APPENDIX. To many persons, doubtless, the foregoing statements of Messrs. Wake and Westropp appear to be grossly exaggerated if not absolutely preposterous. It seems to them almost incredible that such ideas and customs should obtain ascendancy among any people, and especially in the character of religious mysteries. Even classical readers participate in this skepticism. They are unwilling to believe that, except in places notoriously immoral, like Pompeii or Lampsacus, the use of sexual representations in common life would be countenanced. Nevertheless, a careful review of the evidence will assure us of their mistake. We must not always expect shameless manners to attend immorality. Prudery and pruriency are frequently companions, equally impure and cowardly; and in all scientific investigation they should be disregarded rather than conciliated. The careful student of the Old Testament is amazed at the antagonism apparent between the examples of the Hebrew patriarchs and the teachings of the prophets, in regard to the erection of monolithic pillars and other structures, for votive memorials and other religious purposes. It is likewise hard to distinguish a difference between the customs of the early Israelites and those of the nations around them. The similarity is observable in their religious as well as their political institutions. Their rulers were at first patriarchs or sheiks, as among the Arabs; then they had princes of tribes, like the lords of the Philistines, and after that suffetes, or judges, like the Carthaginians; concluding finally with kings, "like all the nations." They had the same language and alphabet as the Phoenicians from the days of Moses. As, despite the tenth chapter of Genesis, the ethnographers persist in classing the latter in the Semitic group, there is little reason given for not including both peoples under one ethnic head. The Phoenicians and Pelasgians or Ionians of Asia Minor were the most adventurous nations of the time. They colonized Greece, Italy, Spain, and Africa, and the former extended their enterprises to the countries on the Atlantic Ocean. Their gods Baal or Hercules, and Astarté or Venus, were worshipped wherever they went. So uniform were the religious emblems and customs, that a description of the usages of one people very nearly describes them all. The Pelasgians of Ionia had different deitynames, like Dionysus or Bacchus, Hermes, Aphrodité; but they had like customs, and the Cabeirian Mysteries, which fixed the institutions of religion, were common to both. The Hermaic statue, consisting of a human head placed upon an inverted obelisk, with a phallus, was the recognized simulacrum of Baal in the Bible. Associated with it was the Venus or Aphrodité, a female draped figure terminating below in the same square form. This was generally of wood, the palm being preferred. Aspasia is often inscribed upon these female images. The Hermaic and Aphroditic statue were sometimes included in one, like the Hindoo Siva and Bhavani, giving rise to the androgynous representations. The name The mode of constructing the Hermaic statues was derived by the Greeks from the Pelasgians of Asia Minor. Herodotus says: "Whoever has been initiated into the Mysteries of the Cabeiri will understand what I mean. The Samothracians received these Mysteries from the Pelasgi, who, before they went to live in Attica, were dwellers in Samothrace, and imparted their religious ceremonies to the inhabitants. The Athenians, then, who were the first of all the Greeks to make their statues of Mercury in this way, learnt the practice from the Pelasgians; and by this people a religious account of the matter is given, which is explained in the Samothracian Mysteries." * The Cabeiri, we presume, represented the divinities of the planets; Esmun or the Phoenician Esculapius being the eighth. The serpent was his symbol. Kadmiel or Cadmus was the same as Taut or Thoth, the god of the steles or pillar-emblems, and was the reputed founder of the city of Thebes. It was to the worship of these divinities that reference was made by the author of The Wisdom of Solomon: "They slew their children in sacrifices, or used secret Mysteries, or celebrated frantic komuses of strange rites." + But the institution of the Orphic rites and the Eleusinian Mysteries is ascribed by Herodotus to Egyptian influences. "The rites called Orphic and Bacchic are in reality Egyptian and Pythagorean; and no one initiated in these Mysteries can be buried in a woollen shroud, a religious reason being assigned for the observance."