Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/320

 290 A History of Arc in Sardinia and Jud.ea. minds of David and Solomon by Punic art, and, mayhap, still more Punic activity and consequent prosperity. This so worked upon the imagination of Solomon that he conceived the idea of having a fleet like his Tyrian ally, and as Palestine had no harbour in the Mediterranean he tried to get an outlet in the Red Sea. But the scheme fell to the ground with the disruption of the empire under his son Rehoboam. The real and traditional sanctuary of the Hebrews, that which had been from time immemorial, was the bàmâh or bâmoth (Baal, sun-god), the high-place, haram, generally found on a hill or mountain top, with a sacrificial altar and some crude image or symbol of the deity [Ntimb. xxii. 41). The bamoth was intimately connected with the worship of the powers of nature — the moon and stars, hoary mountains, deep rivers, springs, mysterious groves, and majestic trees. It was a worship so deeply rooted in the soil that it continued centuries after the establishment of Christianity, and in remote districts it may be said to have extended to our own day. Names, such as Beershebah, Hebron, Bethshimesh, " city of the sun," Ashtaroth Barnaim, " two-horned crescent," will occur to the reader as localities that were held in reverence by the Hebrews under the Judges and the Kings. Here and there popular tradition had retained the memory of a remote age in connection with the most famous shrines : thus the altars at Shechem, Bethel, and Beershebah were stated to have been erected by one or other of the patriarchs. In virtue of this pleasing myth their children looked upon these Bethels as having been Hebrew property long before they had crossed the Jordan ; and when they had taken firm foothold in the country, altars on the model of the Canaanitish high-place were built at Gilgal, Shiloh, Ophrah, Ramath, Gibeah, and many other localities. Of these, scarcely any traces are found west of Jordan, due probably to the iconoclastic proclivities of the Maccabees, under whose rule every vestige of the old cult that had not been removed was vigorously eradicated, whether above ground or in the ancient national records. These in zealous hands underwent sundry corrections. The land of Ammon and Moab, which had successfully re- sisted Jewish monotheism, was scarcely affected by Hellenic culture. There, recent explorers have described hundreds and hundreds of monuments to which the name of bamoth must be given, where Chemosh, of the Moabites, and Milkom, of the