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THE
THRESHOLD COVENANT

OR

THE BEGINNING OF RELIGIOUS RITES

BY

H. CLAY TRUMBULL

Author of “Kadesh-barnea,” “The Blood Covenant,”

“Studies in Oriental Social Life,” etc.

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1896

Copyright, 1896

BY

H. CLAY TRUMBULL

PREFACE.

This work does not treat of the origin of man’s religious faculty, or of the origin of the sentiment of religion; nor does it enter the domain of theological discussion. It simply attempts to show the beginning of religious rites, by which man evidenced a belief, however obtained, in the possibility of covenant relations between God and man; and the gradual development of those rites, with the progress of the race toward a higher degree of civilization and enlightenment. Necessarily the volume is not addressed to a popular audience, but to students in the lessons of primitive life and culture.

In a former volume, “The Blood Covenant,” I sought to show the origin of sacrifice, and the significance of transferred or proffered blood or life. The facts given in that work have been widely accepted as lying at the basis of fundamental doctrines declared in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and have also been recognized as the source of perverted views which have had prominence in the principal ethnic religions of the world. Scholars of as divergent schools of thought as Professors William Henry Green of Princeton, Charles A. Briggs of New York, George E. Day of Yale, John A. Broadus of Louisville, Samuel Ives Curtiss of Chicago, President Mark Hopkins of Williams, Rev. Drs. Alfred Edersheim of Oxford and Cunningham Geikie of Bournemouth, Professor Fréderic Godet of Neuchatel, and many others, were agreed in recognizing the freshness and importance of its investigations, and the value of its conclusions. Professor W. Robertson Smith, of Cambridge, in thanking me for that work, expressed regret that he had not seen it before writing his “Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.” He afterwards made repeated mention of the work as an authority in its field, in his Burnett Lectures on the “Religion of the Semites.”

This volume grew out of that one. It looks back to a still earlier date. That began as it were with Cain and Abel, while this begins with Adam and Eve. It was while preparing a Supplement for a second edition of that volume that the main idea of this work assumed such importance in my mind that I was led to make a separate study of it, and present it independently. The special theory here advanced is wholly a result of induction. The theory came out of the gathered facts, instead of the facts being gathered in support of the theory.

Of course, these facts are not new, but it is believed that their synthetic arrangement is. It has been a favorite method with students of primitive religions to point out widely different objects of primitive worship and their corresponding cults among different peoples, and then to try to show how the ceremonials of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures were made up from these primitive cults. But the course of investigation here pursued seems to show that the earlier cult was the simple one, which has been developed in the line of the Bible story, and that the other cults, even those baser and more degraded, are only natural perversions of the original simple one. This is a reversal of the usual order in studies of primitive religious rites. Here it is first the simple, then the complex; first the one germ, then the many varieties of growth from that germ.

As this particular subject of investigation seems to be a hitherto untrodden field, I am unable to refer to any published works as my principal sources of information. But I have gathered important related facts from various directions, giving full credit in explicit foot-notes, page by page. Many added facts confirmatory of my position might, undoubtedly, have been found through yet wider and more discerning research, and they will be brought to light by other gleaners in the same field. Indeed, a chief value of this volume will be in the fresh study it provokes on the part of those whom it stimulates to more thorough investigation in the direction here pointed out. And if such study shows an added agreement between some of the main facts of modern scientific investigation and those disclosed in the Bible narrative, that will not be a matter of regret to any fair-minded scholar.

In my earlier studies for this work, I had valuable assistance from the late Mr. John T. Napier; and in my later researches I have been materially assisted by Professors Herman V. Hilprecht, E. Washburn Hopkins, William R. Lamberton, John Henry Wright, Robert Ellis Thompson, Morris Jastrow, Jr., D.G. Brinton, Adolph Erman, W. Max Müller, W. Hayes Ward, M.B. Riddle, Minton Warren, Alfred Gudeman, John P. Peters, M.W. Easton, and A.L. Frothingham, Jr., President George Washburn, Rev. Drs. Marcus Jastrow, H.H. Jessup, George A. Ford, William W. Eddy, and Benjamin Labaree, Rev. William Ewing, Rev. Paulus Moort, Dr. Talcott Williams, Dr. J. Solis Cohen, Dr. A.T. Clay, Dr. T.H. Powers Sailer, Judge Mayer Sulzberger, Mr. S. Schecter, Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing, Captain John G. Bourke, Mr. Khaleel Sarkis, Mr. John T. Haddad, Mr. Montague Cockle, Mr. Le Roy Bliss Peckham, the late Mr. William John Potts, and other specialists. To all these I return my sincere thanks.

Facts and suggestions that came to my notice after the main work was completed, or that, while known to me before, did not seem to have a place in the direct presentation of the argument, have been given a place in the Appendix. These may prove helpful to scholars who would pursue the investigation beyond my limits of treatment.

Comments of eminent specialists in Europe and America, to whom the proof-sheets of the volume were submitted before publication, are given in a Supplement. Important additions are thus made to the results of my researches, which are sure to be valued accordingly.

H.C.T.

Philadelphia,

Passover Week, 1896.

CONTENTS.

I.

PRIMITIVE FAMILY ALTAR.

(1.) A Blood Welcome at the Door, [3]. (2.) Reverence for the Threshold Altar, [10]. (3.) Threshold Covenanting in the Marriage Ceremony, [25]. (4.) Stepping or Being Lifted across the Threshold, [36]. (5.) Laying Foundations in Blood, [45]. (6.) Appeals at the Altar, [57]. (7.) Covenant Tokens on the Doorway, [66]. (8.) Symbol of the Red Hand, [74]. (9.) Deities of the Doorway, [94].

II.

EARLIEST TEMPLE ALTAR.

(1.) From House to Temple, [99]. (2.) Sacredness of the Door, [102]. (3.) Temple Thresholds in Asia, [108]. (4.) Temple Thresholds in Africa, [126]. (5.) Temple Thresholds in Europe, [132]. (6.) Temple Thresholds in America, [144]. (7.) Temple Thresholds in Islands of the Sea, [148]. (8.) Only One Foundation, [153].

III.

SACRED BOUNDARY LINE.

(1.) From Temple to Domain, [165]. (2.) Local Landmarks, [166]. (3.) National Borders, [177]. (4.) Border Sacrifices, [184].

IV.

ORIGIN OF THE RITE.

(1.) A Natural Question, [193]. (2.) An Answer by Induction, [194]. (3.) No Covenant without Blood, [196]. (4.) Confirmation of this View, [197].

V.

HEBREW PASS-OVER, OR CROSS-OVER, SACRIFICE.

(1.) New Meaning in an Old Rite, [203]. (2.) A Welcome with Blood, [204]. (3.) Bason, or Threshold, [206]. (4.) Pass-over or Pass-by, [209]. (5.) Marriage of Jehovah with Israel, [212].

VI.

CHRISTIAN PASSOVER.

(1.) Old Covenant and New, [215]. (2.) Proffered Welcome by the Father, [216]. (3.) Bridegroom and Bride, [218]. (4.) Survivals of the Rite, [221].

VII.

OUTGROWTHS AND PERVERSIONS OF THIS RITE.

(1.) Elemental Beginnings, [223]. (2.) Main Outgrowths, [225]. (3.) Chief Perversions, [228].

APPENDIX.

