Part 11

See Henderson’s _Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders_, p. 38.

Footnote 416:

Curtin’s _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, p. 177.

Footnote 417:

See Jones’s and Kropf’s _Folk-Tales of the Magyars_, p. 410.

Footnote 418:

On the eye-witness testimony of Prof. Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr.

Footnote 419:

Réville’s _Nat. Relig. of Mex. and Peru_, pp. 41, 179 f., 207; also Bancroft’s _Mex._, I., 296.

Footnote 420:

Réville’s _Nat. Relig. of Mex. and Peru_, p. 183; Bancroft’s _Mex._, I., 162.

Footnote 421:

Réville’s _Nat. Relig. of Mex. and Peru_, pp. 31, 184, 207 f.

Footnote 422:

_Ibid._, p. 83.

Footnote 423:

Bancroft’s _Native Races_, “Civilized Nations,” II., 706 f.

Footnote 424:

See Bancroft’s _Native Races and Antiquities_, IV., 209 f., 314, 321, 323, 332, 338, 351, 531, 801, 803, 805. See also, Stephens’s _Incidents of Travels in Yucatan_, I., 137, 167–176, 303, 306, 403–407, 411–413; II., 42, 54, 56, 72, 122.

Footnote 425:

Chateaubraud’s _Voyage en Amérique_, pp. 130–136; cited in Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, II., 383.

Footnote 426:

Ellis’s _Polynesian Researches_, II., 206.

Footnote 427:

_Ibid._, II., 211 f.

Footnote 428:

_Ibid._, II., 207, illustration.

Footnote 429:

_Ibid._, II., 212 f.

Footnote 430:

Ellis’s _Hist. of Madagascar_, I., 176–187.

Footnote 431:

Ellis’s _Through Hawaii_, p. 73 f.

Footnote 432:

_Ibid._, p. 75.

Footnote 433:

Ellis’s _Through Hawaii_, p. 81 f.

Footnote 434:

_Ibid._, p. 135 f.; also, Isabella Bird’s _Six Months in the Sandwich Islands_, p. 196.

Footnote 435:

Ellis’s _Through Hawaii_, p. 153 f. See, also, Isabella Bird’s _Six Months in the Sandwich Islands_, p. 135 f.

Footnote 436:

Num. 35 : 6–32; Deut. 4 : 41–43; 19 : 1–13; Josh. 20 : 1–9.

Footnote 437:

Comp. Gill’s _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, pp. 3, 4, 7, 14, 18, 20, 26, 152, 155, 158, 160, 170; also Turner’s _Samoa_, p. 259.

Footnote 438:

See pp. 21–23, 45 f., 55, _supra_.

Footnote 439:

Gen. 11 : 28; Neh. 9 : 7.

Footnote 440:

Rawlinson’s _Inscript. of W. Asia_, Vol. I., pl. 69, Col. II., l. 29 ff.

Footnote 441:

See Hilprecht’s _Assyriaca_, pp. 54, 55, 97.

Footnote 442:

Inscription in the temple of Rameses III. at Karnak.

Footnote 443:

Erman’s _Life in Ancient Egypt_, p. 279.

Footnote 444:

See “Grihya-Sutras,” in _Sacred Books of the East_, XXX., 193–201; also De Coulange’s _Ancient City_, pp. 36, 47 f.

Footnote 445:

See Julien’s _Mémoires de Hionen-Thsang_, I., 459–466; Cunningham’s _Archæological Survey of India_, I., 1–12; Sir Monier Monier-Williams’s _Buddhism_, pp. 390–401.

Footnote 446:

Cunningham’s _Archæological Survey of India_, II., 212, 213.

Footnote 447:

_Ibid._, II., 353 f.

Footnote 448:

_Ibid._

Footnote 449:

“The Shih King,” Bk. 7, § 3, in _Sacred Books of the East_, III., 111.

Footnote 450:

Williams’s _Middle Kingdom_, I., 90 f.

Footnote 451:

Harrison and Verrall’s _Myth. and Monu. of Anc. Athens_, pp. 353–361.

Footnote 452:

Henderson’s _Iceland_, II., 64–67; also _ibid._, I., xiv.

Footnote 453:

Gen. 28 : 10–22.

Footnote 454:

_Ibid._, 13 : 1–3.

Footnote 455:

_Ibid._, 12 : 1–8.

Footnote 456:

Exod. 3 : 1–12.

