Part 7

Footnote 226:

Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art. in Chald. and Assy._, I., p. 196. See, also, pp. 87, 143, 212; II., 99, 111, 169, 211, 215, 227, 231, 257, 261, 266, 267, 273, 275, 279. See, also, _Collection de Clercq_, passim.

Footnote 227:

Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Phœnicia_, I., 53, 54, 69, 320; II., 61, 113, 161, 228, 247, 248, 255, 257.

Footnote 228:

Wilkinson’s _Anc. Egypt_, III., 3, 8, 24, 48, 53, 100, 192, 208, 218, 228, 232, 235, 240, 362, 370, 425.

Footnote 229:

_Ibid._, III., 53.

Footnote 230:

Mason’s _Statistical Account or Parochial Survey of Ireland_, II., 322.

Footnote 231:

Stephens’s _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_, I., 177 f.

Footnote 232:

Gen. 14 : 22.

Footnote 233:

Psa. 63 : 4.

Footnote 234:

Isa. 49 : 22.

Footnote 235:

Comp. Exod. 6 : 8; Num. 14 : 30; Neh. 9 : 15.

Footnote 236:

See Tallquist’s _Die Sprache Contracte Nabû-Nâ’ido_, p. 108.

Footnote 237:

See Gesenius’s _Heb. Lex._, s. v. “Nasa.”

Footnote 238:

See, for example, Exod. 3 : 19; 13 : 3, 14, 16; 32 : 11; Deut. 3 : 24; 4 : 34; 5 : 15; 6 : 21; 7 : 8, 19; 9 : 26; 11 : 2, etc.; 2 Chron. 6 : 32; Ezek. 20 : 34; Dan. 9 : 15.

Footnote 239:

Ellis’s _Polynesian Researches_, II., 207, illustration.

Footnote 240:

Stephens’s _Incidents of Travels in Yucatan_, II., 46 f.

Footnote 241:

Stephens’s _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_, Appendix, II., 476–478.

Footnote 242:

_Ibid._, II., 477.

Footnote 243:

See Gen. 49 : 8–17; Num. 27 : 22 f.; Acts 4 : 4; 6 : 6; 8 : 18; 13 : 3; 19 : 6; Heb. 6 : 2; 1 Tim. 4 : 14.

Footnote 244:

See, for example, “a scene in the hypostyle hall at Lûxor,” in Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 111.; also, illustration in Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Anc. Egypt_, I., 45.

Footnote 245:

Catlin’s “Eight Years amongst the North American Indians,” II., pp. 5–7; cited in Donaldson’s _George Catlin Indian Gallery_, p. 263.

Footnote 246:

In a personal letter to the Author.

Footnote 247:

See Bourke’s _Medicine Men of the Apaches_, Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.

Footnote 248:

Variae nationes, inter quas Americæ aborigines sunt, sanguinem menstrualem sacrissimum atque in eo boni malique vim esse putant, quia non solum modo omnis sanguinis vita ipsa sit, sed vitae humanae germina vel ova quibus species hominum transmittuntur in se contineat. Quod quam verum sit quantamque vim ad foedieris liminis notionem principalem intellegendam habeat infra videtur.

For illustrations of this truth see H. Ploss’s _Das Weib in der Natur. und Völkerkunde_ (2d ed.), I., chap. 39; Strack’s _Der Blutaberglaube_ (4th ed.), pp. 14–18; Spivak’s _Menstruation_, pp. 6–12; and Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, I., 170; II., 225–240. These illustrations are gathered from Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and the Islands of the Sea; and they include citations from Pliny, the Talmud, the Christian Fathers, medieval writers, and down to writers of this century.

“Apud populum Novæ Zelandæ creditur sanguinem utero sub tempus menstruale effusum continere germina hominis; et secundum præcepta veteris superstitionis panniculus sanguine menstruali imbutus habebatur sacer (_tapu_), haud aliter quam si formam humanam accepisset. Mulierum autem mos est hos panniculos intra juncos parietum abdere: et hâc de causâ paries est domûs pars adeo sacra ut nemo illi innixus sedere audeat. Opinio animis N. Zelandorum insita–nempe sanguinem menstruum germina humanæ speciei continere–opinionibus hodiernis convenit: multi enim physiologiæ scientissimi credunt rumpi vesiculam gräafianam, et ex illâ ova delabi circa tempora menstrualia.”–Shortland’s _Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders_, p. 292.

