The shrines are the centres of story and legend which relate their origin, legitimise their persistence, or illustrate their power. In the course of ages the name of the saint who once chose to reveal himself there has varied, and the legends of earlier figures have been transferred and adjusted to names more acceptable to orthodoxy. Some of the figures have grown in importance and have thus extended their sphere of influence, and as difference of sect is found to be no hindrance to a common recognition of the power of the saint, the more famous shrines have been accepted by worshippers outside the original circle. In course of time, too, isolated figures have gained supremacy, and have superseded earlier distinct authorities, with the result that the same name will be found under a number of locally diverging types. Most conspicuous of all are St. George and the ever-youthful prophet Elijah, who have inherited numerous sacred places and their cults, in the same manner as St. George has become the successor of Apollo in the Greek isles. Similarly the Virgin Mary, in her turn, has frequently taken the place formerly held by the female deities of antiquity.
CHAPTER III
SACRED OBJECTS
The modern holy places, under the care of some minister, dervish, or priestly family, are the scenes of periodic visits, liturgical unctions, processions, the festal display of lights, etc., and although in the course of their lengthy history there have been certain modifications, it is to them that one must look for the persisting religion which underlay the older official cults. The rocks with cup-marks and channels, the gloomy caves and grottoes, the mountain summits, the springs or fountains which still receive the offerings of worshippers, the holy trees, the sacred sacrificial stones—these form the fundamental substructure of the land's religion, and whatever be the true origin of their sanctity, they continue to be visited when superhuman aid is required.
Trees.—It is not the shrines alone which are sacred on the ground that some saint had once revealed his presence there; there are trees (the terebinth, and more especially the oak) which are inviolable because spirits have made them their abode, or which owe their supernatural qualities to some holy being who is currently supposed to have reclined beneath them. Such trees are virtually centres of worship. Incense is burned to them, and they receive sacrifices and offerings; they are loaded with food, gifts, and (on special occasions) with lamps. They give oracles, and the sick sleep beneath their shade, confident that a supernatural messenger will prescribe for their ailments. They are decked with rags, which thus acquire wonderful properties; and the worshipper who leaves a shred as a pledge of attachment or, it may be, to transfer a malady, will take away a rag which may serve as a charm. Sacred trees were well known to early writers, and according to the Talmud there were some beneath which priests sat but did not eat of their fruit, remains of heathen sacrifice might be found there, and the Jew who sat or passed in its shade became ceremonially impure. It is unnecessary, however, to multiply examples of a feature to which the Old Testament also attests; popular belief has universally associated religious and superstitious ideas with those beneficent objects which appear to be as much imbued with motion, animation, and feeling as man himself.
The sacred tree tends to become conventionalised and is replaced by the trunk or post. As the home of a powerful influence there is an inclination to symbolise it, and to identify it with the supernatural being, with the deity itself. The development of the image (not necessarily female) from an aniconic wooden post can be illustrated by the pillars representative of Osiris, by the head of Hathor of Byblos (p. [75] sq.) upon a pillar in Egypt (Nineteenth Dynasty), and by the votive tablets at Serabit bearing the head of Hathor mounted upon a pole, which stands upon a base, or is flanked by a tree on either side. Some tree-like post is evidently intended by the ashērah of the Old Testament, a common object at the 'high-places' during the monarchy. In this case, the relation between the tree and deity is absolute, and we shall meet with a goddess of this name (see below, p. [87]).
Stones.—The inanimate stone is partly commemorative, partly representative. In Palestine we see it marked with the curious hollows which, when found upon the bare rock, served, amid a variety of purposes, for libations and for the blood of the sacrifices. The erect pillar appears to be secondary, but dates, at least in Serabit, from before our period. The hollows upon such stones are equally adapted for offerings, although, when they are lateral, it is probable that they were smeared or anointed like the door-posts of a modern shrine. These holes are also transferred to slabs or are replaced by vessels, while the stone itself is not merely 'the place of sacrificial slaughter' (the literal meaning of 'altar' in the Old Testament), but embodies the power whose influence is invoked. It is practically a fetish, the tangible abode of the recipient of veneration. At Serabit Professor Petrie discovered before a stele a flat altar-stone which bore cavities (Twelfth Dynasty), and even in Abyssinia at Aksum have been observed great monoliths, at whose base stood stone blocks with vessels and channels. Similar combinations have been found at Carthage. Throughout, neither the stone nor the significance attached to it remains the same. The sacred stone may lose its value and be superseded, and it by no means follows that the number of pillars implies an equal number of in-dwelling beings. While the stone develops along one line as an object of cult and becomes an altar, it takes other forms when, by an easy confusion of sentiment, it comes to represent a deity (of either sex). It is then shaped or ornamented to depict the conceptions attached to the holy occupant, and when this deity is anthropomorphic, the pillar becomes a rude image, and finally the god in human form. It is now clothed and decked with ornaments. Thus, one finds the groove along the top or the bifurcation suggestive of early steps towards the representation of the horns of an animal; or, as among the pillars at Gezer, one perceives two (Nos. 4 and 8) which assume some resemblance to a simulacrum Priapi.
The growing wealth of cult, the influence of novel ideas, and the transformation of the attributes of a deity make the history of the evolution of the objects of cult extremely intricate. At the same place and time they may be found in varying stages of development, and if the interpretation of the several features as they appealed to worshippers is often obscure to us, the speculations of the contemporary writers cannot always be accepted without careful inquiry.