Footnote 457:

Brugsch’s _Egypt under the Pharaohs_, I., 411.

Footnote 458:

2 Sam. 6 : 1–19.

Footnote 459:

_Ibid._, 24 : 15–25.

Footnote 460:

Gen. 22 : 1–13.

Footnote 461:

As evidenced in the traditional claim that the grave of Adam was under the cross.

Footnote 462:

2 Kings 5 : 17.

Footnote 463:

Isa. 28 : 16; 1 Pet. 2 : 6.

Footnote 464:

Isa. 58 : 12.

Footnote 465:

1 Cor. 3 : 10, 11.

Footnote 466:

1 Pet. 2 : 5.

Footnote 467:

Eph. 2 : 20, 21.

Footnote 468:

_Sura_ 3 : 90.

Footnote 469:

See Sale’s _Koran_, “Preliminary Discourse,” Sect. IV.; Burton’s _Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah_, III., 149–222; Hughes’s _Dictionary of Islam_, s. vv. “Abraham,” “Adam,” “Arafāt,” “Hagar,” “Ishmael,” “Kaʿbah,” “Masjidu ʾl-Harām,” “Zamzam;” Sprenger’s _Life of Mohammad_, pp. 46–62; Muir’s _Mahomet and Islam_, pp. 12–17, 215–219.

Footnote 470:

Burton’s _Pilgrimage_, III., 260.

III. SACRED BOUNDARY LINE.

1. FROM TEMPLE TO DOMAIN.

Man’s first dwelling-place was the cave, or the tent, or the hut, in which he made a home with his family. The threshold and hearth of that dwelling-place was the boundary of his earthly possessions. It was the sacred border or limit of the portion of the earth’s surface over which he claimed control, and where he and his were under the special protection of the deity with whom he was in covenant. Therefore the threshold hearth was hallowed as a place of covenant worship.

As families were formed into tribes and communities, they came to have a common ruler or priest, and his dwelling-place was counted by all as the common center of covenant with their common deity; and when they would worship that deity there, they worshiped at the threshold altar of his sanctuary. So it was that the threshold was the place of the hearth-fire and altar, in both house and temple.

When man acquired property rights beyond his dwelling-place, and communities and peoples gained control over portions of country more or less extensive, the boundary limits of their possessions were extended, but were no less real and positive than before. The protecting deity of the region thus bounded was recognized as having sway in that domain; and those who were dwellers there were in covenant relations with him. Therefore it was that the boundary line of such domain was deemed its threshold, and as such was held sacred as a place of worship and of sacrifice.

2. LOCAL LANDMARKS.

A private landmark was a sacred boundary, and was a threshold altar for its possessor. To remove or to disregard such a local threshold, was an offense not only against its owner, but against the deity in whose name it had been set up.

Among the earliest remains from unearthed Babylonia are local landmarks, or threshold boundary stones, inscribed, severally, with a dedication and an appeal to the deity honored by him who erected the stone. These local landmarks were ordinarily in the form of a phallus; as phallic forms were numerous under Babylonian temple thresholds. Among the records of those peoples are writings, showing the importance attached to such threshold stones, in the contracts accompanying their setting up, and in the sacred ceremonies on that occasion.

Illustrations of the importance attached by the ancient Babylonians to a boundary stone, or threshold landmark, are found in the records of the imprecations inscribed on these phallic pillars, as directed against the violator of their sacredness.[471] For example, a Babylonian, Sir-usur [“O snake-god protect”], a descendant of the house of Habban, presented a valuable tract of land to his daughter on her betrothal to Tâbashâp-Marduk. The withering curse inscribed on the conventional boundary-stone pillar is as follows:

