As regards the Phoenicians and Canaanites, Philo Byblius says that plants were in ancient times revered as gods, and honoured with libations and sacrifices. Dr. Robertson Smith gives several instances. Christianity has not extinguished the veneration for sacred trees in Syria, where they are still prayed to in sickness and hung with rags. The Moslems of Palestine also venerate the sacred trees of immemorial antiquity.
In the Hebrew scriptures tree-worship constantly appears, and is frankly dwelt with by Professor Robertson Smith, who does not refuse to connect with this set of beliefs the legend of Jahweh in the burning bush. The local altars of early Hebrew cult were habitually set up “under green trees.” On this subject I would refer the reader to Dr. Smith’s own interesting disquisition on p. 193 of The Religion of the Semites.
With regard to the general sacredness of vegetation, and especially of food-plants, such as corn, the vine, and the date-palm, I postpone that important subject for the present, till we come to consider the gods of cultivation, and the curious set of ideas which gradually led up to sacramental god-eating. In a theme so vast and so involved as that of human religion, it becomes necessary to take one point at a time, and to deal with the various parts in analytic isolation.
We have now examined briefly almost all the principal sacred objects of the world, according to classes—the corpse, the mummy, the idol, the sacred stone, the sacred stake, the sacred tree or grove; there remains but one other group of holy things, very generally recognised, which I do not propose to examine separately, but to which a few words may yet be devoted at the end of a chapter. I mean, the sacred wells. It might seem at first sight as if these could have no possible connection with death or burial; but that expectation is, strange to say, delusive. There appears to be some reason for bringing wells, too, into the widening category of funereal objects. The oxen’s well at Acre, for example, was visited by Christian, Jewish, and Moslem pilgrims; it was therefore an object of great ancient sanctity; but observe this point: there is a mashhed or sacred tomb beside it, “perhaps the modern representative of the ancient Memnonium.” Every Egyptian temple had in like manner its sacred lake. In modern Syria, “cisterns are always found beside the grave of saints, and are believed to be inhabited by a sort of fairy. A pining child is thought to be a fairy changeling, and must be lowered into the cistern.” The similarity of the belief about holy wells in England and Ireland, and their frequent association with the name of a saint, would seem to suggest for them a like origin. Sacred rivers usually rise from sacred springs, near which stands a temple. The river Adonis took its origin at the shrine of Aphaca: and the grave of Adonis, about whom much more must be said hereafter, stood near the mouth of the holy stream that was reddened by his blood. The sacred river Belus had also its peculiar Memnonium or Adonis tomb. But I must add that sacred rivers had likewise their annual god-victims, about whom we shall have a great deal to say at a later stage of our enquiry, and from whom in part they probably derived their sanctity. Still, that their holiness was also due in part, and originally, to tombs at their sources, I think admits of no reasonable doubt.
The equivalence of the holy well and the holy stone is shown by the fact that while a woman whose chastity was suspected had to drink water of a sacred spring to prove her innocence, at Mecca she had to swear seventy oaths by the Kaaba.
Again, sacred wells and fountains were and are worshipped with just the same acts of sacrifice as ghosts and images. At Aphaca, the pilgrims cast into the holy pool, jewels of gold and silver, with webs of linen and other precious stuffs. A holy grove was an adjunct of the holy spring: in Greece, according to Botticher, they were seldom separated. At the annual fair of the Sacred Terebinth, or tree and well of Abraham at Mamre, the heathen visitors offered sacrifices beside the tree, and cast into the well libations of wine, with cakes, coins, myrrh, and incense: all of which we may compare with the Ostyak offerings to ancestral grave-stakes. At the holy waters of Karwa, bread, fruit, and other foods were laid beside the fountain. At Mecca, and at the Stygian Waters in the Syrian desert, similar gifts were cast into the holy source. In one of these instances at least we know that the holy well was associated with an actual burial; for at Aphaca, the holiest shrine of Syria, the tomb of the local Baal or god was shown beside the sacred fountain. “A buried god,” says Dr. Robertson Smith quaintly, in commenting on this fact, “is a god that dwells under ground.” It would be far truer and more philosophical to say that a god who dwells underground is a buried man.
I need not recall the offerings to Cornish and Irish well-spirits, which have now degenerated for the most part into pins and needles.
On the whole, though it is impossible to understand the entire genesis of sacred founts and rivers without previous consideration of deliberate god-making, a subject which I reserve for a later portion of our exposition, I do not think we shall go far wrong in supposing that the sacred well most often occurs in company with the sacred tree, the sacred stone or altar, and the sacred tomb; and that it owes its sanctity in the last resort, originally at least, to a burial by its side; though I do not doubt that this sanctity was in many cases kept up by the annual immolation of a fresh victim-god, of a type whose genesis will hereafter detain us. Indeed, Dr. Robertson Smith says of the Semitic worship in general, “The usual natural symbols are a fountain or a tree, while the ordinary artificial symbol is a pillar or pile of stones: but very often all three are found together, and this was the rule in the more developed sanctuaries.” I cannot agree with him on the point of “symbolism”: but the collocation of objects is at least significant.
Thus, in ultimate analysis, we see that all the sacred objects of the world are either dead men themselves, as corpse, mummy, ghost, or god; or else the tomb where such men are buried; or else the temple, shrine, or hut which covers the tomb; or else the tombstone, altar, image, or statue, standing over it and representing the ghost; or else the stake, idol, or household god which is fashioned as their deputy; or else the tree which grows above the barrow; or else the well, or tank, or spring, natural or artificial, by whose side the dead man has been laid to rest. In one form or another, from beginning to end, we find only, in Mr. William Simpson’s graphic phrase, “the Worship of Death,” as the basis and root of all human religion.