Significance of Blood in the Marriage Rite, [243]. Exhibiting the Evidences, [245]. Substitute Blood for Deception, [248]. Public Performance of the Rite, [250]. Bible Testimony, [251]. Woman as a Door, [252]. Symbolism of the Two Sexes, [257]. Symbolism of Tree and Serpent, [258]. Covenant of Threshold-Crossing, [259]. Doorkeeper, and Carrier, [263]. Passing over into a Covenant, [266]. England’s Coronation Stone, [268].

INDEXES.

Topical Index, [273]. Scriptural Index, [301].

SUPPLEMENT.

COMMENTS OF SPECIALISTS.

From the Rev. Dr. Marcus Jastrow, [307]. From Professor Dr. Herman V. Hilprecht, [309]. From Professor Dr. Fritz Hommel, [313]. From Professor Dr. A.H. Sayce, [314]. From Professor Dr. W. Max Müller, [315]. From Professor Dr. C.P. Tiele, [317]. From Professor Dr. E. Washburn Hopkins, [318]. From the Rev. Dr. William Elliot Griffis, [319]. From Professor Dr. John P. Mahaffy, [324]. From Professor Dr. William A. Lamberton, [326]. From Professor Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, [328]. From the Rev. Dr. Edward T. Bartlett, [329]. From Professor Dr. T.K. Cheyne, [330]. Additional from Professor Dr. Fritz Hommel, [333].

THE THRESHOLD COVENANT.

I.
PRIMITIVE FAMILY ALTAR.

1. A BLOOD WELCOME AT THE DOOR.

The primitive altar of the family would seem to have been the threshold, or door-sill, or entrance-way, of the home dwelling-place. This is indicated by surviving customs, in the East and elsewhere among primitive peoples, and by the earliest historic records of the human race. It is obvious that houses preceded temples, and that the house-father was the earliest priest. Sacrifices for the family were, therefore, within or at the entrance of the family domicile.

In Syria and in Egypt, at the present time, when a guest who is worthy of special honor is to be welcomed to a home, the blood of a slaughtered, or a “sacrificed,” animal is shed on the threshold of that home, as a means of adopting the new-comer into the family, or of making a covenant union with him. And every such primitive covenant in blood includes an appeal to the protecting Deity to ratify it as between the two parties and himself.[^[1]] While the guest is still outside, the host takes a lamb, or a goat, and, tying its feet together, lays it upon the threshold of his door. Resting his left knee upon the bound victim, the host holds its head by his left hand, while with his right he cuts its throat. He retains his position until all the blood has flowed from the body upon the threshold. Then the victim is removed, and the guest steps over the blood, across the threshold; and in this act he becomes, as it were, a member of the family by the Threshold Covenant.

The flesh of the slaughtered animal is usually given to the neighbors, although in the case of humbler persons it is sometimes used for the meal of the guest in whose honor it is sacrificed. It may be a larger offering than a lamb or a goat, or it may be a smaller one. Sometimes several sheep are included in the sacrifice. Again, the offering may be a bullock or a heifer, or simply a fowl or a pair of pigeons. The more costly the gift, in proportion to the means of the host, the greater the honor to him who is welcomed.

As illustrative of this idea, a story is commonly told in Syria of a large-hearted man who gave proof of his exceptional devotedness to an honored guest. He had a horse which he prized as only an Oriental can prize and love one. This horse he sent to meet his guest, in order that it might bring him to the home of its owner. When the guest reached the house and dismounted, he spoke warm words in praise of the noble animal. At once the host led the horse to the house door, and cut its throat over the threshold, asking the guest to step over the blood of this costly offering, in acceptance of the proffered Threshold Covenant.

“If you know that one is coming whom you would honor and welcome, you must make ready to have the blood on the threshold when he appears,” said a native Syrian. In case an honored guest arrives unexpectedly, so that there is no time to prepare the customary sacrifice, salt, as representing blood, may be sprinkled on the threshold, for the guest to pass over; or again coffee, as the Muhammadan substitute for the “blood of the grape,”[^[2]] may be poured on it.[^[3]]

Crossing the threshold, or entering the door, of a house, is in itself an implied covenant with those who are within, as shown by the earlier laws of India. He who goes in by the door must count himself, and must be recognized, as a guest, subject to the strictest laws of hospitality. But if he enters the house in some other way, not crossing the threshold, there is no such implied covenant on his part. He may then even despoil or kill the head of the house he has entered, without any breach of the law of hospitality, or of the moral law as there understood.[^[4]] Illustrations of this truth are found in the Mahabharata, as applicable to both a house and a city.[^[5]] “It is in accordance with the strict law of all the law books,” of ancient India, “that one may enter his foe’s house by a-dvāra, ‘not by door,’ but his friend’s house only ‘by door.’”[^[6]]

It would seem to have been in accordance with this primitive law of the East that Jesus said: “He that entereth not by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.... I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”[^[7]]

It is possible that there is an explanation, in this law of the doorway, or threshold, of the common practice among primitive Scandinavians of attacking the inmates of an enemy’s house through the roof instead of by the door;[^[8]] also, of the custom in Greece of welcoming a victor in the Olympian games into his city through a breach in the walls, instead of causing him to enter by the gates, with its implied subjection to all the laws of hospitality.[^[9]] (See [Appendix].)

Examples of the blood welcome at the threshold abound in modern Egyptian customs. When the new khedive came to his palace, in 1882, a threshold sacrifice was offered as his welcome. “At the entrance to the palace six buffaloes were slaughtered, two being killed just as the khedive’s carriage reached the gateway. The blood of the animals was splashed across the entrance, so that the horses’ hoofs and wheels of the carriage passed through it. The flesh was afterwards distributed among the poor.”[^[10]]

When General Grant was at Assioot, on the Upper Nile, during his journey around the world, he was doubly welcomed as a guest by the American vice-consul, who was a native of Egypt. A bullock was sacrificed at the steamer landing, and its head was laid on one side of the gang-plank, and its body on the other. The outpoured blood was between the head and the body, under the gang-plank, so that, in stepping from the steamer to the shore, General Grant would cross over it. When he reached the house of the vice-consul, a sheep was similarly sacrificed at the threshold, in such a way that General Grant passed over the blood in entering.[^[11]]

It is also said in Egypt: “If you buy a dahabiyeh,” and therefore are to cross its threshold for the occupancy of your new home on the water, “you must kill a sheep, letting the blood flow on the deck, or side, of the boat, in order that it may be lucky. Your friends will afterwards have to dine on the sheep.”[^[12]] There seems, indeed, to be a survival of this idea in the custom of “christening” a ship at the time of its launching, in England and America, a bottle of wine–the “blood of the grape”[^[13]]–being broken on the bow of the vessel as it crosses the threshold of the deep. And a feast usually follows this ceremony also.[^[14]]

In Zindero, or Gingiro, or Zinder, in Central Africa, a new king is welcomed at the royal residence with a bloody threshold offering. “Before he enters his palace two men are to be slain; one at the foot of the tree by which his house is chiefly supported; the other at the threshold of his door, which is besmeared with the blood of the victim. And it is said ... that the particular family, whose privilege it is to be slaughtered, so far from avoiding it, glory in the occasion, and offer themselves willingly to meet it.”[^[15]]

Among the Arabs in Central Africa, the blood welcome of a guest at the threshold of a home is a prevailing custom. “The usual welcome upon the arrival of a traveler, who is well received in an Arab camp, is the sacrifice of a fat sheep, that should be slaughtered at the door of the hut or tent, so that the blood flows to the threshold.”[^[16]]

On the arrival of strangers among the primitive tribes of Liberia, in West Africa, a fowl is killed, and its blood is sprinkled at the doorway.[^[17]]

Receiving an honored guest with bread and salt, at the threshold of the house he enters, is common in Russia. Bread and salt are symbolic, in primitive thought, of flesh and blood; and this threshold welcome seems to be a survival of the threshold sacrifice.[^[18]]

To step over or across the blood, or its substitute, on the door-sill, is to accept or ratify the proffered covenant; but to trample upon the symbol of the covenant is to show contempt for the host who proffers it, and no greater indignity than this is known in the realm of primitive social intercourse.

