I should add that in an immense number of instances the rude stone image or idol, and at a still lower grade the unwrought sacred stone, stands as the central object under a shed or shelter, which develops by degrees into the stately temple. The advance in both is generally more or less parallel; though sometimes, as in historical Greece, a temple of the noblest architecture encloses as its central and principal object of veneration the rough unhewn stone of early barbaric worship. So even in Christendom, great churches and cathedrals often hold as their most precious possession some rude and antique image like the sacred Bambino of Santa Maria in Ara Coli at Rome, or the “Black Madonnas” which are revered by the people at so many famous Italian places of pilgrimage.
Nor do I mean to say that every Idol is necessarily itself a funereal relic. When once the idea of godship has been thoroughly developed, and when men have grown accustomed to regard an image or idol as the representative or dwelling-place of their god, it is easy to multiply such images indefinitely. Hundreds of representations may exist of the self-same Apollo or Aphrodite or Madonna or St. Sebastian. At the same time, it is quite clear that for most worshippers, the divine being is more or less actually confused with the image; a particular Artemis or a particular Notre Dame is thought of as more powerful or more friendly than another. I have known women in Southern Europe go to pray at the shrine of a distant Madonna, “because she is greater than our own Madonna.” Moreover, it is probable that in many cases images or sacred stones once funereal in origin, and representing particular gods or ghosts, have been swallowed up at last by other and more powerful deities, so as to lose in the end their primitive distinctness. Thus, there were many Baals and many Ashteroths; probably there were many Apollos, many Artemises, many Aphrodites. It is almost certain that there were many distinct Hermæ. The progress of research tends to make us realise that numberless deities, once considered unique and individual, may be resolved into a whole host of local gods, afterwards identified with some powerful deity on the merest external resemblances of image, name, or attribute. In Egypt at least this process of identification and centralisation was common. Furthermore, we know that each new religion tends to swallow up and assimilate to itself all possible elements of older cults; just as Hebrew Jahwehism tried to adopt the sacred stones of early Semitic heathenism by associating them with episodes in the history of the patriarchs; and just as Christianity has sanctified such stones in its own area by using them sometimes as the base of a cross, or by consecrating them at others with the name of some saint or martyr.
But even more than the evolution of the Temple and the Idol, the evolution of the Priesthood has given dignity, importance, and power to the gods. For the priests are a class whose direct interest it is to make the most of the greatness and majesty of the deities they tend or worship.
Priesthood, again, has probably at least two distinct origins. The one is quasi-royal; the other is quasiservile.
I begin with the first. We saw that the chief of an African village, as the son and representative of the chief ghosts, who are the tribal gods, has alone the right to approach them directly with offerings. The inferior villager, who desires to ask anything of the gods, asks through the chief, who is a kinsman and friend of the divine spirits, and who therefore naturally understands their ideas and habits. Such chiefs are thus also naturally priests. They are sacred by family; they and their children stand in a special relation to the gods of the tribe, quite different from the relation in which the common people stand; they are of the blood of the deities. This type of relation is common in many countries; the chiefs in such instances are “kings and priests, after the order of Melchizedek.”
To put it briefly, in the earliest or domestic form of religion, the gods of each little group or family are its own dead ancestors, and especially (while the historic memory is still but weak) its immediate predecessors. In this stage, the head of the household naturally discharges the functions of priest; it is he who approaches the family ghosts or gods on behalf of his wives, his sons, his dependants. To the last, indeed, the father of each family retains this priestly function as regards the more restricted family rites; he is priest of the worship of the lares and penates; he offers the family sacrifice to the family gods; he reads family prayers in the Christian household. But as the tribe or nation arises, and chieftainship grows greater, it is the ghosts or ancestors of the chiefly or kingly family who develop most into gods; and the living chief and his kin are their natural representatives. Thus, in most cases, the priestly office comes to be associated with that of king or chief. Indeed, we shall see hereafter in a subsequent chapter that many kings, being the descendants of gods, are gods themselves; and that this union of the kingly and divine characters has much to do with the growth of the dignity of godhead. Here, however, I waive this point for the present; it will suffice for us to note at the present stage of our argument that in a large number of instances the priesthood and the kingship were inherent and hereditary in the self-same families.
