The primitive altar of the family would seem to have been the threshold,
or door-sill, or entrance-way, of the home dwelling-place. This is
indicated by surviving customs, in the East and elsewhere among
primitive peoples, and by the earliest historic records of the human
race. It is obvious that houses preceded temples, and that the
house-father was the earliest priest. Sacrifices for the family were,
therefore, within or at the entrance of the family domicile.
In Syria and in Egypt, at the present time, when a guest who is worthy
of special honor is to be welcomed to a home, the blood of a
slaughtered, or a “sacrificed,” animal is shed on the threshold of that
home, as a means of adopting the new-comer into the family, or of making
a covenant union with him. And every such primitive covenant in blood
includes an appeal to the protecting Deity to ratify it as between the
two parties and himself.[1] While the guest is still outside, the host
takes a lamb, or a goat, and, tying its feet together, lays it upon the
threshold of his door. Resting his left knee upon the bound victim, the
host holds its head by his left hand, while with his right he cuts its
throat. He retains his position until all the blood has flowed from the
body upon the threshold. Then the victim is removed, and the guest steps
over the blood, across the threshold; and in this act he becomes, as it
were, a member of the family by the Threshold Covenant.
The flesh of the slaughtered animal is usually given to the neighbors,
although in the case of humbler persons it is sometimes used for the
meal of the guest in whose honor it is sacrificed. It may be a larger
offering than a lamb or a goat, or it may be a smaller one. Sometimes
several sheep are included in the sacrifice. Again, the offering may be
a bullock or a heifer, or simply a fowl or a pair of pigeons. The more
costly the gift, in proportion to the means of the host, the greater the
honor to him who is welcomed.
As illustrative of this idea, a story is commonly told in Syria of a
large-hearted man who gave proof of his exceptional devotedness to an
honored guest. He had a horse which he prized as only an Oriental can
prize and love one. This horse he sent to meet his guest, in order that
it might bring him to the home of its owner. When the guest reached the
house and dismounted, he spoke warm words in praise of the noble animal.
At once the host led the horse to the house door, and cut its throat
over the threshold, asking the guest to step over the blood of this
costly offering, in acceptance of the proffered Threshold Covenant.
“If you know that one is coming whom you would honor and welcome, you
must make ready to have the blood on the threshold when he appears,”
said a native Syrian. In case an honored guest arrives unexpectedly, so
that there is no time to prepare the customary sacrifice, salt, as
representing blood, may be sprinkled on the threshold, for the guest to
pass over; or again coffee, as the Muhammadan substitute for the “blood
of the grape,”[2] may be poured on it.[3]
Crossing the threshold, or entering the door, of a house, is in itself
an implied covenant with those who are within, as shown by the earlier
laws of India. He who goes in by the door must count himself, and must
be recognized, as a guest, subject to the strictest laws of hospitality.
But if he enters the house in some other way, not crossing the
threshold, there is no such implied covenant on his part. He may then
even despoil or kill the head of the house he has entered, without any
breach of the law of hospitality, or of the moral law as there
understood.[4] Illustrations of this truth are found in the Mahabharata,
as applicable to both a house and a city.[5] “It is in accordance with
the strict law of all the law books,” of ancient India, “that one may
enter his foe’s house by _a-dvāra_, ‘not by door,’ but his friend’s
house only ‘by door.’”[6]
It would seem to have been in accordance with this primitive law of the
East that Jesus said: “He that entereth not by the door into the fold of
the sheep, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a
robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the
sheep.... I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved,
and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. The thief cometh
not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may
have life, and may have it abundantly.”[7]
It is possible that there is an explanation, in this law of the doorway,
or threshold, of the common practice among primitive Scandinavians of
attacking the inmates of an enemy’s house through the roof instead of by
the door;[8] also, of the custom in Greece of welcoming a victor in the
Olympian games into his city through a breach in the walls, instead of
causing him to enter by the gates, with its implied subjection to all
the laws of hospitality.[9] (See Appendix.)
Examples of the blood welcome at the threshold abound in modern Egyptian
customs. When the new khedive came to his palace, in 1882, a threshold
sacrifice was offered as his welcome. “At the entrance to the palace six
buffaloes were slaughtered, two being killed just as the khedive’s
carriage reached the gateway. The blood of the animals was splashed
across the entrance, so that the horses’ hoofs and wheels of the
carriage passed through it. The flesh was afterwards distributed among
the poor.”[10]
When General Grant was at Assioot, on the Upper Nile, during his journey
around the world, he was doubly welcomed as a guest by the American
vice-consul, who was a native of Egypt. A bullock was sacrificed at the
steamer landing, and its head was laid on one side of the gang-plank,
and its body on the other. The outpoured blood was between the head and
the body, under the gang-plank, so that, in stepping from the steamer to
the shore, General Grant would cross over it. When he reached the house
of the vice-consul, a sheep was similarly sacrificed at the threshold,
in such a way that General Grant passed over the blood in entering.[11]
It is also said in Egypt: “If you buy a dahabiyeh,” and therefore are to
cross its threshold for the occupancy of your new home on the water,
“you must kill a sheep, letting the blood flow on the deck, or side, of
the boat, in order that it may be lucky. Your friends will afterwards
have to dine on the sheep.”[12] There seems, indeed, to be a survival of
this idea in the custom of “christening” a ship at the time of its
launching, in England and America, a bottle of wine–the “blood of the
grape”[13]–being broken on the bow of the vessel as it crosses the
threshold of the deep. And a feast usually follows this ceremony
also.[14]
In Zindero, or Gingiro, or Zinder, in Central Africa, a new king is
welcomed at the royal residence with a bloody threshold offering.
“Before he enters his palace two men are to be slain; one at the foot of
the tree by which his house is chiefly supported; the other at the
threshold of his door, which is besmeared with the blood of the victim.
And it is said ... that the particular family, whose privilege it is to
be slaughtered, so far from avoiding it, glory in the occasion, and
offer themselves willingly to meet it.”[15]
Among the Arabs in Central Africa, the blood welcome of a guest at the
threshold of a home is a prevailing custom. “The usual welcome upon the
arrival of a traveler, who is well received in an Arab camp, is the
sacrifice of a fat sheep, that should be slaughtered at the door of the
hut or tent, so that the blood flows to the threshold.”[16]
On the arrival of strangers among the primitive tribes of Liberia, in
West Africa, a fowl is killed, and its blood is sprinkled at the
doorway.[17]
Receiving an honored guest with bread and salt, at the threshold of the
house he enters, is common in Russia. Bread and salt are symbolic, in
primitive thought, of flesh and blood; and this threshold welcome seems
to be a survival of the threshold sacrifice.[18]
To step over or across the blood, or its substitute, on the door-sill,
is to accept or ratify the proffered covenant; but to trample upon the
symbol of the covenant is to show contempt for the host who proffers it,
and no greater indignity than this is known in the realm of primitive
social intercourse.