2. REVERENCE FOR THE THRESHOLD ALTAR.

The threshold, as the family altar on which the sacrificial blood of a covenant welcome is poured out, is counted sacred, and is not to be stepped upon, or passed over lightly; but it is to be crossed over reverently, as in recognition of Him to whom all life belongs. “On passing the threshold,” in Arabia, “it is proper to say, ‘Bismillah,’ that is, ‘In the name of God.’ Not to do so would be looked upon as a bad augury, alike for him who enters and for those within.”[^[19]] In Syria the belief prevails “that it is unlucky to tread on a threshold.” When they receive a new member to their sect, the Bektashi derwishes of Syria bring him to the threshold, and prayers and sacrifices are offered “on the door-sill.”[^[20]]

“The khaleefs of Bagdad required all those who entered their palace to prostrate themselves on the threshold of the gate, where they had inserted a fragment of the black stone of the temple at Meccah, in order to render it [the threshold] more venerable to those who had been accustomed to press their foreheads against it. The threshold was of some height, and it was a crime to set foot upon it.” In the advice which Nurshivan gives to his son Hormuz, he recommends him to betake himself to the threshold of the Lord; that is, to the “presence of God, in the same fashion in which the poor do, at the gates of the rich. ‘Since you are his slave,’ he says, ‘set your forehead on his threshold.’”[^[21]]

Among the Hindoos, “the threshold is ... sacred in private houses; it is not propitious for a person to remain on it; neither to eat, sneeze, yawn, nor spit whilst there.”[^[22]]

A double welcome is sometimes given to one who is in an official position. Thus, a Syrian, who held a commission from the chief officer of customs in Upper Syria, was surprised at having two sheep sacrificed before him as he approached the door of a house east of the Sea of Galilee; and he graciously protested against the excessive honor shown him. “One sheep is to welcome yourself as a man, and the other is to welcome you as an officer of the government,” was the answer. Loyalty as well as hospitality was indicated in these threshold sacrifices.

Sacredness attaches to the threshold in Persia. It must not be trodden on; but it is often kissed by those who would step over it.[^[23]]

A man should always cross himself when he steps over a threshold in Russia; and, in some portions of the realm, it is believed that he ought not to sit down on the threshold.[^[24]]

High sills, or thresholds, so that one must step over, and not on, them, are in the houses of Finland, and in the houses of many Finns in the United States.[^[25]] The same was true of many Teutonic houses.[^[26]]

To shake hands across a threshold, instead of crossing it, is said, in Finland, to ensure a quarrel.[^[27]] To step over a threshold is, in Lapland, to bring one under the protection of the family within, and of its guardian deity.[^[28]] The same is true among the Magyars.[^[29]]

The ancient Pythagoreans quoted various maxims, supposed to be from the sayings of their great founder, as teaching important lessons for all time. In these maxims there were indications of a peculiar reverence for the threshold and doorway. Thus: “He who strikes his foot against the threshold should go back;” it were unsafe to pursue a movement so inauspiciously begun. And, again: “The doors should be kissed fondly by those who enter or depart.”[^[30]]

“Treading on the threshold was ... tabooed by the Tatars.”[^[31]] Again, on the other side of the globe, in Samoa, to spill water on the door-step, or threshold, when food is brought in, is a cause of anger to the protecting deity of the family. It may drive him away.[^[32]]

In Europe and in America it is by many counted an ill omen to tread upon the threshold of the door on entering a house. To the present day, in portions of Scotland, the idea popularly prevails, that to tread directly upon the boundary lines of division between ordinary flagstones is to endanger one’s soul; hence the very children are careful to avoid stepping upon those lines, in their walking across the courtyards or along the streets, in their every-day passing.

Many a person in the United States, who knows nothing of any superstition connected with this, avoids, if possible, stepping on, instead of over, the cracks or seams of a board walk, or even the seams of a carpet.

All these customs seem to be a survival of the feeling that the threshold is sacred as the primitive altar.

Apart from the reverence for the threshold demanded of those who pass over it, there is an obvious sanctity of the threshold recognized in the placing of images and amulets underneath it, and in the sacrifices and offerings placed on it, as a means of guarding the dwelling within.

In the building of private houses, as well as temples, and city gateways, in ancient Assyria, images of various kinds and sizes, “in bronze, red jasper, yellow stone, and baked earth, ... are buried beneath the stones of the threshold, so as to bar the entrance to all destructive spirits.” Invocations are graven upon these figures.[^[33]]

Herodotus mentions[^[34]] that, in the annual feast in honor of the god Osiris, “every Egyptian sacrifices a hog before the door of his house” on the evening before the festival. Osiris was the god who was the judge of the soul after death, and who in a peculiar sense stood for the truth of the life to come. Every Egyptian desired, above all, to be in loving covenant with Osiris, and when he would offer a welcoming sacrifice to him, he did so before the door of his own house, as before the primitive family altar. That it was the blood poured out at the threshold which was the essential act of covenanting in this sacrifice to Osiris, is evidenced in the fact that the animal sacrificed was not eaten in the family of the sacrificer, but was carried away by the swineherd who furnished it.

Bunches of grass dipped in blood, and touched by the king, as if made representative of his dignity and power, are to-day placed on the threshold, as an offering, and as averters of evil, in Equatorial Africa. This is known there as an ancient custom. In Uganda, “every house has charms hung on the door, and others laid on the threshold.” An offering to the lubare, or local spirit, must be thrown across the threshold, from within the house, before a native ventures to leave his home in the morning.[^[35]] Charms for this purpose are kept behind the door.

One of the requirements in the Vedic law (the sacred law of the Hindoos) was, that “on the door-sill (a bali must be placed) with a mantra addressed to Antariksha (the air),”[^[36]] by a house father, in his home;[^[37]] that is, that an offering, with an invocation to a deity, should be a sacrifice at the threshold altar. Other references in the Hindoo laws seem to demand bali offerings “at all the doors, as many as they are,” in a house, and evidence the importance and sacredness attaching to the doorway.[^[38]]

The threshold seems to have special reverence in Northwestern India, in connection with the seasons of seedtime and harvest. At seedtime “a cake of cowdung formed into a cup” is placed on the threshold of the householder; it is filled with corn, and then water is poured over it as a libation to the deities. Cowdung is not only a means of enrichment to the soil, but it is a gift from the sacred cow, and so, in a sense, represents or stands for the life of the cow. It is laid on the threshold altar as an offering of life. The libation of water is an accompaniment of that offering; water is essential to life and growth, and it is a gift of the gods accordingly. Seed-sowing is recognized as an act which needs the blessing of the gods, and on which that blessing is sought in covenant relations.