“For all future time: Whosoever, of the brothers, sons, family, relatives, descendants, servants purchased or house-born, of the house of Habban, be he a prefect, or an overseer, or anybody else, shall rise and stand up to take this field away, or to remove this boundary stone, and causes this field to be presented to a god, or sends some one to take it away [for the state], or brings it into his own possession; who changes the area, the limit, or the boundary stone, divides it into pieces, or takes a piece from it, saying, ‘The field and _mulugi_[472] have not been presented;’ or who on account of the dire curse [written] on this boundary stone, sends a fool, a deaf man, a blind man, a reckless man, an enemy, an alien, an ignorant man, and causes this inscribed stone to be removed, throws it into the water, hides it in the earth, crushes it with a stone, burns it with fire, effaces it and writes something else on it, or puts it into a place where nobody can see it,–upon this man may the great gods Anu, Bêl, Ea, and Nusku, look wrathfully, uproot his foundation, and destroy his offspring. May Marduk, the great lord, cause him to carry dropsy as an ever-entangling net; may Shamash the judge, greatest of heaven and earth, decide all his lawsuits, standing relentlessly against him; may Sin, the light dwelling in the brilliant heavens, cover him with leprosy as a garment; like a wild ass may he lie down at the wall surrounding his city; may Ishtar, mistress of heaven and earth, lead him into evil daily before the god and the king; may Ninib, born in the temple Ekura, the sublime son of Bêl, uproot his area, his limit, and his boundary stone; may Gula, the great physician, consort of the god Ninib, put never-ceasing poison into his body till he urinates blood and pus like water; may Rammân, first of heaven and earth, the strong son of the god Anu, inundate his field, and destroy the corn, that thorns may shoot up, and may his feet tread down vegetation and pasturage; may Nabû, the sublime messenger, bring want and famine upon him, and whatsoever he desires for the hole of his mouth may he not obtain; and may the great gods, as many names as are mentioned on this inscribed stone, curse him with a dire curse that cannot be removed, and destroy his seed for ever and ever.”[473]

Prominence is given, in the ancient laws of India, to the manner in which disputed boundaries between villages, and between land owners, shall be settled; and it is made evident that a peculiar sacredness attaches to these landmarks. The king was to decide the dispute, after hearing testimony and examining evidence. Trees, and mounds, or heaps of earth, were preferred as landmarks; and tanks, wells, cisterns, and fountains, as also temples, were desired on boundary lines.[474]

Emphasis was laid on the sacredness of the local landmark, in the laws of the Hebrews; and a curse was pronounced against him who dared remove this threshold altar. “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor’s landmark, which they of old time have set, in thine inheritance which thou shalt inherit, in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee,” was an injunction in the fundamental law of the Promised Land.[475] And it passed into a proverb of duty: “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.”[476] It was a reproach to a people that there were those among them who would “remove the landmarks” and disregard sacred property rights.[477] And among the curses which were to be spoken from the summit of Ebal, when Israel took possession of Canaan, was this: “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor’s landmark. And,” it was added, “all the people shall say, Amen.”[478]

Abraham and Abimelech found that their followers were quarreling over the boundary line between their respective domains on the borders of the Negeb. Abraham claimed the well at Beer-sheba as his by right, but the servants of Abimelech forcibly took possession of it. So the two chieftains met and agreed upon a border line, and made a covenant with accompanying sacrifices. “And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba” as his border landmark, “and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God.”[479] Border landmarks were in the form of a pillar, a tree, a heap, or a stele, in Oriental countries generally.

When Jacob and Laban agreed to part in peace after their stormy meeting in Gilead, they set up a heap of stones and a stone pillar as a monument of witness of their mutual covenant, and as a landmark of their agreed territorial boundary. This memorial of their covenant was called “Galeed,” or “Witness Heap,” and “Mizpah,” or “Watch Tower.” “And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold the pillar, which I have set betwixt me and thee. This heap be witness, and the pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me, for harm. The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God [or, gods] of their father, judge betwixt us.”[480] The new boundary mark was a token of a sacred covenant.

In classic literature and customs the sacred boundary landmark is prominent as devoted to, or as representing, various deities, at different times. Zeus and Hermes among the Greeks; Jupiter, Mercury, Silvanus, and Terminus, among the Romans, are sometimes interchangeably referred to in this connection. The legends and symbols employed seem to indicate that life and its transmission took their start at the threshold boundary, and therefore a pillar or a phallus marked every new beginning along a road or at a territorial boundary.

An image of Zeus, or Jupiter, was sometimes employed as a boundary landmark, and an image of Hermes, or Mercury, was at the starting-point of a road, and again at various points along the road. Zeus, or Jupiter, was chief of gods as the arbiter of life. Hermes, or Mercury, was earliest known as the fertilizing god of earth, and hence was the promoter of all forms of life, as guardian of flocks, fish, fields, and fruits. He also guarded those who went out from the threshold. Sacrifices were offered to him by Athenian generals as they started on their expeditions. He was even spoken of as the inventor of sacrifices and the promoter of commerce and of enrichment.[481]

Of Terminus, Ovid say: “When the night shall have passed away [and the threshold of a new day is to be crossed], let the god who by his landmark divides the fields be worshiped with the accustomed honors. Terminus,[482] whether thou art a stone, or whether a stock sunk deep in the field by the ancients, yet even in this form thou dost possess divinity.”[483] This symbol of Terminus was regularly “sprinkled with the blood of a slain lamb,” in recognition of its sacredness.

