SACRED OBJECTS
The modern holy places, under the care of some minister, dervish, or
priestly family, are the scenes of periodic visits, liturgical
unctions, processions, the festal display of lights, etc., and although
in the course of their lengthy history there have been certain
modifications, it is to them that one must look for the persisting
religion which underlay the older official cults. The rocks with
cup-marks and channels, the gloomy caves and grottoes, the mountain
summits, the springs or fountains which still receive the offerings of
worshippers, the holy trees, the sacred sacrificial stones--these form
the fundamental substructure of the land's religion, and whatever be
the true origin of their sanctity, they continue to be visited when
superhuman aid is required.
+Trees.+--It is not the shrines alone which are sacred on the ground
that some saint had once {25} revealed his presence there; there are
trees (the terebinth, and more especially the oak) which are inviolable
because spirits have made them their abode, or which owe their
supernatural qualities to some holy being who is currently supposed to
have reclined beneath them. Such trees are virtually centres of
worship. Incense is burned to them, and they receive sacrifices and
offerings; they are loaded with food, gifts, and (on special occasions)
with lamps. They give oracles, and the sick sleep beneath their shade,
confident that a supernatural messenger will prescribe for their
ailments. They are decked with rags, which thus acquire wonderful
properties; and the worshipper who leaves a shred as a pledge of
attachment or, it may be, to transfer a malady, will take away a rag
which may serve as a charm. Sacred trees were well known to early
writers, and according to the Talmud there were some beneath which
priests sat but did not eat of their fruit, remains of heathen
sacrifice might be found there, and the Jew who sat or passed in its
shade became ceremonially impure. It is unnecessary, however, to
multiply examples of a feature to which the Old Testament also attests;
popular belief has universally associated religious and superstitious
ideas with those beneficent objects which appear {26} to be as much
imbued with motion, animation, and feeling as man himself.
The sacred tree tends to become conventionalised and is replaced by the
trunk or post. As the home of a powerful influence there is an
inclination to symbolise it, and to identify it with the supernatural
being, with the deity itself. The development of the image (not
necessarily female) from an aniconic wooden post can be illustrated by
the pillars representative of Osiris, by the head of Hathor of Byblos
(p. 75 _sq._) upon a pillar in Egypt (Nineteenth Dynasty), and by the
votive tablets at Serabit bearing the head of Hathor mounted upon a
pole, which stands upon a base, or is flanked by a tree on either side.
Some tree-like post is evidently intended by the _ashērah_ of the
Old Testament, a common object at the 'high-places' during the
monarchy. In this case, the relation between the tree and deity is
absolute, and we shall meet with a goddess of this name (see below, p.
87).
+Stones.+--The inanimate stone is partly commemorative, partly
representative. In Palestine we see it marked with the curious hollows
which, when found upon the bare rock, served, amid a variety of
purposes, for libations and for the blood {27} of the sacrifices. The
erect pillar appears to be secondary, but dates, at least in Serabit,
from before our period. The hollows upon such stones are equally
adapted for offerings, although, when they are lateral, it is probable
that they were smeared or anointed like the door-posts of a modern
shrine. These holes are also transferred to slabs or are replaced by
vessels, while the stone itself is not merely 'the place of sacrificial
slaughter' (the literal meaning of 'altar' in the Old Testament), but
embodies the power whose influence is invoked. It is practically a
fetish, the tangible abode of the recipient of veneration. At Serabit
Professor Petrie discovered before a stele a flat altar-stone which
bore cavities (Twelfth Dynasty), and even in Abyssinia at Aksum have
been observed great monoliths, at whose base stood stone blocks with
vessels and channels. Similar combinations have been found at
Carthage. Throughout, neither the stone nor the significance attached
to it remains the same. The sacred stone may lose its value and be
superseded, and it by no means follows that the number of pillars
implies an equal number of in-dwelling beings. While the stone
develops along one line as an object of cult and becomes an altar, it
takes other forms when, by an easy confusion of sentiment, {28} it
comes to represent a deity (of either sex). It is then shaped or
ornamented to depict the conceptions attached to the holy occupant, and
when this deity is anthropomorphic, the pillar becomes a rude image,
and finally the god in human form. It is now clothed and decked with
ornaments. Thus, one finds the groove along the top or the bifurcation
suggestive of early steps towards the representation of the horns of an
animal; or, as among the pillars at Gezer, one perceives two (Nos. 4
and 8) which assume some resemblance to a _simulacrum Priapi_.