At early harvest time the first-fruits of the grain-field are not taken to the threshing-floor, but are brought home to be presented to the gods at the household altar, and afterwards eaten by the family, with a portion given to the Brahmans. The first bundle of corn is deposited at the threshold of the home, and a libation of water is made as a completion of its offering. The grain being taken from the ear, of a portion of this first-fruits, is mixed with milk and sugar, and every member of the family tastes it seven times.[^[39]]

Among the Prabhus of Bombay, at the time of the birth of a child, an iron crowbar is placed “along the threshold of the room of confinement, as a check against the crossing of any evil spirit.” This is in accordance with a Hindoo belief that evil spirits keep aloof from iron, “and even nowadays pieces of horseshoe can be seen nailed to the bottom sills of doors of native houses.”[^[40]] Iron seems, in various lands, to be deemed of peculiar value as a guard against evil spirits, and the threshold to be the place for its efficacious fixing.

Similarly, “in East Bothnia, when the cows are taken out of their winter quarters for the first time, an iron bar is laid before the threshold, over which all the cows must pass; for, if they do not, there will be nothing but trouble with them all the following summer.”[^[41]]

Among the folk customs in the line of exorcism and divination in Italy, the threshold has prominence. “In Tuscany, much taking of magical medicine is done on the threshold; it also plays a part in other sorcery.”[^[42]] A writer mentions a method of exorcism with incense, where three pinches of the best incense, and three of the second quality, are put in a row on the threshold of the door, and then, after other incense is burned within the house in an earthen fire-dish, these “little piles of incense on the threshold of the door” are lighted, with words of invocation. This process is repeated three times over.[^[43]]

A method of curing a disorder of the wrist prevalent in harvest time, in North Germany, is by taking “three pieces of three-jointed straw,” and so laying them “side by side as to correspond joint by joint,” then chopping through the first joint into the block beneath. This “ceremony is performed on the threshold, and ends with the sign of the cross.”[^[44]]

Observances with reference to the threshold are numerous in Russia. “On it a cross is drawn to keep off maras (hags). Under it the peasants bury stillborn children. In Lithuania, when a new house is being built, a wooden cross, or some article which has been handed down from past generations, is placed under the threshold. There also when a newly baptized child is being brought back from church, it is customary for its father to hold it for a while over the threshold, ‘so as to place the new member of the family under the protection of the domestic divinities’ [bringing it newly into the family covenant at the threshold altar].... Sick children, who are supposed to have been afflicted by an evil eye, are washed on the threshold of their cottage, in order that, with the help of the Penates who reside there, the malady may be driven out of doors.”[^[45]]

At the annual feast known as “Death Week,” among Slavonic peoples, marking the close of winter and the beginning of spring, the peasants in rural Russia combine for a sacrifice to appease the “Vodyaoui,” or aroused water-spirit of the thawing streams. They also prepare a sacrifice for the “Domovoi” or house-spirit. A fat black pig is killed, and cut into as many pieces as there are residents in the place. “Each resident receives one piece, which he straightway buries under the door-step at the entrance to his house. In some parts, it is said, the country folk bury a few eggs beneath the threshold of the dwelling to propitiate the ‘Domovoi.’”[^[46]]

When a Magyar maiden would win the love of a young man, or would bring evil on him because of his reluctance, she seeks influence over him by means of the sacred threshold. “She must steal something from the young man, and take it to a witch, who adds to it three beans, three bulbs of garlic, a few pieces of dry coal, and a dead frog. These are all put into an earthenware pot, and placed under the threshold,” with a prayer for the object of her desire.[^[47]]

A superstition is prevalent in Roumania, that if a bat, together with a gold coin, be buried under the threshold, there is “good luck” to the house.[^[48]] Various superstitions, in connection with the bat are found among primitive peoples.[^[49]]

In Japan, the threshold of the door is sprinkled with salt, after a funeral, and as a propitiatory sacrifice in time of danger.[^[50]] Salt represents blood.

Among the Dyaks of Borneo, a pig’s blood is sprinkled at the doorway to atone for the sin of unchastity by a daughter of the family. Again, the blood of a fowl is sprinkled there at the annual festival of seed-sowing, with prayers for fecundity and fertility.[^[51]]

“On New Year’s morning, along the coast [in Aberdeenshire] where seaweed is gathered, a small quantity is laid down at each door of the farm-steading [the buildings of the homestead], as a means of bringing good luck.” And fire and salt are put on the threshold of the byre-door before a cow leaves the building after giving birth to a calf.[^[52]]

Of portions of Ireland, it was said, early in this century: “On the 11th of November, every family of a village kills an animal of some kind or other; those who are rich kill a cow or sheep, others a goose or a turkey; while those who are poor ... kill a hen or a cock, and sprinkle the threshold with the blood, and do the same in the four corners of the house; ... to exclude every kind of evil spirit from the dwelling.”[^[53]]

Holes bored in the door-sill, and plugged with pieces of paper on which are written incantations, a broom laid across the door-sill, or “three horseshoes nailed on the door-step with toes up,” are supposed to be a guard against witches or evil spirits in portions of Pennsylvania to-day.[^[54]] Many a Pennsylvanian is unwilling to cross, for the first time, the threshold of a new home, without carrying salt and a Bible.

Among the Indians in ancient Mexico there was an altar near the door of every house, with instruments of sacrifice, and accompanying idols.[^[55]]

“Threshold” and “foundation” are terms that are used interchangeably in primitive life. The sacredness of the threshold-stone of a building pivots on its position as a foundation stone, a beginning stone, a boundary stone. Hence the foundation stone of any house, or other structure was sacred as the threshold of that building. According to Dr. H.V. Hilprecht, in the earlier buildings of Babylonia the inscriptions and invocations and deposits were at the threshold, and later under the four corners of the building; but when they were at the threshold they were not under the corners, and vice versa. It would seem from this that the corner-stone was recognized as the beginning, or the limit, or the threshold, of the building. It may be, therefore, that the modern ceremonies at the laying of a “corner-stone” are a survival of the primitive sacredness of a threshold-laying.[^[56]]

It would seem, moreover, as if the sanctity of the threshold as the primitive altar were, in many places, in the course of time transferred to the family hearth. In the primitive tent the household fire was at the entrance way, as it is in the tents of the East to-day. Where Arabs have camped on an Eastern desert, the place of the shaykh’s tent can always be known by the blackened hearthstones at its entrance, or threshold, where he welcomed guests to the hospitality of his tribe and family by the sharing of bread and salt, or by the outpouring of the blood of a slaughtered lamb or kid.

