Stone pillars marking the exact boundaries of states or nations, whether
settled by a joint commission or by a conqueror’s fiat, are not a modern
invention, although they are in use to-day. They are of old time, and of
primitive ages. And these boundaries of a country are by their very
nature its thresholds.
In Babylonia, the name of Nebuchadrezzar meant literally, “Nebo protect
the boundary!” The threshold of the empire was sacred; and the deity,
with whom the Babylonian king was in covenant, was the protector of that
boundary, and of those who dwelt within it. From the earliest times
onward an Oriental sovereign would set up a pillar, or pillars, or
stele, at the extreme limits of his newly extended dominion, as the
outer threshold or doorway of his empire.
From Tiglath-Pileser I. to Esarhaddon, from about 1100 B.C. to 669 B.C.,
the great Assyrian kings tell us, in their inscriptions, that whenever
they restored an old boundary of their predecessors that had been lost
to them, or extended their boundary beyond its former limits, they had
set up a large stele bearing their image at this threshold of their
empire.[491] Frequently these stele doorways,[492] with the king
represented on the threshold, had inscriptions on them giving the story
of the new conquests, with an ascription of honor to the covenant god by
whose power they had been wrought. Prominent mountain peaks, sources of
rivers, the temples or market-places of conquered cities, the banks of
lakes, or the shores of the sea, are chosen as conspicuous places for
such steles. National boundary marks of this character are still to be
seen on the rocks of Nahr-el-Kelb, above Beyroot, on the shores of the
Mediterranean, and at the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates.[493]
Ashurnâsirapli (king of Assyria, 885–860 B.C.) tells of such a new
boundary mark set up by him at the farthest point of his conquests,
“whither nobody of my royal ancestors had advanced.... At that time I
made a picture [a stele] of my person. The glory of my power I wrote
upon it. On the mountain Eki, in the city Ashurnâsirapli [named after
the king], at a spring I set it up.”[494]
A similar custom would seem to have prevailed with the rulers of ancient
Egypt. Sneferu, a king of the fourth dynasty, greatest among the very
early names of the Old Empire (say, about 4000 B.C.), went down as a
conqueror into the Peninsula of Sinai, and left there inscribed a
mammoth figure of himself, on the granite hills above the famous copper
and turquoise mines of Wady Magharah. He is styled in the accompanying
inscription the “vanquisher of a foreign people.”[495]
As early as the twelfth dynasty of ancient Egypt, before the days of
Abraham, stone thresholds marked the upper border of that mighty empire.
“Two huge pillars of stone, covered with long inscriptions, served
formerly as boundary marks between the Egyptian empire and the
negro-land called Heh.”[496] King Usurtasen III., who set up these
landmarks, says in an inscription on the second of them: “Every one of
my sons who maintains this boundary which I have fixed, he shall be
called my son who was born of me. My son is like the protector of his
father (that is Horus), like the preserver of the boundary of his father
(that is Osiris.) But if he abandons it, so that he does not fight upon
it, he is not my son, he is not then born of me. I have caused my own
image to be set up, on this boundary which I have fixed, not that ye may
(only) worship it (the image of the founder), but that ye may fight upon
it.”
On the oldest map in the world, a map of the gold districts in Nubia, in
the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt, there is a mention of the “memorial
stone of King Mineptah I. Seti I.” And that memorial stone, of this new
threshold of domain, marked the boundary line of empire in that
direction.[497]
Rameses II. had it recorded on the walls of the rock grotto of
Bayt-el-Walli concerning his threshold extensions: “The deeds of victory
are inscribed a hundred thousand times on the glorious Persea. As the
chastiser of the foreigners, _who has placed his boundary-marks
according to his pleasure_ in the land of the Ruthennu, he is in truth
the son of Ra, and his very image.”[498]
On the eastern border of Lower Egypt, the main passage way from the
Delta into Arabia, the great gateway of the empire toward the north and
the east, is still known as _El Gisr_, or “The Threshold.”[499] This
point is near Lake Timsah, on the line of the modern Suez Canal.
In ancient Greece, Theseus “set up a pillar,” as a threshold stone
between Peloponnesus and Attica,–then called Ionia,–“writing upon it an
epigram in two trimeters, bounding the land. Of these [inscriptions] the
one toward the east side said, ‘This is not Pelopennesus, but Ionia,’
and that toward the west, ‘This is Pelopennesus, not Ionia.’”[500]
Even the term, the “Pillars of Hercules,” as the boundaries of the
Grecian empire and the then known world, is an indication of this idea
in the classic age, as well as in the primitive mind. Calpë and Abyla
were the door-posts of the great outer passage way, and the threshold
between those pillars was founded upon the seas, and established upon
the floods.[501]
As showing that the term “threshold” is not applied to these boundary
stones merely by accommodation, it is sufficient to quote from Justinian
in the case. He declares specifically that “as the threshold makes a
certain boundary in a house, so also the ancients designed that the
boundary of the empire should be its threshold; hence it is called the
‘threshold,’ as if it were a certain bound and term.”[502] Speaking of
one who has been in foreign captivity, and who desires a resumption, or
a restoration, of his civil rights, on his coming back to his country,
Justinian says that such a return “is called _postliminium_ [a
recrossing of the threshold], because at that same threshold the thing
which he has lost is restored to him.”[503]
When the old Portuguese navigators started out on their voyages of
discovery, they were accustomed to take with them stone pillars to set
up in a prominent place at the farthest limits of their newly claimed
territory as the national door-posts or threshold in that direction.
Such a pillar was erected at the mouth of the Congo River, at the time
of its discovery by Diego Cão, or Cam, in 1484–85. On this account, the
river was known for a time as the “Rio de Padrão,” or “Pillar
River.”[504] It might, indeed, have been called the “River of the
Threshold.”
This custom of setting up stone pillars as boundary marks along the
borders of countries, nations, and states, has been continued down to
the present day. Such landmarks are still to be seen along the borders
of the great divisions of Europe, and they are on the lines of the
several states of the United States of America. The line between the
English grants in America, originally made to the Duke of York and to
Lord Baltimore, was, after much dispute, run by two English surveyors,
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, in 1763–67, and marked by stone
pillars at intervals of five miles. This was generally known as “Mason
and Dixon’s line;” it separated Pennsylvania from Delaware, Maryland,
and Virginia, and was the dividing line between the free and the slave
states before the Civil War of 1861–65. One of those early stone
landmarks on that line is still to be seen near Oxford, in Chester
County, Pennsylvania, as an illustration of a practice beginning in
Babylonia as far back as 4000 B.C., and continued in America down to
A.D. 1895.[505]
European titles of rank bear traces of the importance formerly attached
to national boundary lines and their preservation. The old German title
of “markgraf,” the “graf” or count or warden of the marches, designated
a representative or servant of the king who was in charge of the
“marches,” or “marks,” or “border lines,” which guarded the thresholds
of the empire in different directions. It was under “Henry the Fowler,”
early in the tenth century, that this title, as a title, first gained
prominence. Afterwards it became hereditary; “and hence have come the
innumerable margraves, marquises, and such like of modern times.”[506]
“Letters of marque” were letters of commission, or permission, granted
by the government to individuals, in time of war, to pass over the
boundary mark, or national threshold, for purposes of seizure or
reprisal. And a “marquee” is primarily a tent over, or before, the
threshold of a military commander’s tent.