A peculiar sacrifice in Tibet is the disemboweling of a devotee in the presence of a great multitude, as an act of worship. An altar on which this act is performed is erected for the occasion “in front of the temple gate.”[[362]]
In the more sacred shrines of Japan and Korea, Shinto or Booddhist temples, pilgrim worshipers are permitted to go no farther than the threshold of the inner sanctuary. There they may deposit their offerings and may prostrate themselves in prayer, but they cannot pass beyond.
At Kitzuki, “the most ancient shrine of Japan,” multitudes of pilgrims gather for worship. They are coming and going ceaselessly, but all pause before the threshold of the inner sanctuary. “None enter there: all stand before the dragon-swarming doorway, and cast their offerings into the money-chest placed before the threshold; many making contributions of small coin, the very poorest throwing only a handful of rice into the box. Then they clap their hands, and bow their heads before the threshold, and reverently gaze through the hall of prayer at the loftier edifice, the holy of holies beyond it. Each pilgrim remains but a little while, and claps his hands but four times; yet so many are coming and going that the sound of the clapping is like the sound of a cataract.”[[363]] The same is true of “the great Shrines of Isé, chief Mecca of the Shintō faith,”[[364]] of those of famous Nikkō, and of other centers of worship.[[365]]
4. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN AFRICA.
The oldest temple discovered in Egypt is little more than a doorway with an altar at its threshold, and with a stele on either side of the altar. This temple is near the base of the stepped pyramid of Meydoom, dating back probably to the beginning of the fourth dynasty.[[366]]
Later, in Egypt, as in early Babylonia, the doorway, above the threshold, had peculiar sacredness, in the temples and in the approaches to the under-world. The pylon, or propylon, of an Egyptian temple, was a monumental gateway before the temple, and exalted honor attached to it. It frequently gave its name to the entire temple.[[367]] The side towers of this gateway are said to have represented Isis and Nephthys, and the door itself between these towers stood for Osiris, the judge of the living and the dead.[[368]]
There was indeed a temple in Thebes which bore the name of “Silver Threshold.” This temple “is mentioned in the time of the twenty-first dynasty; and it cannot have been earlier than the eighteenth dynasty, when silver was growing cheaper in Egypt.”[[369]] But the prominence of the “threshold” in the designation of the “temple” is aside from the question of the time of the use of silver.
“The winged sun disk was placed above all the doors into the temples, that the image of Horus might drive away all unclean spirits from the sacred building.”[[370]] These overshadowing wings marked the special sacredness of the doors beneath them.
When an Egyptian priest opened the door of the shrine–the holy of holies of the temple–he must prostrate himself at the threshold in reverent worship. “According to the Theban rite, ... as soon as he saw the image of the god he had to ‘kiss the ground, throw himself on his face, throw himself entirely on his face, kiss the ground with his face turned downward, offer incense,’ and then greet the god with a short petition.”[[371]] This priestly worship was at the threshold of the shrine.
The Egyptian idea of the future life, and of the world beyond this, had marked correspondences with the Babylonian. Osiris presided over the under-world, as, indeed, he was the chief object of worship in this.[[372]] He had been slain in a conflict with evil, and in his new life he was the friend and helper of those who struggled against evil.[[373]] He was in a peculiar sense the door of the life beyond this, “Osiris, opening the ways of the two worlds;”[[374]] and those who passed that door safely were identified with himself in the under-world.[[375]]