If, indeed, the earliest dwelling of man was a cave, rather than a tent, the household fire was still at its entrance; and the threshold was the hearthstone. When, in the progress of building-changes, the hearthstone was removed to the center of the building, or of the inner court, its sanctity went with it, as the place of the family fire. Thus, for example, in Russia, the Domovoi, or household deity, who is honored and invoked at the threshold, “is supposed to live behind the stove now, but in early times he, or the spirits of the dead ancestors, of whom he is now the chief representative, were held to be in even more direct relations with the fire on the hearth; as were the Penates of the Romans, who were sometimes spoken of as at the threshold, and again as at the hearth.”[^[57]]

A recognition of the peculiar sacredness of the threshold is shown, in different lands, by the popular unwillingness to have the dead carried over it on the way to burial. In India, the body of one dying in certain phases of the moon can in no wise be carried over the threshold. The house wall must be broken for its removal.[^[58]] When Chinese students are attending the competitive examinations for promotion, they are shut up in rooms until their work is completed. If one of them dies at such a time, “the body is removed over the back wall, as the taking out openly through the front door would be regarded as an evil omen.”[^[59]]

In the capital of Korea there is a small gate in the city wall known as the “Gate of the Dead,” through which alone a dead body can be carried out. But no one can ever enter through that passage-way.[^[60]]

There is a recognition, in Russian folk-tales, of safety to the spirit of one who dies in a house, if his body be passed out under the threshold of the outer door.[^[61]]

It is not allowable to carry out a corpse through the main door of a house in Italy. There is a smaller door, in the side wall, known as the porta di morti, which is kept closed except as it is opened for the removal of a body at the time of a funeral.[^[62]]

In Alaska, it is deemed an evil omen for the dead to be carried over the threshold. “Therefore the dying one, instead of being allowed to rest in peace in his last hours, is hastily lifted from his couch and put out of doors [or out of the house] by a hole in the rear wall” so as not to have a corpse pass the threshold.[^[63]]

In some communities, in both Europe and America, the coffin is passed out of the house through the window, instead of through the door, at a funeral. And again, the front door is closed and a window is opened at the time of a death, in order that the spirit may pass out of the house in some other way than over the threshold.[^[64]]

Even though the dead may not be lifted over the threshold altar, the dead may be buried underneath it. In both the far East and the far West, burials under the threshold are known. And in Christian churches of Europe, a grave underneath the altar is an honored grave for saint or ecclesiastic.

In the Apocalypse the seer beheld “underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a great voice, saying, How long, O Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”[^[65]]

3. THRESHOLD COVENANTING IN THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY.

Marriage customs in various parts of the world, in ancient and modern times, illustrate this idea of the sacredness of the threshold as the family altar.

In portions of Syria, when a bride is brought to her husband’s home, a lamb or a kid is sacrificed on the threshold, and she must step across the outpoured blood.[^[66]] This marks her adoption into that family.

Among the wide-spreading ʾAnazeh Bed´ween, the most prominent and extensive tribe of desert Arabs, whose range is from the Sinaitic Peninsula to the upper Desert of Syria, “when the marriage day is fixed, the bridegroom comes with a lamb in his arms to the tent of the father of his bride, and then, before witnesses, he cuts its throat. As soon as the blood falls upon the earth [and the earth is the only threshold of a tent], the marriage ceremony is regarded as complete.”[^[67]] “In Egypt, the Copts sacrifice a sheep as the bride steps into the bridegroom’s house, and she is compelled to step over the blood which flows upon the threshold in the doorway.”[^[68]] It is evident, moreover, that this custom is not confined to the Copts.[^[69]]

Blood on the threshold, as an accompaniment of a marriage, is still counted important among Armenian Christians in Turkey. After the formal marriage ceremony at the church, the wedded pair, with their friends, proceed to the bridegroom’s home. “At the moment of their arrival a sheep is sacrificed on the threshold, over the blood of which the wedding party steps to enter the house.”[^[70]]

In the island of Cyprus, a bridegroom is borne to the house of his bride on the wedding morning, in a living chair formed by the crossed hands of his neighbor friends. Dismounting at her door, “as he is about to pass in, a fowl is brought and held down by head and feet upon the threshold of the door; the bridegroom takes an axe, cuts off the head, and only then may he enter.”[^[71]]

Like customs are found among yet more primitive peoples. Thus, for instance, with the western Somali tribes, in east Central Africa: “On reaching the bridegroom’s house a low-caste man sacrifices a goat or sheep on the threshold; and the bride steps over it;” and again when the bridegroom returns from his devotions at a neighboring masjid (a place of public prayer) to claim his bride, as he reaches his threshold, “another goat is sacrificed, and he steps over it in the same way as his bride.”[^[72]] Again the bridegroom himself brings the bride from her father’s hut to his own, accompanied by young men and maidens dancing and singing. “On reaching the new hut, the bride holds a goat or sheep in the doorway, while the bridegroom cuts its throat in the orthodox manner with his jambia (long knife). The bride dips her finger in the blood, smears it on her forehead, ... and then enters the gúrí, stepping over the blood. The bridegroom follows her, also stepping over the blood, and is accompanied by some of his nearest male relatives.”[^[73]]

There are traces of such customs, also, among the natives of South Africa,[^[74]] and elsewhere.

Besides the bloody sacrifices at the threshold, in the marriage ceremony, there are, in different countries, various forms of making offerings at the threshold, and of surmounting obstacles at that point, as an accompaniment of the wedding covenant. All these point to the importance and sanctity of the threshold and doorway in the primitive mind.

A bride, in portions of Upper Syria, on reaching her husband’s house, is lifted up so that she can press against the door-lintel a piece of dough, prepared for the purpose, and handed to her at the time. This soft dough, thus pressed against the plastered or clay wall, adheres firmly, and is left there as long as it will remain. The open hand of the bride stamps the dough as it is fixed in place, and in some cases the finger points are pricked before the stamping, so that the blood will appear as a sign manual on the cake of dough.[^[75]]

When a bride reaches the door of her husband’s house, among the fellaheen of Palestine, a jar of water is placed on her head. She must call on the name of God as she crosses the threshold; and, at the same moment, her husband strikes the jar from her head, and causes the water to flow as a libation.[^[76]]

Among the Wallachians there is a marriage rite, said to be of Latin origin, because there was a similar rite among the old Latins. The Wallachian bride is borne on horseback, with an accompanying procession, to the house of the bridegroom. “At the moment when the betrothed maiden dismounts from her steed, and is about to cross the threshold, they present to her butter, or sometimes honey, and with this she smears the door-posts.”[^[77]]

An observer says of this rite: “For the same reason among the Latins, the word for wife, uxor, originally unxor, was derived from the verb ungere, ‘to anoint,’ because the maidens when they reached the threshold of their future husbands, were similarly accustomed to anoint the door-posts.” In support of this fanciful etymology, old-time commentators on Terence and Virgil are cited;[^[78]] which shows, at least, that this ceremony at the threshold of the husband’s home has long been recognized as of vital importance in the marriage contract and relation.

It is customary, among the Greeks in Turkey, for the mother of the bridegroom, as he leaves his home to go for his bride on the morning of his wedding, to lay across his pathway a girdle, over which he steps, and to pour a libation of water before him.[^[79]]

In the Morea, in the vicinity of Sparta, it is said that, when the bride is brought to her new home, the mother of the bridegroom “stands waiting at the door, holding a glass of honey and water in her hand. From this glass the bride must drink; ... while the lintel of the door is smeared with the remainder; ... in the meantime one of the company breaks a pomegranate on the threshold.”[^[80]] In Rhodes, when the newly married couple enter the doorway of their new home, the husband “dips his finger in a cup of honey, and traces a cross over the door.... A pomegranate is placed on the threshold, which the young husband crushes with his foot as he enters, followed by his wife, over whom the wedding guests throw corn and cotton seeds and orange flower water.”[^[81]]

On Skarpanto (Carpathos), an island lying between Rhodes and Crete, when the bridegroom reaches the door of the bride’s house “he is greeted by the mother of the bride, who touches the nape of his neck with a censer containing incense.... She further gives him a present called embatikon,–that is to say, ‘the gift of in-going,’–and then places on the threshold a rug or blanket folded, with a stick resting on one of the corners. The bridegroom advances his right foot, breaks the stick and passes in.”[^[82]]