The growing wealth of cult, the influence of novel ideas, and the
transformation of the attributes of a deity make the history of the
evolution of the objects of cult extremely intricate. At the same
place and time they may be found in varying stages of development, and
if the interpretation of the several features as they appealed to
worshippers is often obscure to us, the speculations of the
contemporary writers cannot always be accepted without careful inquiry.
+Images and Symbols.+--Thutmose III. relates that he carried off from
Megiddo and the Lebanon a silver statue in beaten work; also some
object [words are lost] with a head of gold, {29} the staff having
human faces, and a royal image of ebony wrought with gold, the head of
which was adorned with lapis lazuli. Although no sacred statues of
Ancient Palestine have as yet come to light--if they escaped the zeal
of later iconoclasts--it would seem that they were of no mean
workmanship, and it may be inferred that they did not differ radically
from the gods and goddesses whose outward appearance can be observed on
the monuments of Western Asia. This inference is supported by the
repeated discovery, in course of excavation, of representations of a
goddess who was evidently the embodiment of life and fertility. A few
figurines and numerous small 'Astarte-plaques,' with moulds for their
manufacture, prove the prevalence of a mother-goddess and patroness of
nature, essentially identical with that familiar in the old Oriental
religions. The plaques, which are about 6 to 7 inches in length, offer
a large variety of types from the coarsest exaggeration of sexuality to
highly conventionalised forms. The goddess is generally nude, but a
bronze figurine from Taanach gives her a conical head-dress and a thin
robe reaching down to her ankles. The characteristic type at this
city, however, depicts a striated crown, rings on neck and feet, and is
{30} generally suggestive of Babylonian influence. Otherwise, when
depicted with bracelets, necklace and lotus-flowers, she resembles the
Egyptian Hathor; indeed she is often marked with the Egyptian uraeus.
A specimen from Tell es-Sāfy curiously combines an Egyptianised form
of the goddess with typical Babylonian five- and six-rayed stars. Yet
a fourth variety with huge and disfiguring earrings finds its parallels
in North Syria and Cyprus. The occurrence and combination of elements
of different origin are instructive for the culture and religion of
Palestine. This fourth type has sometimes a bird-like head, which
recalls a curious example from Lachish with large ears and hooked nose
or beak. A small bronze image of the goddess, which was found at
Gezer, among broken lamps and pottery within the area of the pillars,
gives her horns which coil downwards like those of a ram. It is
through such development and modification that the horns of the great
goddess could come to be regarded as the representation of a crescent
moon when philosophical speculation busied itself with the heavenly
bodies. The traces of animal attributes take another form in various
rude and almost shapeless objects of bronze which have been
interpreted, thanks to a more realistic {31} specimen from the Judæan
Tell Zakariya, as models of an amphibious creature with human head and
the tail of a fish. Here it is natural to see the famous Derceto or
Atargatis, well known later as a deity of the Astarte type, and, as an
illustration of the evolution of symbols, it may be added that a
splendid Carthaginian sarcophagus of a priestess represents a woman of
strange beauty with the lower part of the body so draped as to give it
a close resemblance to a fish's tail.[1]
[1] Mabel Moore, _Carthage of the Phoenicians in the Light of Modern
Excavation_ (London, 1905), p. 146 _sq._ and frontispiece.
The manifold representations of the Palestinian 'good goddess' extend
over a lengthy period, and vary in taste and nuance from the crudest of
specimens to veritable artistic products of the Seleucid age. They
indicate that the fundamental religious conceptions agreed with those
of Western Asia as a whole, and it may be assumed that the conclusions
which can be drawn from the figurines and plaques of this deity would
apply, _mutatis mutandis_, to others.
Among other objects which hardly belong to public cult, but were
probably for household or private use, may be noticed the small idols;
_e.g._ one from Megiddo in the clumsy 'snow-man' {32} technique,
another from Jericho with the head of a bull. Numerous small phalli
have also been unearthed. Some are roughly carved in human shape,
others approximate the form of a fish. They do not necessarily belong
to the cult of any male deity, but the true significance of these and
other small emblems is often uncertain. As with the many small models
of the heads of bull, cow, or serpent, or the two small conical stones
from the temple at Serabit, each with a groove along the base, it is
often difficult to distinguish the fetishes and symbols, which involve
ideas of some relationship with a supernatural being, from the charms,
amulets, and talismans, wherein other religious ideas are involved.
The possibility that some of the objects are really toys cannot be
excluded.
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