Footnote 249:

Landor’s _Corea or Cho-sen_, p. 156.

Footnote 250:

Orme’s _Hist. of Milit. Trans. of British in Indostan_, V., 348.

Footnote 251:

Maspero’s _Life in Anc. Egypt and Assyria_, pp. 198–200.

Footnote 252:

_Ibid._, p. 204.

Footnote 253:

_Ibid._, p. 220.

Footnote 254:

Roberts’s _Oriental Illustrations of the Scriptures_, p. 148 f.

Footnote 255:

Williams’s _Middle Kingdom_, I., 731.

Footnote 256:

See McDowell’s “A New Light on the Chinese,” in _Harper’s Magazine_ for Dec., 1893, with illustration of “The Gods of the Threshold.”

Footnote 257:

Isabella Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, I., 117, 273.

Footnote 258:

Wilkinson’s _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, I., 362 f., and note.

Footnote 259:

See Tertullian “On Idolatry,” and “On the Soldier’s Chaplet,” in _Ante-Nicene Christian Library_, XI., 164 f., 353.

Footnote 260:

Tr. Rowan, in “Ximenes,” p. 183; cited in Spencer’s _Descrip. Soc._, II., 22.

II. EARLIEST TEMPLE ALTAR.

1. FROM HOUSE TO TEMPLE.

A temple is only a more prominent house. As a house was the dwelling of the earlier priest of his household, who was in covenant for himself and his family with the guardian deity of that household; so, afterwards, a temple was a dwelling for the deity guarding an aggregation of families, and for the priests who stood between him and the community.

This is no new or strange truth; it is obvious. “In the Vedas, Yama, as the first man, is the first priest too; he brought worship here below as well as life, and ‘first he stretched out the thread of sacrifice.’”[261] The fire-altar of the home was first the center of worship in the family in India;[262] as later the fire-altar was the center of the worship of the community.

The same cuneiform characters in old Babylonian stand for great house, for palace, and for temple;[263] as similarly, in ancient Egypt, the same hieroglyph represented house or temple,–a simple quadrangular enclosure, with its one doorway.[264]

The oldest form of an Egyptian temple known to us through the inscriptions of the Ancient Empire indicates that the prehistoric houses of worship in that land were mere hovels of wood and lattice-work, over the doors of which was a barbaric ornamentation of bent pieces of wood.[265] The private house became the public temple.

“The design of the Greek temple in its highest perfection was ... a gradual development of the dwelling-house.”[266] Palace and temple were, indeed, often identical in ancient Greece.[267]

Strictly speaking, there were no temples in ancient Persia, any more than in early India. But the fire-altars that were first on the home hearth, or threshold, were made more and more prominent on their uplifted stepped bases, until they towered loftily in the sight of their worshipers.[268]

It is the same Hebrew word, _ohel_, that stands for the “tent” of Abraham, and for the “Tent” or Tabernacle of the congregation of Israel.[269]

In China “temple architecture differs little from that of the houses.”[270] The house of a god is as the house of a man, only grander and more richly ornamented. And Japanese antiquaries say that the architecture of Shinto temples is on the model of the primeval Japanese hut. The temples of Ise, the most sacred of the Shinto sanctuaries, are said to represent this primitive architecture in its purest form.[271]

The father of the family was the primitive priest in the Samoan Islands, and his house was the first place of worship. Then “the great house of the village,” or the place of popular assembling, was used as a temple; and afterwards there were special temple structures with attendant priests.[272]

The transition from house to temple seems to have been a gradual one in the primitive world. The fire-altar of the family came to be the fire-altar of the community of families. The house of a king became both palace and temple, and so again the house of a priest; for the offices of king and of priest were in early times claimed by the same person.[273]

2. SACREDNESS OF THE DOOR.

In all stages of the transition from house to temple, the sacredness of the threshold, of the door, of the entrance-way, of the gate, was recognized in architecture and in ceremonial. Often the door, or the gate, stood for the temple, and frequently the threshold was an altar, or an altar was at the threshold.

There are, indeed, reasons for supposing that the very earliest form of a primitive temple, or sanctuary, or place of worship, was a rude doorway, as covering or as localizing the threshold altar. This would seem to be indicated by prehistoric remains in different parts of the world, as well as in the later development of the idea in the earlier historic ages. The only exception to this was where, as in India or Persia, the fire-altar on an uplifted threshold stood alone as a place of worship.