Among the Morlacchi, in Dalmatia, it is, or was, a custom for a bride to kneel and kiss the threshold of her husband’s home, before crossing it for the first time. Her mother-in-law, or some other near relative of her husband, at the same time presented her with a sieve full of different kinds of grain, nuts, and small fruits, which the bride scattered behind her back as she passed in.[^[83]]

It is a custom in portions of Russia, when the bride is about to leave her father’s home to meet the bridegroom, for the friends of the bridegroom to appear at the door, and request that the bride be brought to them. “After their request has been many times repeated, the ‘princess’ [as the bride is called] appears, attended by her relatives and attendants, but stops short at the door. Again the bridegroom’s friends demand the bride, but are told first to ‘cleanse the threshold; then will the young princess cross the threshold.’” Thereupon gifts are made by the bridegroom’s friend, and the bride crosses the threshold to go to the bridegroom.[^[84]]

Among the Mordvins (or, Mordevins), a Finnish people on the Volga, there are various customs in connection with marriage, tending to confirm the idea that the threshold is the household altar. In a ceremony of betrothal, with a conference over the terms of dowry, a prayer is offered to the “goddess of the homestead,” and the “goddess of the dwelling-house;” “the girl’s father then cuts off the corner of a loaf of bread with three slashes of a knife, salts it, and places it under the threshold, where the Penates are believed to frequent. This is called the ‘gods’ portion.’” Bread and salt are factors in a sacred covenant, and their proffer to the household gods, at the threshold altar, would seem to be an invitation to those gods to be a party to the new marriage covenant. Again, after the terms of betrothal are agreed on, there is the feast of “hand-striking,” or ratification of the betrothal. On that occasion also the “gods’ portion” is offered; and “a little brandy is spilt under the threshold. Bread and salt are once more placed under the threshold by the bride’s father, who carries it from the table to the household altar “on the point of the knife–under no circumstances in his hands.”[^[85]]

A custom of strewing the threshold of the home of a new-married couple prevailed in Holland until recent times.[^[86]] This was obviously a form of offering at the household altar.

On the evening before the marriage ceremony, in the rural districts and smaller towns of Northern Germany, the boys and girls, and others in the neighborhood, are accustomed to appear at the door of the bride’s house, and smash on the threshold earthen pots and jars, with loud cries of joy. “Sometimes, whole car-loads of broken pottery have to be removed from the door the next morning.” And when the young couple return to their home, after the ceremony at the church, poor boys and girls are accustomed to stretch a colored cord across the door of the house, to prevent a passage over the threshold, unless the bridegroom throws a handful of small coins among those who bar the way.[^[87]]

Traces of the sacredness of the threshold altar seem to exist in the wedding ceremonies in villages on the coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. “After the marriage is solemnized, ... the bride’s guests are entertained at her home, and the bridegroom’s at his.... When the bride returns to her father’s house, after the marriage, broken bread of various sorts is thrown over her before she enters. The same ceremony is gone through with the bridegroom at his father’s door.”[^[88]]

When a girl among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo is married, the wedding takes place at her house. The marriage rite includes the erecting an altar before the door of the house, and placing on it an offering of prepared areca-nut, covered with a red cloth, the color of blood. The families of the bride and the groom then partake of that offering in covenant conclave.[^[89]]

A lover, among the Woolwas, in Central America, when wooing a bride, would bring a deer’s carcass, and a bundle of firewood, and deposit it outside of her house door. If she accepted these, and took them over the threshold, it was a betrothal.[^[90]] The covenant seemed to consist in the reaching across the threshold and accepting a proffered offering in a spirit of loving agreement.

Among the Towkas, in the same part of the world, a bridegroom would go with his friends to the home of his bride, carrying a bundle of gifts for her. Sitting down outside of the door, he would call on her family to open to him. There being no response, music would then be tried by his friends. At this the door would be opened just far enough for him to put a gift inside over the threshold. One by one his gifts would be passed in, in this way, while the door opened wider and wider. When the last gift was over the threshold, the lover would spring within, and, seizing the bride, would carry her across the threshold, and take her to a temporary hut erected within a charmed circle near by, while his friends guarded him from intrusion.[^[91]]

And thus, in various ways, among widely different primitive peoples, the marriage customs go to show that the home threshold cannot be passed except by overcoming a barrier of some kind, and making an offering, bloody or bloodless, at this primal family altar. An essential part of the covenant of union is a halting at, and then passing over, the threshold of the new home, with an accompanying sacrifice.

4. STEPPING OR BEING LIFTED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD.

Even more widespread and prominent than the custom of offering blood, or of making a libation, or of overcoming a special barrier, at the threshold, or of anointing or stamping the posts or lintel of the doorway as a sign of the covenant, at the time of a marriage, and as a part of the ceremony, is the habit of causing the bride to cross the threshold with care, without stepping upon it. This custom is of well-nigh world-wide observance, and it has attracted the attention of anthropologists and students of primitive customs. A favorite method of explaining it has been by calling it a survival of the practice of “marriage by capture;” but this is nothing more than an unscientific guess, in defiance of the truth that persistent popular customs have their origin in a sentiment, and not in a passing historic practice. The earliest mentions of this custom, of the bride’s crossing the threshold without stepping on it, show it as a voluntary religious rite; and there are traces of its recognition in this light from the earliest times until now.

In the Vedic Sutras, or the sacrificial rules of the ancient Hindoo literature, it is specifically declared that a bride, on entering her husband’s home, shall step across the threshold, and not upon it. She is not lifted over the door-sill, but she voluntarily crosses it. Thus it is said: “When (the bridegroom with his bride) has come to his house, he says to her, ‘Cross (the threshold) with thy right foot first; do not stand on the threshold.’”[^[92]] In this ancient ceremony, grains of rice are poured on the heads of the bridegroom and his bride.[^[93]] This modern custom has, therefore, a very early origin. And again: “He makes her enter the house (which she does) with her right foot. And she does not stand on the threshold.”[^[94]]

Putting the right foot forward seems to be a matter of importance in various primitive religions. “Put your right foot first” is a maxim ascribed to Pythagoras.[^[95]] In his description of the proportions of a temple, the Roman architect Vitruvius said: “The number of steps in front should always be odd, since, in that case, the right foot, which begins the ascent, will be that which first alights on the landing of the temple.”[^[96]] A Muhammadan is always careful to put his right foot first in crossing over the threshold of a mosk.[^[97]]

Among the Albanians, when the bride is taken to the home of the bridegroom, accompanied by the vlam, or “the friend of the bridegroom,” it is said that “particular care is taken that the threshold should be crossed with the right foot foremost.”[^[98]] Here, as in India, the crossing of the threshold is a voluntary act. The bride is not lifted over, but crosses of her own accord. If she be veiled, the lifting is a necessity.

In Madagascar, “on entering a house, especially a royal house, it is improper to use the left foot on first stepping into it. One must ‘put one’s best (or right) foot foremost.’”[^[99]]

The bride, in Upper Syria, is sometimes carried across the threshold of the bridegroom’s house by friends of the bridegroom.[^[100]] She, of course, is veiled.