“The union of a royal title with priestly duties,” says Mr. Frazer in The Golden Bough, “was common in ancient Italy and Greece. At Rome and in other Italian cities there was a priest called the Sacrificial King or King of the sacred rites (Rex Sacrificulus or Rex Sacrorum), and his wife bore the title of Queen of the Sacred Rites. In republican Athens, the second magistrate of the state was called the King, and his wife the Queen; the functions of both were religious. Many other Greek democracies had titular kings, whose duties, so far as they are known, seem to have been priestly. At Rome the tradition was that the Sacrificial King had been appointed after the expulsion of the kings in order to offer the sacrifices which had been previously offered by the kings. In Greece a similar view appears to have prevailed as to the origin of the priestly kings. In itself the view is not improbable, and it is borne out by the example of Sparta, the only purely Greek state which retained the kingly form of government in historical times. For in Sparta all state sacrifices were offered by the kings as descendants of the god. This combination of priestly functions with royal authority is familiar to every one. Asia Minor, for example, was the seat of various great religious capitals, peopled by thousands of ‘Sacred slaves,’ and ruled by pontiffs who wielded at once temporal and spiritual authority, like the popes of mediaeval Rome. Such priest-ridden cities were Zela and Pes-sinus. Teutonic Kings, again, in the old heathen days seem to have stood in the position and exercised the powers of high priests. The Emperors of China offer public sacrifices, the details of which are regulated by the ritual books. It is needless, however, to multiply examples of what is the rule rather than the exception in the early history of the kingship.”
We will return hereafter in another connexion to this ancient relation of kingship with priesthood, which arises naturally from the still more ancient relation of the king to the god.
Where priesthood originates in this particular way, little differentiation is likely to occur between the temporal and the ecclesiastical power. But there is a second and far more potent origin of priesthood, less distinguished in its beginnings, yet more really pregnant of great results in the end. For where the king is a priest, and the descendant of the gods, as in Peru and Egypt, his immediate and human power seems to overshadow and as it were to belittle the power of his divine ancestors. No statue of Osiris, for example, is half so big in size as the colossal figure of Rameses II. which lies broken in huge pieces outside the mortuary temple of the king it commemorates, among the ruins of Thebes. But where a separate and distinct priesthood gets the management of sacred rites entirely into its own hands, we find the authority of the gods often rising superior to that of the kings, who are only their vicegerents: till at last we get Popes dictating to emperors, and powerful monarchs doing humble penance before the costly shrines of murdered archbishops.
The origin of independent or quasi-servile priesthood is to be found in the institution of “temple slaves,”—the attendants told off as we have already seen to do duty at the grave of the chief or dead warrior. Egypt, again affords us, on the domestic side, an admirable example of the origin of such priesthoods. Over the lintel of each of the cave-like tombs at Beni Hassan and Sakkarah is usually placed an inscription setting forth the name and titles of its expected occupant (for each was built during the life-time of its owner), with an invocation praying for him propitious funeral rites, and a good burial-place after a long and happy life. Then follows a pious hope that the spirit may enjoy for all eternity the proper payment of funereal offerings, a list of which is ordinarily appended, together with a statement of the various anniversaries on which they were due. But the point which specially concerns us here is this: Priests or servants were appointed to see that these offerings were duly made; and the tomb was endowed with property for the purpose both of keeping up the offerings in question, and of providing a stipend or living-wage for the priest. As we shall see hereafter, such priesthoods were generally made hereditary, so as to ensure their continuance throughout all time: and so successful were they that in many cases worship continued to be performed for several hundred years at the tomb; so that a person who died under the Early Empire was still being made the recipient of funeral dues under kings of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties.