he must have been known in the mother-land of Phoenicia,
and yet no trace of her worship there has as yet been found. There were
"gods many and lords many" in primitive Palestine, and though a
comprehensive faith summed them up as its Baalim and Ashtaroth they yet
had individual names and titles, as well as altars and priests.

But though altars were numerous, temples were not plentiful. The chief
seats of religious worship were "the high-places," level spots on the
summits of hills or mountains, where altars were erected, and the
worshipper was believed to be nearer the dwelling-place of the gods than
he would have been in the plain below. The altar was frequently some
natural boulder of rock, consecrated by holy oil, and regarded as the
habitation of a god. These sacred stones were termed beth-els, _baetyli_
as the Greeks wrote the word, and they form a distinguishing
characteristic of Semitic faith. In later times many of them were
imagined to have "come down from heaven." So deeply enrooted was this
worship of stones in the Semitic nature, that even Mohammed, in spite of
his iconoclastic zeal, was obliged to accommodate his creed to the
worship of the Black Stone at Mekka, and the Kaaba is still one of the
most venerated objects of the Mohammedan faith.

But the sacred stone was not only an object of worship or the
consecrated altar of a deity, it might also take the place of a temple,
and so be in very truth a beth-el, or "house of God." Thus at Medain
Salih in North-western Arabia Mr. Doughty discovered three upright
stones, which an inscription informed him were the _mesged_ or "mosque"
of the god Aera of Bozrah. In the great temple of Melkarth at Tyre
Herodotus saw two columns, one of gold, the other of emerald, reminding
us of the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, which the Phoenician architect
of Solomon erected in the porch of the temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings vii.
21). Similar columns of stone have been found in the Phoenician temple,
called that of the Giants, in Gozo, one of which is still standing in
its place.

While certain stones were thus regarded as the abode of deity, the high
places whereon so many of them stood also received religious worship.
The most prominent of the mountains of Syria were deified: Carmel became
a Penu-el or "Face of God," Hermon was "the Holy One," and Mount Lebanon
was a Baal. The rivers and springs also were adored as gods, and the
fish which swam in them were accounted sacred.