Britannia in pose and emblem. He reads the shield as bearing the Sun-Cross, which he links to the Red Cross tradition, and he insists that these coins reveal the origin of the British marine tutelary Britannia as a Hittite-Phoenician figure rather than a Roman invention. He juxtaposes that claim with early Roman coin images of Britannia under Hadrian and Antoninus, treating the similarity in iconography as a transmission trail. He extends the goddess further into Egypt by identifying with a maritime “Mother of the Waters” figure that he labels Biiirthy and aligns with Nut or a Naiad representation, supported by Egyptian hieroglyphic renderings reproduced among his figures.
This section uses names with documentary specificity: W. M. Ramsay appears as the source Waddell follows for Lycaonian coin publication; Akerman appears for early Roman Britannia coins; Hill appears for Phoenician coin parallels; Budge appears for Egyptian evidence; and Waddell folds these into a single genealogical argument that keeps returning to the Barat root.
Stone Circles, Sighting, and the Solar Calendar
Waddell claims that prehistoric stone circles in Britain functioned as solar observatories erected by Mor-ite Brito-Phoenicians, and he describes “sighting” methods that use observation stones to mark solstice sunrise. He points to Keswick and Stonehenge as examples where orientation and marked stones supply an operational astronomy that matches his broader sun-cult framework. He then links the circles’ carved marks to his script argument, treating cup-marks as a legible system rather than decorative accident, and he treats those marks as invocations to the Sun-god in an early Sumerian circle notation.
Cup-Marks as Script and the Archangel of the Pentad Circles
The cup-mark chapters push Waddell’s method into a full decipherment project. He claims that identical circle groupings occur on Hitto-Sumerian seals, Trojan amulets, and British rock carvings, and he treats the repetition as a stable signary. He assigns meanings to number-groups, including a pentad that he identifies with an archangel figure: Tasia, Taswp, Dasup Mikal, and later Michael in his equivalence chain. He states that coins and monuments of the Ancient Britons carry Tasc, Tascio, and related forms, and he treats those as local spellings of the same divine messenger. He describes scenes in which a warrior-angel appears with an eight-rayed sun and an endless-revolutions motif, and he uses those motifs to keep solar theology tied to iconography across centuries and regions.
Tas-Mikal, Tash-ub, and the Coin Legend DIAS
Waddell’s chapter on the corn spirit expands the divine cast through another named synthesis. He identifies Tas-Mikal or Tash-ub of the Hitto-Sumers as Tascio on Early Briton coins, and he links that figure to Tuesday’s god “Ty” in Gothic tradition and to Michael the Archangel in later Christian framing. He quotes Sumer litany lines that hail Tas as “Gladdener of Corn” and “Creator of Wheat and Barley,” then uses those functions to argue for a pan-regional cult that governs harvest ritual and festival time, including the Michaelmas harvest association. He treats the coin legend DIAS as a stamped name for this tutelary figure and connects it to protective scenes where goats or deer symbolize “Goths” under the defense of Cross emblems against lions, wolves, and dragons of death. He also ties Tas to Indara, whom he associates with Andrew’s Cross and Thor’s hammer imagery, and then links those emblems to the British and Scandinavian ensign traditions through the cross forms he traces across seals, monuments, and coins.
A final question sharpens the chapter’s historical intent: what cultural mechanism could keep a cross, a sun-disc, a corn emblem, and an angelic defender locked together across seals, stone carvings, and coin dies unless a coherent cult system guided artisans and rulers? Waddell answers with a lineage model that runs from Sumer through Hittite and Phoenician into Britain, then into Christian symbol inheritance through Goth-mediated adoption.
Language, Law, and the Claim of Early Literacy
Across these sections, Waddell asserts that writing accompanies governance. He links Brutus’s alleged lawgiving to a scribal environment and ties that environment to the Newton Stone as a surviving sample of the “Aryan Phoenician” script in Britain. He also claims that English and Scots preserve a deep deposit of Sumerian or Hittite word-forms and that Ogam derives from Phoenician sacred usage, though the book’s most concrete linguistic moments arise when he grounds claims in proper names, coin legends, and transliterated titles rather than in broad word-percentage assertions.
The book’s structure reflects its evidentiary ladder: inscription decipherment generates named actors; named actors align with chronicles; chronicles supply dates and king-lists; names map onto rivers, ports, and tribal tags; coins and monuments supply repeated symbols that Waddell treats as cult signatures; cult signatures unify stone circles, cup-marks, and cross-forms; and that unification delivers the book’s promised recovery of a pre-Roman history that features Britons, Scots, and Anglo-Saxons as heirs to Phoenician maritime civilization.
Note: “Tintern” reminds me of the Phoenician deity, Lady Tinnit (traditionally vocalized as Tanit), who was the principal female deity of the ancient Carthaginian Tophet Network, worshipped alongside the supreme god Baal Hammon. Though she was a relatively obscure figure in the Levantine homeland, she rose to immense prominence in the western Mediterranean diaspora starting in the late fifth century BCE, where she was frequently invoked first in inscriptions and titled the “Face of Baal”. As a central figure of the tophet cult, she was a primary recipient of infant sacrifices (the molk), and her worship was so resilient that it survived the destruction of Carthage, persisting into the Roman era, where she was syncretized with the Roman goddess Caelestis.
In modern esoteric and conspiratorial interpretations, Tinnit is viewed as an active symbol of dark, elite power. Researcher Peter Duke argues that the colossal “Heritage” statue sitting outside the U.S. National Archives is actually a representation of Tanit. Duke claims the statue’s androgynous features match ancient depictions of the goddess, and he reads the monument as a literal instruction manual for a tophet ritual. In this interpretation, Tanit is depicted holding a funerary urn and a sacrificial infant (the “seed”) wrapped in wheat, symbolizing the prosperity (the “harvest”) that a secretive, “closed circle” of modern elites expects to receive in exchange for transactional sacrifice.
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