others were content to have their monumental barrow or cairn raised within view of some fane of remarkable sanctity. Around Avebury, Stonehenge, and other circular temples, we can judge from remains, and learn from records, how extremely numerous were the tumuli. Every elevation within the very extensive circuit which the eye could reach from these centres of worship was studded with the cairns and barrows of the worshippers, who we may imagine hoped, from the sacred nature of the locality, to obtain a favourable metempsychosis. A late and careful writer,1 in exploring the summits of Mount Hermon, believes that the foundations of a stone wall there enclosing a circular space, 180 feet in diameter, mark one of the "high-places" where the worship of Baal was particularly celebrated, and once contained an altar whence ascended the flames of sacred fires in his honour. The earliest notice in history of unhewn columns forming part of an establishment dedicated to religious ceremonies is that of Mount Sinai, where Moses "builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel." There he caused burnt-offerings to be offered, and peace-offerings to be sacrificed, and he himself sprinkled the blood on the altar and on the people. It has already been intimated that the altars were to be formed of unhewn stones, and were not to be ascended by steps. 1 Porter's Five Years in Damascus, pp. 293-295. See also Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines, where the same facts are repeated, and St. Jerome is mentioned as testifying to the fact that a 3 temple of Baal existed on Mount Hermon, vol. ii. pp. 14, 15. 2 Exod. xxiv. 4. Exod. xx. 25, 26; Josh. viii. 31. This shows that there were steps to the altars of the Canaanites. |