It is said that Numa, the second king of Rome, who was revered by the Romans as the author of their whole system of religious worship, directed that every one should mark the boundaries of his landed property by stones consecrated to Jupiter, and that yearly sacrifices should be offered at these boundary stones, at the festival of the Terminalia.[484] At this festival the two owners of adjacent property crowned the statue or stone pillar with garlands, and raised a rude altar, on which they offered up corn, honeycombs, and wine, and sacrificed a lamb or a sucking pig, with accompanying praises to the god.[485]

Silvanus also was a god of the boundary. He was represented by a tree grove, as Terminus was by a pillar, and offerings of fruit, grain, and milk, and of pigs, were made to him. When he would be guarded against as a source of evil in a home, the protectors of the inmates would perform certain ceremonies at the threshold of the house.

A tree, and sometimes a grove, was the sacred landmark of a village boundary in primitive lands. Such trees and groves are still to be found in Equatorial Africa. Describing some of these in Zinga and its vicinity, Stanley expresses surprise that they have so long remained untouched in “a country left to the haphazard care of patriarchal chiefs ignorant of written laws.”[486] But reverence for a threshold landmark seems to be in the very nature of a primitive people, as truly as any primitive sentiment; and sentiment is in itself a dominant law.

At the boundary line between two villages in Samoa, in olden time, there were two stones said to have been two living beings. When any quarrel arose, those engaged in it were told, “Go and settle it at the stones;” and they went to those boundary line stones and fought out their contest.[487]

Trees and stone pillars are still known as boundary landmarks between parishes and townships in Europe and America, as in Asia, Africa, and Polynesia in more primitive days; and their importance is recognized as peculiar, even if not always absolutely sacred. The annual custom of “beating the bounds” of a parish by the parish authorities survives in some parts of England to-day. A procession makes the circuit of the parish boundary, under the care of a “select vestryman,” or other parish official, halting at every landmark to identify it and carefully to observe its location.

In former times it was customary to take the boys of the parish on this round, and beat them at every landmark, in order to impress upon their memories its precise position. More recently the boys are permitted to carry willow wands peeled white, and with these to beat the landmarks. The later plan is certainly more satisfactory to the boys, and it is quite as likely to impress their memories. Formerly this ceremony was accompanied by religious services, in which the clergyman invoked curses on him who “transgresseth the bounds and doles of his neighbor,” and blessings on him who regarded the landmarks.[488]

It has been suggested that this fixing and honoring of the landmarks by an annual festival goes back to the Roman Terminalia, in the days of Numa, but there is reason to believe that it was far earlier than that. There are traces of it in primitive times, among various primitive peoples.

In Russia, the Cossacks long had a custom somewhat like this, in the case of a disputed boundary line. When the boundary had been formally determined, all the boys of the two contiguous stanitsas, or land divisions, were collected, and driven by the people along the frontier line. “At each landmark a number of boys were soundly whipped and allowed to run home,” in order that in later years they might be able to testify as to the spot where that landmark stood. In cases where the boys’ memory failed to be accurate, an arbiter was chosen from the older inhabitants, and sworn to act honestly to the best of his knowledge; and his decision was accepted as final.[489]

A similar custom of beating the bounds under a “selectman” of the town has existed in portions of New England until recently, and perhaps it has not yet died out there. Thus Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of the selectmen of Concord perambulating the bounds of its township “once in five years,” up to 1858.[490] Is there not a survival of this old custom in the habit of striking a child on his birthday as many blows as he has passed years, when he comes to the threshold of another year of his life?

Mile-posts would seem to have been originally landmarks separating the public way from private lands, being placed at regular distances along the road for convenience of measurement and locating. They marked the threshold of the “king’s highway” to and from his capital in the Roman empire, as trees marked the border-lines of the principal roads in Greece.

3. NATIONAL BORDERS.

Stone pillars marking the exact boundaries of states or nations, whether settled by a joint commission or by a conqueror’s fiat, are not a modern invention, although they are in use to-day. They are of old time, and of primitive ages. And these boundaries of a country are by their very nature its thresholds.