+ Melampus introduced into Greece the name of Dionysus or Bacchus, the ceremonial of his worship, and the procession of the phallus. "I can by no means admit," says Herodotus, "that it is by mere coincidence that the Bacchic ceremonies in Greece are so nearly the same as the Egyptian-they would have been more Greek in their character and less recent in their origin. Much less can I admit that the Egyptians borrowed these customs, or any other, from the Greeks. My belief is that Melampus got his knowledge of them from Cadmus the Tyrian, and the followers whom he brought from Phoenicia into the country which is now called Boeotia." "The Egyptians were also the first to introduce solemn assemblies, processions, and litanies to the gods; of all which the Greeks * Rawlinson's Herodotus, book ii. 51. "The phallus formed an essential part of the symbol, probably because the divinity represented by it was in the earliest times, before the worship of Dionysus was imported from the East, the personification of the reproductive powers of nature.”—Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Hermai. Wisdom, xiv. 23. Book ii. 81. were taught the use by them."* In the Dionysiac festival of Egypt, instead of phalli they used images a cubit high, pulled by strings, which the women carried round to the villages. A piper headed the company, and the women followed, singing hymns in honor of the god. As in the Cabeirian Mysteries of Phoenicia and Samothrace, a "religious reason" accounted for the peculiarities of the image. The identity of Bacchus with the Moloch or Hercules of the Phoenicians, and with the Dionysus of Arabia and the Mysteries, is apparent. Both the Greeks and Romans, however, for a long time had no images. Numa, who is said to have been a Pythagorean, allowed only the "eternal fire" of Vesta as a symbol of the Deity. The earlier temples were temenoi, or consecrated areas, marked out by erect pillars of stone. In them were altars, "great stones," or conical statues. Mounds, or artificial eminences, were also common, as representative of the "holy hill," or mount of assembly where the Deity dwelt. These were denominated, by both Greeks and Phoenicians, bemas, or "high places."+ The stele or pillar came early to be used as the emblem of the god; and, in like manner, a conical stone, signifying the omphalos, navel, or rounded abdomen, became the symbol of the great Mother-Goddess. The service of Hercules, with Omphalé, queen or goddess of Lydia, he receiving from her the distaff, and she taking his club and lion-skin, expresses the association of the two in the Mysteries. At the temple of Amun, in Libya, the emblem of the god is described as an umbriculum of immense size, which was borne in a boat or ark, requiring eighty men for the purpose. The boat is a feminine symbol. At the temple of Delphi, the omphalos, or navel-stone, is described as obtuse in form, and having nothing obscene in appearance. It was of white marble, and was kept in the sanctuary, carefully wrapped in a white cloth. § The nabhi, *Book ii. 49, 58. Quintus Curtius. or navel of Vishnu, the Brahmin god, explained in like manner as expressive of the female organs, is similarly represented. M. Creuzer found among the ruins of Carthage a large conical stone, which he immediately recognized as the representation of Astarté. Lajard also mentions many smaller cones in Greece, some of them bearing the name of Aphrodité. "In all Cyprian coins," he remarks," may be seen, in the place where we would anticipate to find a statue of the goddess, the form of a conical stone. The same is found placed between two cypresses under the portico of the temple of Astarté, in a temple of Ælia Capitolina; but in this instance the cone is crowned. In another medal, struck by the elder Philip, Venus is represented between two genii, each of whom stands upon a cone or pillar with a rounded top. There is reason to believe that at Paphos images of the conical stone* were made and sold as largely as were effigies of Diana of the Ephesians." +‡ The ancient Arabians, in like manner, venerated certain conical stones as symbols of the goddess Al Uza, or Alitta. The famous Caaba, or black stone of Mecca, now revered by the Moslems, was of this character. The crescent, also the emblem of the goddess, is the Mohammedan monogram, contrasting with the cross, or masculine emblem of the Christians, and almost implies that the Mussulmans are votaries of the female divinity. The Scandinavians also represented the goddess Disa or Isa by a conical stone, surmounted by a head, analogous to the busts of Astarté. The erect pillar was common over all the East. It stood at the intersection of roads as a sign of consecra * "The statue of the goddess bears no resemblance to the human form. It is round throughout, broad at one end, and gradually tapering to a narrow span at the other, like a goal. The reason is stated by Philostratus to be symbolical."-Tacitus, book ii., ch. 3. Acts xix. 24, 25. Venus and Diana, instead of representing the opposing ideas of virginity and sexual love, were deities of like mould, and personified the great maternal principle, Recherches sur la Culte de Vénus, page 36. |