Two upright stone posts, with or without an overlaying stone across them, and with or without an altar stone between or before them, are among the most ancient remains of primitive man’s handiwork; and a similar design is to be recognized, all the way along in the course of history, down to the elaborate doorway standing by itself as a memorial of the revered dead,[274] or to the monumental triumphal arch as an accompaniment of the highest civilization. And the very name of door, or gate, attaches persistently to the loftiest temple and to the most exalted personage. As the earliest altar was the threshold, the earliest temple was a doorway above the altar at the threshold.

When the first dwellers on the plains of Chaldea, after the Deluge, gathered themselves for the building of a common structure reaching God-ward,[275] they, in their phraseology, called that structure Bab-el, or Bâb-ilu, or Bâbi-ilu, the Door of God.[276] Ancient Egyptians called the sovereign head of their national family “_Per-ao_” (Pharaoh), the exalted House, or Gate, or Door;[277] as to-day the Sultan, who is spiritual father of the faithful Muhammadans, and autocrat of his realm, is widely known as the “Sublime Porte,” or the Exalted Door.[278] The modern Babists, in Persia and beyond, look up to their spiritual head as the “Bab,” or the “Door.”[279] “Throughout the East this word [‘Bab’] signifies the court of a prince [as a ruler by divine right].... The threshold of the gate is used in the same sense, and frequently it is qualified by some epithet of nobility, loftiness, or goodness.”[280]

Jesus Christ did not hesitate to say of himself as the Way to God: “I am the Door: by me if any man enter in he shall be saved.”[281]

In China, Japan, Korea, Siam, and India, a gate, or doorway, usually stands before Confucian and Booddhist and Shinto temples, but apart from the temple, and always recognized as of peculiar sacredness. These doorways, in many places, are painted blood-color.[282] They stand “at the entrance of temple grounds, in front of shrines and sacred trees, and in every place associated with the native _kami_”–or gods.[283] Yet, again, in all these countries, the temple gateway is a main feature, or a prominent one, in the chief sanctuaries.[284]

Swinging doors, or gates, are represented, in the religious symbolism of ancient Babylonia, as opening to permit the god Shamash, or the sun, to start out on his daily circuit of the heavens.[285] A door, or a doorway, appears as a shrine for a god in various cylinders from this region; and the god is shown standing within it, just beyond the threshold.[286] Indeed, the doorway shrine is a common form on the Babylonian and the Assyrian monuments, as a standing-place for the gods, and for the kings as representative of the gods.[287] Illustrations of this are found on the Balawat gates,[288] and the sculptures on the rocks at Nahr-el-Kelb[289]–which is itself a gateway of the nations, between the mountains and the sea, on the route between Egypt and Canaan, and both the East and the West.

In ancient Egypt the doorway shrine of the gods was prominent, as in Babylonia.[290] Moreover, a false door was represented in the earlier mastabahs, or tombs, of the Old Empire of Egypt. This representation of a door was toward the west, in which direction Osiris, the god of the under-world, was supposed to enter his realm as the sun went down. On or around this false door were memorial inscriptions, and prayers for the dead; and before it was a table, or altar, for offerings to the _ka_, or soul, of the dead.[291] Gradually this false door came to be recognized as the monumental slab, tablet, or stele, on which were inscribed the memorials of the deceased. As a doorway or a niche, square-topped, or arched, it was the shrine of the one worshiped; and as a panel, or independent stele, it was the place of record of the object of reverence.

“Even at the beginning of the Middle Empire the door form disappeared completely, and the whole space of the stone was taken up with the representation of the deceased sitting before a table of offerings, receiving gifts from his relatives and servants. Soon afterwards it became the custom to round off the stone at the top, and when, under the New Empire, pictures of a purely religious character took the place of the former representations, no one looking at the tomb stele could have guessed that it originated from the false door.”[292]

A “false door” was, in ancient Egypt, a valued gift from a sovereign to an honored subject. Doors of this kind were sometimes richly carved and painted, and were deemed of priceless value by the recipient.[293]