When the bride reaches the outer gate of her husband’s residence, in Egypt, the bridegroom meets her, enveloped as she is in her cashmere shawl, clasps her in his arms, and carries her across the threshold, and up to the doorway of the female apartments.[^[101]]

In portions of Abyssinia, the bridegroom carries his bride from her home to his, bearing her across the threshold as he enters his house.[^[102]]

So, also, it is among the more primitive tribes in West Africa. The bride is carried over the threshold in a rude chair, or on the shoulders of her friends, into her new home.[^[103]]

There are traces of a similar custom in the marriage ceremonies of ancient Assyria.[^[104]]

Again, it is said to be found among the Khonds of Orissa,[^[105]] the Tatars,[^[106]] and the Eskimos.[^[107]]

In ancient Greece[^[108]] and in ancient Rome[^[109]] the lifting of the bride over the threshold of her new home was an important part of the marriage ceremony. Classic writers had their explanations of this custom, as certain modern anthropologists have theirs, but the origin of the ceremony was earlier than they imagined.

In unchanging China the use of fire on the threshold altar, in connection with the marriage ceremony, is continued to the present day. The bride is borne in a sedan-chair to the house of the bridegroom, accompanied by a procession of friends and musicians. “On arriving at the portal of the house, the bridegroom taps the door of the sedan-chair with his fan, and in response, the instructress of matrimony, who prompts every act of the bride, opens the door and hands out the still enshrouded young lady, who is carried bodily over a pan of lighted charcoal, or a red-hot coulter laid on the threshold, while at the same moment a servant offers for her acceptance some rice and preserved prunes.”[^[110]]

Again, it is burning straw that is thrown upon the door-sill, and is half extinguished before the Chinese bride is led to step across it. The instructress says at this point:

“Now, fair young bride, the smoke bestride;

This year have joy, next year a boy.”[^[111]]

Fire, like blood, stands for life in the primitive mind; and fire, like blood, has its place on the altar. Indeed, as the first threshold altar was the hearthstone, it was the place of the household fire. The sacredness of the domestic fire is recognized in all the Hindoo religious literature; and a Hindoo couple, on beginning their married life, must have a care to enter a new home bringing their sacred altar fire with them.[^[112]] In ancient Greece, the mother of the bride accompanied her daughter to the threshold of her new home, bearing a flaming torch “kindled at the parental hearth, according to custom immemorial.”[^[113]] A torch was similarly borne in the Roman marriage ceremonies.[^[114]] This custom is referred to in the term “hymen’s torch,” or the “nuptial torch.” “In Cicero’s time, they did not distinguish the hearth-fire from the Penates, nor the Penates from the Lares.”[^[115]] The bride, in India, in China, in Greece, and in Rome, worshiped at the altar-fire of her new home.

A connecting link between the altar fire and the nuptial torch is found in a marriage custom of the Erza, of the Mordvins, in Russia. On the eve of the wedding day the bridegroom’s family make ready for the bride. “A thick candle, and several thinner ones, have ... been made ready for the occasion. The bridegroom’s father lights the smaller ones before the holy pictures [in use in families of the Greek Church], but sets up the large one on the threshold. It is called ‘the house candle.’” The father then prays for the new couple.[^[116]]

A survival of an ancient Slavic custom, of covenanting together by crossing together an altar fire, would also seem to exist in Russia in the practices of young people at the “Midsummer Day” festival. A Russian writer says of these festivals: “More than once have I had an opportunity of being present at these nightly meetings, held at the end of June, in commemoration of a heathen divinity. They usually take place close to a river or pond; large fires are lighted, and over them young couples, bachelors and unmarried girls, jump barefoot.”[^[117]]

There is a custom of wooing among the Moksha, of the Mordvins, that brings the threshold-altar idea into prominence. The parents of the wooer first make gifts, at their home, to the household goddesses. “These gifts consist of dough figures of domestic animals, which are placed under the threshold of the house and of the outside gate, while prayer is made to the goddesses and to deceased ancestors. The father [of the bridegroom] then cuts off a corner of a loaf placed on the table, and at the time of the offering scoops out the inside and fills it with honey. At midnight he drives in profound secrecy to the house of the bride elect, places the honeyed bread on the gate-post [of her house], strikes the window with his whip, and shouts: ‘Seta! I, Veshnak Mazakoff, make a match between thy daughter and my son Uru. Take the honeyed bread from thy gate-post, and pray.’”[^[118]] The images of domestic animals would here seem to stand for the slaughtered animals formerly offered at the threshold altar; and the linking of the altars of the two homes by offerings and prayer would seem to indicate the desire for a sacred covenant. When the bride is received at the bridegroom’s house, a notch is cut “with an ax in the door-post to mark the arrival of a new addition to the family.”

Among the Erza, of the same province, the bride, on the day of “the girl’s feast,” preceding her marriage, “takes mould [earth] from under the threshold [of her parental home] with her finger-tips, and thrusts it into her bosom,” as she goes out to seek a farewell blessing from her friends. In the bridegroom’s home, meanwhile, a lighted candle is placed on the threshold of the door; and, in some regions, when he and his friends go to the bride’s house to bring her to his home, he and they are met at the door by her parents with the covenanting bread and salt, and the words, “Be welcome, come within.” As the bride is borne out of her old home to go to her new one, she and her party “all halt and bow to the gate, for there, or in the courtyard, is the abode of the god that protects the dwelling-place. The following prayer is made to him: ‘Kardas Sarks, the nourisher, god of the house, do not abandon her that is about to depart; always be near her just as thou art here.‘” When she reaches her new home, she is carried (over the threshold), in the arms of some of her party, into the house of the bridegroom, carrying a lighted candle.[^[119]]

The custom survived in portions of Scotland, as recently as the beginning of this century, of lifting a bride over the threshold, or the first step of the door. A cake of bread, prepared for the occasion, was, at the same time, broken by the bridegroom’s mother over the head of the bride. The bride was then led directly to the hearth, and the poker and tongs, and sometimes the broom, were put into her hands “as symbols of her office and duty.”

Lifting the bride over the threshold has been practiced in recent times, in England, Ireland, and the United States.[^[120]]

Both bride and bridegroom were carried, on the shoulders of their elders, across the threshold of their new home, and laid on their bridal bed, in the marriage ceremonies of some of the tribes of Central America. And again the bridegroom carried his bride in this way.[^[121]] In either case, it was the crossing of the threshold without stepping on it that was the thing aimed at.

5. LAYING FOUNDATIONS IN BLOOD.

In the building of a house, as a new home, the prominence given to the laying of the threshold, or to its dedicating by blood, is another indication, or outcome, of its altar-like sacredness. In Upper Syria a sacrifice is often made at the beginning of the building of a new house, and again at the first crossing of its threshold. “When a new house is built,” among the Metâwileh, “the owner will not reside in it until, with certain formalities, a black hen has been carried several times round the house and slaughtered within the door,” as if in covenant dedication of the house.[^[122]]

Among the Copts in Egypt, when the threshold of a new house is laid, the owner slaughters a sheep or a goat on the threshold, and steps over the blood, as if in covenant for himself and his household with Him to whom all blood, as life, belongs. Then he divides the sacrificed victim among his neighbors; and they in turn come and step across the blood on the threshold, invoking as they do so a blessing on the new house and its owner, while coming into covenant with him.[^[123]]

The foundation-stone of a new building is, in a sense, the threshold of that structure. Hence to lay the foundations in blood is to proffer blood at the threshold. Traces of this custom are to be found in the practices or the legends of peoples wellnigh all the world over.[^[124]] Apparently the earlier sacrifices were of human beings.[^[125]] Later they were of animals substituted for persons. The idea seems to have been that he who covenanted by blood with God, or with the gods, when his house, or his city, was builded, was guarded, together with his household, while he and they were dwellers there; but, if he failed to proffer a threshold sacrifice, his first-born, or the first person who crossed the bloodless threshold, would be claimed by the ignored or defied deity.

