The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

CILICIANS IN EARLY BRITAIN 43

“ Tsland of the Sels.”"? A hoard of pre-Roman coins of Ancient Britain, mostly gold, were found on the sea-shore between Bognor and Selsey, the latter being the name of the ancient Briton sea-port town of the peninsula offlying the Briton “ Caer Cei’’ city, the Chichester of the Romans.? These coins are of archaic type with solar symbols (see later) and bear an inscription hitherto undeciphered, and described by the leading numismatist as ‘‘ a number of marks something like Hebrew characters, which is, however, undecipherable.’”*

Now, this inscription on these Ancient Briton coins from Selsey (see Fig. 9) is, I find, stamped in clear Aryan Phcenician writing, with letters generally similar to those of the Newton Stone, and, like it, reads in the usual Aryan or nom-Semitic direction. It reads ‘‘ SS(i)Z,’’ which seems a contraction

Fig.9. Phoenician Inscription on Early Briton Coins found near Sels-ey. (After Evans.)® Note Inscription reads “* SS()L,” a contraction for “‘ Cilicia.”

for the fuller ‘‘ Sssilokoy”’ or “ Cilicia” of the Newton Stone Phcenician inscription; for it is the rule in Early Briton coins, also followed in modern British, to use a contracted form of place and other names for want of space. Topographically, this Sels-ey was precisely the sort of island

‘The ey, or ay or ea affix in British place-names such as Chelsea or Chelsey, Battersea, Rothesay, Orkney, Alderney, etc., is admittedly the Gothic and Norse ey “an island’’ (cp. V.D. 134). And significantly the Phoenician word for “ island ” or ‘‘ sea-shore ’’ was ay (Hildebrand), a word also adopted by the Hebrews in their Old Testament for ‘Isles of the Gentiles’’ and places beyond the sea.

?C.B., i, 267; and B.HLE., 13.

2 E.B.C., 94-5.

* This direction is clearly indicated by the third or last letter, which is

turned to the left, i.e. in the opposite direction to the retrograde “‘ Semitic ” Phoenician letter L.

° E.B.C., pl. E., Fig. to.