In Phenicia,[294] Carthage,[295] Cyprus,[296] Sardinia,[297] Sicily,[298] and in Abyssinia,[299] a like prominence was given to the door as a door, in temple and in tomb, and as a niche for the figure of a deity or for the representation of one who had crossed the threshold of the new life. And the door-form is a sacred memorial of the dead in primitive lands in various parts of the world, from the rudest trilithon to the more finished structures of a high civilization.[300]

In primitive New Zealand the gateway, or doorway, of a village, a cemetery, or a public building, is both a sacred image and a sacred passage-way. It is in the form of a superhuman personage, and it has its guardians on either hand.[301]

A doorway with an altar between its posts was a symbol of religious worship in ancient Mexico, as in the far East.[302]

It would seem that the “mihrab,” or prayer niche, pointing toward Meccah, in Muhammadan lands, and the Chinese honorary portals and ancestral tablets,[303] as well as the niches for images of saints in churches or at wayside shrines, or for heroes in public halls, in Christian lands, are a survival of the primitive doorway in a tomb.

And wherever the door is prominent as a door, the threshold is recognized and honored as the floor of the door, and as the primitive altar above which the door is erected. To pass through the door is to cross over the threshold of the door.

3. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN ASIA.

In all the modern excavations in the region of Babylonia and Assyria, including Tello, Nippur, Sippara, Borsippa, Khorsabad, and Nineveh, it has been found that the threshold, or foundation-stone, of the temple doorway is marked with inscriptions that show its peculiar sanctity; while underneath it, or near it, are frequently buried images and symbols and other treasures in evidence of its altar-like sacredness. On this point evidence has been furnished by Botta,[304] Bonomi,[305] Layard,[306] George Smith,[307] Lenormant,[308] and yet more fully by Dr. Hilprecht, in his later and current researches.

Bonomi suggests that the word “teraphim,” as an image of a household divinity, has its connection with the threshold or the boundary limit; and that the phrase “thy going out, and thy coming in,” which is common in Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hebrew[309] literature, has reference to the threshold and its protecting deities.[310] The outgoing and the incoming are clearly across the threshold and through the door.

The inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar II., concerning his building of the walls of Babylon, comprise various references to the foundations, to the thresholds, and to their guardians. He says: “On the thresholds of the gates I set up mighty bulls of bronze, and mighty snakes standing upright.”[311] Again of the gates of Imgur-Bêl and Nimitti-Bel, of these walls of Babylon, he says: “Their foundations I laid at the surface (down at) the water, with pitch and bricks. With blue enameled tiles which were adorned with bulls and large snakes, I built their interior cleverly. Strong cedars I laid over them as their covering (or roof). Doors of cedarwood with a covering of copper, a threshold (_askuppu_) and hinges of bronze, I set up in their gates. Strong bulls of bronze, and powerful snakes standing upright, I set upon (or at) their threshold (_sippu_). Those gates I filled with splendor for the astonishment of all mankind.”[312]

In a similar manner Nebuchadrezzar describes his work at the gates of “the royal castle of all mankind,” at Babylon,[313] and of his palace.[314] In connection with the shrine or chapel of Nebo (Ezida), within the walls of the temple of Merodach, in Babylon, he says: “Its threshold (_sippu_), its lock and its key, I plated with gold, and made the temple shine daylike.”[315] When he built Ezida (the “eternal house”), the temple of Borsippa, Nebuchadrezzar says: “The bulls and the doors of the gate of the sanctuary, the threshold (_sippu_), the lock, the hinge, I plated with _zarîru_”[316] (an unknown metal, a kind of bronze).

References to the foundations, to the thresholds, to the gates and doorways, and to bulls and upright serpents, as the guardians of the threshold of the temples and palaces of Babylonia and Assyria, are numerous on unearthed cylinders and tablets, and always in such a way as to indicate their peculiar sacredness. In the recent unearthing, at Nippur, of a small building or shrine, between two great temples, an altar was found in the eastern doorway.