In Babylonia, the name of Nebuchadrezzar meant literally, “Nebo protect the boundary!” The threshold of the empire was sacred; and the deity, with whom the Babylonian king was in covenant, was the protector of that boundary, and of those who dwelt within it. From the earliest times onward an Oriental sovereign would set up a pillar, or pillars, or stele, at the extreme limits of his newly extended dominion, as the outer threshold or doorway of his empire.

From Tiglath-Pileser I. to Esarhaddon, from about 1100 B.C. to 669 B.C., the great Assyrian kings tell us, in their inscriptions, that whenever they restored an old boundary of their predecessors that had been lost to them, or extended their boundary beyond its former limits, they had set up a large stele bearing their image at this threshold of their empire.[491] Frequently these stele doorways,[492] with the king represented on the threshold, had inscriptions on them giving the story of the new conquests, with an ascription of honor to the covenant god by whose power they had been wrought. Prominent mountain peaks, sources of rivers, the temples or market-places of conquered cities, the banks of lakes, or the shores of the sea, are chosen as conspicuous places for such steles. National boundary marks of this character are still to be seen on the rocks of Nahr-el-Kelb, above Beyroot, on the shores of the Mediterranean, and at the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates.[493]

Ashurnâsirapli (king of Assyria, 885–860 B.C.) tells of such a new boundary mark set up by him at the farthest point of his conquests, “whither nobody of my royal ancestors had advanced.... At that time I made a picture [a stele] of my person. The glory of my power I wrote upon it. On the mountain Eki, in the city Ashurnâsirapli [named after the king], at a spring I set it up.”[494]

A similar custom would seem to have prevailed with the rulers of ancient Egypt. Sneferu, a king of the fourth dynasty, greatest among the very early names of the Old Empire (say, about 4000 B.C.), went down as a conqueror into the Peninsula of Sinai, and left there inscribed a mammoth figure of himself, on the granite hills above the famous copper and turquoise mines of Wady Magharah. He is styled in the accompanying inscription the “vanquisher of a foreign people.”[495]

As early as the twelfth dynasty of ancient Egypt, before the days of Abraham, stone thresholds marked the upper border of that mighty empire. “Two huge pillars of stone, covered with long inscriptions, served formerly as boundary marks between the Egyptian empire and the negro-land called Heh.”[496] King Usurtasen III., who set up these landmarks, says in an inscription on the second of them: “Every one of my sons who maintains this boundary which I have fixed, he shall be called my son who was born of me. My son is like the protector of his father (that is Horus), like the preserver of the boundary of his father (that is Osiris.) But if he abandons it, so that he does not fight upon it, he is not my son, he is not then born of me. I have caused my own image to be set up, on this boundary which I have fixed, not that ye may (only) worship it (the image of the founder), but that ye may fight upon it.”

On the oldest map in the world, a map of the gold districts in Nubia, in the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt, there is a mention of the “memorial stone of King Mineptah I. Seti I.” And that memorial stone, of this new threshold of domain, marked the boundary line of empire in that direction.[497]

Rameses II. had it recorded on the walls of the rock grotto of Bayt-el-Walli concerning his threshold extensions: “The deeds of victory are inscribed a hundred thousand times on the glorious Persea. As the chastiser of the foreigners, _who has placed his boundary-marks according to his pleasure_ in the land of the Ruthennu, he is in truth the son of Ra, and his very image.”[498]

On the eastern border of Lower Egypt, the main passage way from the Delta into Arabia, the great gateway of the empire toward the north and the east, is still known as _El Gisr_, or “The Threshold.”[499] This point is near Lake Timsah, on the line of the modern Suez Canal.

In ancient Greece, Theseus “set up a pillar,” as a threshold stone between Peloponnesus and Attica,–then called Ionia,–“writing upon it an epigram in two trimeters, bounding the land. Of these [inscriptions] the one toward the east side said, ‘This is not Pelopennesus, but Ionia,’ and that toward the west, ‘This is Pelopennesus, not Ionia.’”[500]

Even the term, the “Pillars of Hercules,” as the boundaries of the Grecian empire and the then known world, is an indication of this idea in the classic age, as well as in the primitive mind. Calpë and Abyla were the door-posts of the great outer passage way, and the threshold between those pillars was founded upon the seas, and established upon the floods.[501]