Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/330

 500 A History of Art in Sardinia and Juo.ka. Moslem cemeteries ; cippi with a terminal hand and cones were the only emblems of the deity; even when, as in Phoenicia, they testified to constructive skill (Fig. 203). Where stones failed, they were satisfied with poles, " asherah," a diminutive representation of the sacred tree, and intimately connected with the worship of Ashtoreth. It is possible that the pole may have acquired a phallic character by contact with Syrian religions — an appropriate symbol of the goddess of love and life giving — whose rites were not unfamiliar to the Hebrews, as many passages in the Old Testament show. 1 Sometimes cippi had reference to singing, dancing, and rejoicing " before the Lord;" whether by the wood side, under large spreading trees, or on the banks of a babbling brook ; be it at the unfolding of nature in early spring or towards the close of summer. Such simple festivities would have seemed contemptible to an Egyptian or an Athenian ; but they were all-sufficient to the rural and semi-nomadic Canaan- ites. Here and there these open booths were covered with leafy branches or variegated awnings to pro- tect the devout, but especially the cip- pus and sacred objects, against the de- vouring heat of the sun, and the no less Some of these shrines, the " Baal of the covenant," 2 ■■ r.Vj Fig. 203. — Punic Cippus Corpus Inscript. San it. Plate VIII., fig. 44. Kition. Pars, i., destructive rain for instance, which appears in the history of Gideon and Abimelech, were structural ; with a treasure, and a dungeon or vaults — it is uncertain which — where the people took shelter and were burnt to death by Abimelech. We get some insight of this class of building from that at Shiloh, which a century before the monarchy seems to have been an important centre. We gather from the history of the young days of Samuel, that the ark was kept in a chamber or hecal, where lamps could be lighted and a bed put up (1 Sam. i. 9). It is evident that here the word hecal bears no comparison with that of the Solomonian temple ; and that it was 1 1 Sam. vii. 3, 4 ; Hosea iv. 13, 14, etc. 2 Judg. viii. 38 ; ix. 4, 47, 49.