It is to be borne in mind that many early temples in Babylonia, as in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, and in the South Sea Islands, were in the form of a stepped pyramid, or a staged tower, with either inclined planes or stairways from each lower stage to the next higher, and with an altar, or a sanctuary or shrine, at the summit.[317] Herodotus, describing one of these temples in Babylon, says that the altars, larger and smaller, were outside the temple.[318]

Light is thrown on the dream of Jacob at Bethel by the shape of the ancient temple in the East. In his vision it was probably not a ladder, but a conventional stepped-temple structure, with its stairways rising heavenward, and its sanctuary, that Jacob saw.[319] The angel ministers were passing up and down the steps, in the service of the Most High God, who himself appeared above the structure. When Jacob waked he said: “Surely the Lord is in this place [or sanctuary]; and I knew it not.... How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven;” and he took the stone which had been his pillow at the threshold of that sanctuary, and set it up for an altar pillar.[320]

In the literature and legends of Babylonia, as of other portions of the ancient world, there is prominent the idea that an entrance into the life beyond this, as in the entrance into this life, the crossing of a threshold from the one world to the other, from the earlier state and the passing of a door, or gate, marks the change to the later, from the sacred to the more sacred. This is peculiarly illustrated in the famous legend of Ishtar’s descent into the under-world in order to bring back to earth her lover Dumuzi.

The Hades of the Babylonians was surrounded by seven high walls, and was approached through seven gates, each of which was guarded by a pitiless warder. Two deities ruled within it–Nergal, “the lord of the great city,” and Beltis-Allat, “the lady of the great land,”–whither everything which had breathed in this world descended after death. Allat was the actual sovereign of the country; and even the gods themselves could enter her realm only on the condition of submitting to death, like mortals, and of humbly avowing themselves her slaves.[321] “The _threshold_ of Allat’s palace stood upon a spring, which had the property of restoring to life all who bathed in it or drank of its waters.” Yet it was needful that another life should be given for one who would be reborn into this life, after crossing the threshold of the regions beyond.[322]

In the descent of the goddess Ishtar into Allat’s realm, in pursuit of her lover Dumuzi, Ishtar was gradually stripped of her garments and adornings at the successive gates, until she appeared naked, as at birth, at the final threshold of the new state.[323] But she was held captive by Allat until Ea, chief among the gods, exerted himself in her behalf, and sent his messenger to secure for both Ishtar and Dumuzi the waters of life which were underneath the threshold of Allat’s realm,–which must be broken in order to their outflowing.[324]

There would seem to be a reference to this primitive idea of the waters of life flowing from under the threshold of the temple, in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, writing in Babylonia, concerning restored Jerusalem and its holy temple. “Behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward, for the forefront of the house was toward the east: and the waters came down from under, from the right side of the house, on the south of the altar.” (Evidently the altar in this temple was near the threshold.) These flowing waters from under the threshold were life-giving. “Upon the bank of the river,” as it swelled in its progress, “were very many trees on the one side and on the other;” and it was said of this stream: “It shall come to pass, that every living creature which swarmeth, in every place whither the rivers come, shall live; and there shall be a very great multitude of fish: for these waters are come thither, ... and every thing shall live whithersoever the river cometh.”[325] In a curse pronounced against Assyria by the prophet Zephaniah, it was declared that “drought shall be in the thresholds,”[326] instead of life-giving waters.

So, again, the waters of the life-giving Jordan flow out from the threshold of the grotto of Pan, a god of life.[327] And both at the beginning of the Old Testament, and at the close of the New, the waters of life start from the sanctuary of the Author of life.[328]

This Dumuzi of Babylonia has linkings with Tammuz of Syria, with Osiris of Egypt, and with Adonis of Greece, and there are correspondences in all these legends in the references to the door and the threshold of the under-world and the life beyond. Thus, for instance, the Lord’s prophet counts as most heinous of all idolatries the transfer of the weeping worship of Tammuz from the door in the hole of the temple wall to the door of the temple sanctuary.[329]

At the right hand of the entrance of the larger temple unearthed at Nineveh by Layard, a sculptured image of the Assyrian king, with his arm uplifted, was on a doorway stele just outside. And an altar for offerings was in front of that image. Altars

were found similarly situated, just outside the doorway, in a smaller temple in the same region.[330]

An exceptional reverence is shown to the doorway and threshold of their sanctuary, or temple, by the sect of the Yezidis, in the neighborhood of ancient Nineveh, at the present time. Describing an evening service which he attended, Layard says: “When the prayers were ended, those who marched in procession kissed, as they passed by, the right side of the doorway leading into the temple, where a serpent is figured on the wall.” Again, “Soon after sunrise, on the following morning, the sheikhs and cawals offered up a short prayer in the court of the temple.... Some prayed in the sanctuary, frequently kissing the threshold and holy places within the building.”[331]