As illustrative of this idea, a story is commonly told in Syria of a large-hearted man who gave proof of his exceptional devotedness to an honored guest. He had a horse which he prized as only an Oriental can prize and love one. This horse he sent to meet his guest, in order that it might bring him to the home of its owner. When the guest reached the house and dismounted, he spoke warm words in praise of the noble animal. At once the host led the horse to the house door, and cut its throat over the threshold, asking the guest to step over the blood of this costly offering, in acceptance of the proffered Threshold Covenant.
“If you know that one is coming whom you would honor and welcome, you must make ready to have the blood on the threshold when he appears,” said a native Syrian. In case an honored guest arrives unexpectedly, so that there is no time to prepare the customary sacrifice, salt, as representing blood, may be sprinkled on the threshold, for the guest to pass over; or again coffee, as the Muhammadan substitute for the “blood of the grape,”[[2]] may be poured on it.[[3]]
Crossing the threshold, or entering the door, of a house, is in itself an implied covenant with those who are within, as shown by the earlier laws of India. He who goes in by the door must count himself, and must be recognized, as a guest, subject to the strictest laws of hospitality. But if he enters the house in some other way, not crossing the threshold, there is no such implied covenant on his part. He may then even despoil or kill the head of the house he has entered, without any breach of the law of hospitality, or of the moral law as there understood.[[4]] Illustrations of this truth are found in the Mahabharata, as applicable to both a house and a city.[[5]] “It is in accordance with the strict law of all the law books,” of ancient India, “that one may enter his foe’s house by a-dvāra, ‘not by door,’ but his friend’s house only ‘by door.’”[[6]]
It would seem to have been in accordance with this primitive law of the East that Jesus said: “He that entereth not by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.... I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”[[7]]
It is possible that there is an explanation, in this law of the doorway, or threshold, of the common practice among primitive Scandinavians of attacking the inmates of an enemy’s house through the roof instead of by the door;[[8]] also, of the custom in Greece of welcoming a victor in the Olympian games into his city through a breach in the walls, instead of causing him to enter by the gates, with its implied subjection to all the laws of hospitality.[[9]] (See [Appendix].)
Examples of the blood welcome at the threshold abound in modern Egyptian customs. When the new khedive came to his palace, in 1882, a threshold sacrifice was offered as his welcome. “At the entrance to the palace six buffaloes were slaughtered, two being killed just as the khedive’s carriage reached the gateway. The blood of the animals was splashed across the entrance, so that the horses’ hoofs and wheels of the carriage passed through it. The flesh was afterwards distributed among the poor.”[[10]]
When General Grant was at Assioot, on the Upper Nile, during his journey around the world, he was doubly welcomed as a guest by the American vice-consul, who was a native of Egypt. A bullock was sacrificed at the steamer landing, and its head was laid on one side of the gang-plank, and its body on the other. The outpoured blood was between the head and the body, under the gang-plank, so that, in stepping from the steamer to the shore, General Grant would cross over it. When he reached the house of the vice-consul, a sheep was similarly sacrificed at the threshold, in such a way that General Grant passed over the blood in entering.[[11]]
It is also said in Egypt: “If you buy a dahabiyeh,” and therefore are to cross its threshold for the occupancy of your new home on the water, “you must kill a sheep, letting the blood flow on the deck, or side, of the boat, in order that it may be lucky. Your friends will afterwards have to dine on the sheep.”[[12]] There seems, indeed, to be a survival of this idea in the custom of “christening” a ship at the time of its launching, in England and America, a bottle of wine–the “blood of the grape”[[13]]–being broken on the bow of the vessel as it crosses the threshold of the deep. And a feast usually follows this ceremony also.[[14]]
In Zindero, or Gingiro, or Zinder, in Central Africa, a new king is welcomed at the royal residence with a bloody threshold offering. “Before he enters his palace two men are to be slain; one at the foot of the tree by which his house is chiefly supported; the other at the threshold of his door, which is besmeared with the blood of the victim. And it is said ... that the particular family, whose privilege it is to be slaughtered, so far from avoiding it, glory in the occasion, and offer themselves willingly to meet it.”[[15]]
Among the Arabs in Central Africa, the blood welcome of a guest at the threshold of a home is a prevailing custom. “The usual welcome upon the arrival of a traveler, who is well received in an Arab camp, is the sacrifice of a fat sheep, that should be slaughtered at the door of the hut or tent, so that the blood flows to the threshold.”[[16]]