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.
4. BORDER SACRIFICES.
An altar would have no meaning unless sacrifices were offered at it. If, therefore, the boundary threshold of an empire were an altar for that empire, sacrifices would surely be offered there; and the records of history, and the customs of old times and later, show this to have been the case.
Sacrifices were offered at the new boundary of an empire, by ancient Assyrian and Egyptian kings, when they set up a pillar, or stele, at the freshly acquired threshold in that direction. Thus, for example, Ashurnâsirapli (king of Assyria, 885–860 B.C.), telling of his far-reaching conquests, says that he marched with his armies to the slopes of the Lebanon, and to the great sea of the Westland, and that at the mountains of Ammanus he made and set up a stele of victory, and offered sacrifices unto his gods.[[507]]
At the Egyptian boundary line in the Sinaitic Peninsula, there was a temple with its sacrifices to “the sublime Hathor, queen of heaven and earth and the dark depths below, whom the Egyptians worshiped as the protectress of the land of Mafkat.” There were other temples with their sacrifices at that point.[[508]] On the southern boundary of Egypt, in the gold district of Nubia, there was “the temple of Amon in the holy mountain,” where threshold sacrifices were offered.[[509]]
One of the most ancient of Chinese classics is the Shih King. Its age is not known, but it is certain that it was a classic in the days of Confucius, five centuries before the Christian era. This work contains frequent references to sacrifices at the border altars, or the altars of the boundary. There were public sacrifices at the “border altar” in the beginning of every new year; and again when a ruler crossed his border line on a warlike mission.[[510]]
When, in ancient times, a Chinese emperor passed over the outer threshold of his empire, he offered a sacrifice of a dog, by running over it with the wheels of his chariot. This is supposed to have been a propitiatory offering to the dog-shaped guardians of the roadway threshold, known also among the Indo-Aryans and the Assyro-Babylonians.[[511]]
From what is known of modern customs in this line, and from occasional historical references to the matter, it would seem that where there were no gateways, or double columns to stand for door-posts, or doorway stele, it was the practice to divide or separate the animals offered in sacrifice, so as to make a passage-way between them, as through a door or gate, and to pour out the blood of the victims on the earth between the two portions, so that the offerer, or the one welcomed, might pass over, or step across, that blood, as in a threshold covenant.
It has already been noted that when General Grant came to the border line of Assioot, in Upper Egypt, as he landed from his Nile boat, a bullock was sacrificed in covenant welcome, its head being put on one side of the gang-plank, and its body on the other; while its blood was between the two, so that it should be stepped over in the act of landing.[[512]] And every year, when the great Hajj procession returns from Meccah to Syria, it is welcomed, as it approaches Damascus, by just such sacrifices as this. Sheep and oxen are sacrificed before the caravan, their blood being poured out in the middle of the road, and their bodies being divided and placed on either side of the way. Then those who approach by this “new and living way,”[[513]] on the boundary line of their country, renew their covenant with those within, by passing over the blood.[[514]]