(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 The sacred stone may lose its value and be superseded, and it by no means follows that the number of pillars implies an equal number of in-dwelling beings.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.

Images and Symbols.—Thutmose III. relates that he carried off from Megiddo and the Lebanon a silver statue in beaten work; also some object [words are lost] with a head of gold, the staff having human faces, and a royal image of ebony wrought with gold, the head of which was adorned with lapis lazuli. Although no sacred statues of Ancient Palestine have as yet come to light—if they escaped the zeal of later iconoclasts—it would seem that they were of no mean workmanship, and it may be inferred that they did not differ radically from the gods and goddesses whose outward appearance can be observed on the monuments of Western Asia. This inference is supported by the repeated discovery, in course of excavation, of representations of a goddess who was evidently the embodiment of life and fertility. A few figurines and numerous small 'Astarte-plaques,' with moulds for their manufacture, prove the prevalence of a mother-goddess and patroness of nature, essentially identical with that familiar in the old Oriental religions. The plaques, which are about 6 to 7 inches in length, offer a large variety of types from the coarsest exaggeration of sexuality to highly conventionalised forms. The goddess is generally nude, but a bronze figurine from Taanach gives her a conical head-dress and a thin robe reaching down to her ankles. The characteristic type at this city, however, depicts a striated crown, rings on neck and feet, and is generally suggestive of Babylonian influence. Otherwise, when depicted with bracelets, necklace and lotus-flowers, she resembles the Egyptian Hathor; indeed she is often marked with the Egyptian uraeus. A specimen from Tell es-Sāfy curiously combines an Egyptianised form of the goddess with typical Babylonian five- and six-rayed stars. Yet a fourth variety with huge and disfiguring earrings finds its parallels in North Syria and Cyprus. The occurrence and combination of elements of different origin are instructive for the culture and religion of Palestine. This fourth type has sometimes a bird-like head, which recalls a curious example from Lachish with large ears and hooked nose or beak. A small bronze image of the goddess, which was found at Gezer, among broken lamps and pottery within the area of the pillars, gives her horns which coil downwards like those of a ram. It is through such development and modification that the horns of the great goddess could come to be regarded as the representation of a crescent moon when philosophical speculation busied itself with the heavenly bodies. The traces of animal attributes take another form in various rude and almost shapeless objects of bronze which have been interpreted, thanks to a more realistic specimen from the Judæan Tell Zakariya, as models of an amphibious creature with human head and the tail of a fish. Here it is natural to see the famous Derceto or Atargatis, well known later as a deity of the Astarte type, and, as an illustration of the evolution of symbols, it may be added that a splendid Carthaginian sarcophagus of a priestess represents a woman of strange beauty with the lower part of the body so draped as to give it a close resemblance to a fish's tail.[1]

[1] Mabel Moore, Carthage of the Phoenicians in the Light of Modern Excavation (London, 1905), p. 146 sq. and frontispiece.

The manifold representations of the Palestinian 'good goddess' extend over a lengthy period, and vary in taste and nuance from the crudest of specimens to veritable artistic products of the Seleucid age. They indicate that the fundamental religious conceptions agreed with those of Western Asia as a whole, and it may be assumed that the conclusions which can be drawn from the figurines and plaques of this deity would apply, mutatis mutandis, to others.

Among other objects which hardly belong to public cult, but were probably for household or private use, may be noticed the small idols; e.g. one from Megiddo in the clumsy 'snow-man' technique, another from Jericho with the