ake all these words, saying, Thou shalt not make
unto thee any graven image, or the likeness of anything that
is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that
is in the water under the earth.

[Illustration: 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276
277 278 279]

Our theologians have not regarded the second Commandment as a
condemnation of the making of pictures, though many an earnest
believer, during the phases of pictorial frenzy through which we have
passed and are still passing, may have regarded the picture paper and
the picture palace as abominations of Satan's work.

The new pictorial stamps of Turkey have dispelled one of the mellow
myths of our cult, a myth which, perhaps, was simply an exaggeration
of a prohibition which is more in common with Western ideas than with
Western practices. For instance, there have been recorded seizures of
pictorial postcards in Turkey, attributed to the Muhammedan law;
but these probably concerned cards which gave offence to Muslim
susceptibilities by their blatant portrayal of the unveiled faces
(_inter alia_) of women. If the prohibition of pictures in the past
has been no myth, and the late departure from precedent is the
result of the advent of the New Turk, then, indeed, the New Turk hath
courage, for each true believer of the Prophet must needs regard every
new-born child, whether a creature of the flesh or of the mind, as a
thing that is touched by Satan.

Yet one other illusion concerning Turkish stamps has been shattered of
recent years. We are told now that the Crescent, so long an emblem of
the Sublime Empire, owes nothing to the moon. The barking of dogs on
the appearance of the moon at the siege of Byzantium may have saved
the city, and the partial eclipse of the orb of night may have aided
the Turks at the capture of Constantinople, but the Turkish Crescent
is no memorial thereof, merely a horse-shoe or an amulet. Professor
Ridgeway says it is the result of the base-to-base conjunction of two
claw or tusk amulets. Says another writer, "There is no historical
evidence that the Turks thought at all of the moon when they adopted a
crescent as their national symbol."

Turkey's first departure from the _Thoughra_ device for its stamps was
in 1913, when a set of crude picture stamps displayed an alleged view
of the new General Post Office at Constantinople (_Fig._ 280). Later
in the same year a finely-engraved set of three deno