The Stone of Scone

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EL Alamein
Posts: 3102
Joined: Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:55 pm

The Stone of Scone

Post by EL Alamein »

A bit of useless trivia here but some may find it interesting.

I was lying in bed one night looking for an old movie to watch a little bit of before turning in. I came across the movie "The Kings Speech". It's about George VI and preparing him for coronation and leading England through the impending second world war. He had a terrible stutter and this movie is about his relationship with his speech therapist to get it under control for speech making.

There was an interesting scene where the therapist sat on the coronation chair to induce Bertie into making an impassioned plea to get out of it because of the royal tradition. He mentions that the stone of Scone is under it and every English King has been coronated on it for the past seven-hundred years or so.

Intrigued I did a little searching and it was also the stone that the Scottish Kings were also coronated on for a few hundred years before Edward I carted it off in the 13th century for himself.

Long story short there's a controversy as to whether or not this is the genuine stone. It's tradition is that it was the pillow of Jacob in Genesis where he beheld the vision of the stairway to Heaven and angels traversing it. Jacob made it an alter and carried it with him.

The controversy is whether, when Edward I took the stone, the Scottish monks gave him the genuine article. There's another controversy about it being genuine following a theft on Christmas Day in 1950 but I'll leave that out. Seems most historians believe the stone that exists now is the same stone that was stolen.

Anyway, it seems from a geological perspective that the stone is probably a fake as it's petrography suggests it was quarried around Perth, Scotland.

https://sjg.lyellcollection.org/content/34/2/145

Seems Edward I may have been hoaxed. Or was it always a hoax, even on the Scottish Monarchs? If only Edward was hoaxed then where is the real stone?

My guess is it was always a hoax to serve for legitimacy purposes. The real stone, if it ever existed, is probably lost to antiquity. It probably never made it's way to Scotland nor anywhere west of the Holy Land.

Chris
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