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Tumulus   Listen
Tumulus

noun
(pl. tumuli)
1.
(archeology) a heap of earth placed over prehistoric tombs.  Synonyms: barrow, burial mound, grave mound.






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"Tumulus" Quotes from Famous Books



... sufficiently uninjured to enable us to restore them completely. They generally consisted of a substructure of stone, upon which was raised a conical elevation. In the case of the Regulini Galeassi tomb there were an inner and an outer tumulus, the latter of which covered several small tombs, while the inner enclosed one only, which had fortunately never been opened till it was lately discovered. This tomb was vaulted on the horizontal system—that is to say, its vault was not a true arch, but was ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... not elapsed since the death of the deceased) and the initials G. D. were all that was engraved upon the stone. Beside this tomb was one of a more pompous description, to the memory of a Mrs. Douglas, which had with the simple tumulus nothing in common, unless the initial letter of the surname corresponding with the latter initial on the neighbouring gravestone, might authorize any connection between them, not supported by that ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Longobardo, it had been Borgian and Papal; through all these changes a fortified city, then a castellated town, then a walled village; and a village it now remained. It will never be more; before many generations pass it will probably have become still less; a mere tumulus, a mere honeycomb of buried tombs. It was now perishing, surely though slowly, but in peace, with the grass growing on its temple stairs and the woodbine winding round its ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... apartment under ground; and the priest went thither to partake of the emanation. From this history of the place we may learn the purport of the name, by which this oracular place was called. Colophon is Col-Oph On, tumulus Dei Solis Pythonis, and corresponds with the character given. The river, into which this fountain ran, was sacred, and named Halesus; it was also called [623]Anelon: An-El-On, Fons Dei Solis. Halesus is composed of well-known titles ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... written in his school history, "became a magic word at Athens . . . the one hundred and ninety-two Athenians who had perished in the battle were buried on the field, and over their remains a tumulus or mound was erected, which may still be seen about half a mile from the sea." As a small boy he had read that with a certain inevitable detachment. And now here he lay, a man, on that very tumulus, and the brushwood creaked above his head with the movement of the woman ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... down on vast cultivated fields with acres of waving barley and verdant meadows in which fine Holstein cattle were grazing. This hill is composed of soil dug from Mount St. Jean to cover the bones of the slain of both armies. This conical tumulus contains upon its summit, set in a spacious and lofty pedestal, a huge bronze lion cast from the cannon taken ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... wold, on the green road, with its thorn-thickets, until the chalk began to show white among the ruts; and we were soon at the top. A little to the left of us appeared, in the middle of the pasture, a tiny round-topped tumulus that I had often seen from a lower road, but never visited. It was fresher and cooler up here. On arriving at the place we found that it was not a tumulus at all, but a little outcrop of the pure chalk. It had ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... southern boundary of the Gulf of Sidon, we rode for an hour or two over a plain near the sea, and then came down to a valley which ran up among the hills, terminating in a natural amphitheatre. An ancient barrow, or tumulus, nobody knows of whom, stands near the sea. During the day I noticed two charming little pictures. One, a fountain gushing into a broad square basin of masonry, shaded by three branching cypresses. Two Turks sat on its edge, eating their bread and curdled milk, while their horses ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... it for a hummock or tumulus. Then, as the day whitened about us, I saw it to be a building—a tall, circular barrack not unlike the Colosseum. A question shaped itself on my lips, but something in Harry's manner forbade it. His gaze was bent ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright as day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of fire. Upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled by the ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... who sleep in the isle of Iona; the sons of the wave, and the chiefs of the dark-brown shield! The tear of the sympathising stranger is scattered by the wind over the hoary stones as she meditates sorrowfully on the times of old! Such could I say, sitting upon some druidical heap or tumulus. The fact is this, there is a right and wrong handle to everything, and there is more pleasure in thinking with pure nobility of heart than with the illiberal enmities and sarcasm of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... customary among the ancient Slavons at the burial of their heroes; and resembling the funeral games of the heroic age in Greece. The Slavonians, however, had the habit, on such occasions, of sacrificing a horse over the tumulus or barrow of the departed brave. The Perun mentioned in the stanzas was the War-God of this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... the Avon, a mile and a half from Salisbury; a round chalk hill about 300 feet high, in its round shape and isolation resembling a stupendous tumulus in which the giants of antiquity were buried, its steeply sloping, green sides ringed about with vast, concentric earth-works and ditches, the work of the "old people," as they say on the Plain, when referring to the ancient Britons, but how ancient, whether invading Celts or Aborigines—the true ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... told you upon what a curious and interesting old place we have fallen for our retirement. The walls of the room in which I am writing are five feet thick. The old part of the house must have been an Abbey Grange; the cellars run into a British tumulus, the oaks in the grounds must many of them be as old as the Conquest, and the site of the parish church was a place of pilgrimage probably before Christianity. Stone coffins are turned over on the hillsides in making modern improvements. Denfil ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... arch, the low and narrow doors and passages, the enormous thickness of the walls, when compared with the interior accommodation—exist in both. When a both is covered with green turf it becomes a chambered tumulus, and when buried by drifting sand it is a subterranean Pict's house.... I regard the comparatively large Picts' houses of the Orkneys as the pastoral residence of the Pictish lord, fitted to contain his numerous family and dependents. Such an one exists ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie

... ruined Ambarkhana or Elephant-stable on the hill top. It is a picture of great desolation which meets the eye. The fragment of a wall or plinth, covered with rank creepers, an archway of which the stones are sagging into final disruption, and many a tumulus of coarse brown grass are all that remain of the wide buildings which once surrounded the Ambarkhana. The latter, gray and time-scarred, still rears on high its double row of arched vaults; but Vandalism, in the guise of the local shepherd and grass-cutter, has claimed it ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.



Words linked to "Tumulus" :   mound, barrow, archeology, grave mound, burial mound, archaeology, hill



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