[544] Cf. F. Lenormant, in Revue de l'histoire des religions, iii, 31 ff.; Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, p. 775 f.
[545] For Phœnician customs see Pietschmann, Phönisier, p. 204 ff.
[546] Cf. Deut. x, 2; Ex. xxv, 16; 2 Chr. v, 10, where the stone in the ark seems to have become two stone tables on which the decalogue was written by the finger of Yahweh—an example, if the view mentioned above be correct, of the transformation of a thing originally divine in itself into an accessory of a god.
[547] Cf. Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, s.v. Kaaba; Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentumes, pp. 99, 171.
[548] On the relation between the stone heaps and the Hermes pillars cf. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, ii, 455, and Roscher, Lexikon, i, 2, col. 2382. With Hermes as guide of travelers cf. the Egyptian Khem (Min), of Coptos, as protector of wanderers in the desert, and perhaps Eshmun in the Sardinian trilingual inscription (see Roscher, Lexikon, article "Esmun"; Orientalische Studien Nöldeke gewidmet).
[549] See below, § 1080.
[550] W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., pp. 202, 341; cf. Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, chap. xi; article "Altar" in Hastings, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics.
[551] Lev. xvi, 19.
[552] For some methods of such introduction see W. Crooke, in Folklore, viii.
[553] Herodotus, ii, 44; he identifies Melkart with Herakles.