There is, indeed, a suggestion of this idea in the curse pronounced by Joshua, when he destroyed the doomed city of Jericho, against him who should rebuild its walls, he not being in covenant with and obedient to the Lord. “Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: with the loss of his firstborn shall he lay the foundation thereof, and with the loss of his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”[^[126]] A later record tells of the fulfilment of this curse. It says of the reign of Ahab: “In his days did Hiel the Bethel-ite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof with the loss of Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of his youngest son Segub; according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by the hand of Joshua the son of Nun.”[^[127]]

Human sacrifices, in order to furnish blood at the foundations of a house, or of a public structure, have been continued down to recent times, or to the present, in some portions of the world; and there are indications in popular tradition that they were frequent in a not remote past.

It is said that at the building of Scutari, in Asia Minor, “the workmen were engaged on its fortifications for three years, but the walls would not stand. Then they protested that the only possible way to succeed was to lay under or in them a living human being. They accordingly laid hold of a young woman who brought them dinner, and immured her.”[^[128]]

According to a story in China, when the bridge leading to the site of St. John’s College, in Shanghai, was in process of building, an official present took off his shoes, as indicating his rank, and threw them into the stream, in order to stay the current, and enable the workmen to lay the foundations. Finding this unavailing, he took off his garments and threw them in. Finally he threw himself in, and as his life went out the workmen were enabled to go on with their building. To this day the belief is general that that structure stands fast because of this sacrifice.[^[129]]

“When the walls of Algiers were built of blocks of concrete [by Muhammadans], in the sixteenth century, a Christian captive named Geronimo was placed in one of the blocks and the rampart built over and about him. Since the French occupation of Algiers a subsidence in the wall led to an examination of the blocks, and one was found to have given way. It was removed, and the cast of Geronimo was discovered in the block. The body had gone to dust, and the superincumbent weight had crushed in the stone sarcophagus.”[^[130]]

A story told among the Danes is, that “many years ago, when the ramparts were being raised round Copenhagen, the wall always sank, so that it was not possible to get it to stand firm. They therefore took a little innocent girl, placed her in a chair by a table, and gave her playthings and sweetmeats. While she thus sat enjoying herself, twelve masons built an arch over her, which, when completed, they covered with earth to the sound of drums and trumpets. By this process the walls were made solid.”[^[131]]

“Thuringian legend declares that to make the castle of Liebenstein fast and impregnable, a child was bought for hard money of its mother, and walled in. It was eating a cake while the masons were at work, the story goes, and it cried, ‘Mother, I see thee still;’ then later, ‘Mother, I see thee a little still;’ and as they put in the last stone, ‘Mother, now I see thee no more.’”[^[132]]

A similar story is told of a Slavic town on the Danube. A plague devastated it, and it was determined to build it anew, with a new citadel. “Acting on the advice of their wisest men, they sent out messengers before sunrise one morning in all directions, with orders to seize upon the first living creature they should meet. The victim proved to be a child (Dyetina, archaic form of Ditya), who was buried alive under the foundation-stone of the new citadel. The city was on that account called Dyetinets [or Detinetz], a name since applied to any citadel.”[^[133]]

It is even said that “when, a few years ago, the Bridge Gate of the Bremen city walls was demolished, the skeleton of a child was found imbedded in the foundations.”[^[134]]

A Scottish legend tells that St. Columba found himself unable to build a cathedral on the island of Iona unless he would secure its stability and safety by the blood of a human sacrifice. Thereupon he took his companion, Oran, and buried him alive at the foundations of the structure, having no trouble after that.[^[135]]

And it is said that under the walls of the only two round towers of the ancient Irish examined, human skeletons were found buried.[^[136]]

Until the transfer of Alaska to the United States, in 1867, by the Russian government, human sacrifices at the foundation of a new house were common in that portion of America. The ceremonies are thus described by one familiar with them: “The rectangular space for the building is ... cleared, a spot for the fireplace designated, and four holes dug, wherein the corner posts are to be set.... A slave, either man or woman who has been captured in war or is even a descendant of such a slave, is blindfolded and compelled to lie down face uppermost, in the place selected for the fireplace [the site of the domestic altar]. A sapling is then cut, laid across the throat of the slave, and, at a given signal, the two nearest relatives of the host sit upon the respective ends of the sapling, thereby choking the unhappy wretch to death. But the corner posts must receive their baptism; so four slaves are blindfolded, and one is forced to stand in each post-hole, when, at a given signal, a blow on the forehead is dealt with a peculiar club ornamented with the host’s coat of arms.” It is said that even to the present time, on the building of a house in Alaska, “the same ceremonies are enacted, with the exception of the sacrifices, which are prevented by the United States authorities.”[^[137]]

In Hindoostan, Burmah, Tennasserin, Borneo, Japan, Galam, Yarriba, Polynesia, and elsewhere, there are modern survivals of this foundation-laying in blood.[^[138]] It would seem, indeed, to have been wellnigh universal as a primitive usage.

Popular ballads give other indications of such customs, in various lands. “In a song, of which there are several versions, of the building of the bridge of Arta, it is told how the bridge fell down as fast as it was built, until at last the master-builder dreamed a dream that it would only stand if his own wife were buried alive in the foundations. He therefore sends for her, bidding her dress in festival attire, and then finds an excuse to make her descend into the central pile, whereupon they heap the earth over her, and thus the bridge stands fast.”[^[139]]

“In another song the same story is told of the Bridge of Tricha, with the difference only that it is a little bird that whispers in the architect’s ear how the pile may be made to stand. A similar superstition connected with the building of the monastery Curtea de Argest, in Wallachia, forms the subject of a fine poem by the Roumanian poet Alexandri.”[^[140]]

There is an indication of a like custom among the Vlachs in Turkey, as shown in their folk-poetry. The ballad of the “Monastery of Argis” tells of such an incident, in which the master-builder Manoli plays a part.[^[141]]

Various substitutes for human offerings at the laying of a foundation-stone, or a threshold, have been adopted in different countries. Thus, in modern Greece, “after the ground has been cleared for the foundations of a new house, the future owner, his family, and the workmen attend, together with the pappas [the priest] in full canonicals, accompanied by incense, holy water, and all due accessories. A prayer is said, and those present are aspersed, and the site is sprinkled with the consecrated water. Then a fowl or a lamb, which you have noticed lying near with the feet tied together, is taken by one of the workmen, killed and decapitated, the pappas standing by all the while, and even giving directions; the blood is then smeared on the foundation-stone, in the fulfilment of the popular adage that ‘there must be blood in the foundation.’”[^[142]]

The modern Greek term for this ceremony, stoicheionein, would seem to indicate a sacrifice to the deity of the threshold, or the foundation.

“The Bulgarians, it is said, when laying a house foundation, take a thread, and measure the shadow of some casual passer-by. The measure is then buried under the foundation-stone, and it is expected that the man whose shadow has been thus treated will soon become but a shade himself.... Sometimes a victim is put to death on the occasion; the foundations being sprinkled with the blood of a fowl, or a lamb, or some other species of scapegoat.”[^[143]]

Among the Russian peasants the idea prevails that the building of a new house “is apt to be followed by the death of the head of the family for which the new dwelling is constructed, or that the member of the family who is the first to enter it will soon die. In accordance with a custom of great antiquity, the oldest member of a migrating household enters the new house first; and in many places, as, for instance, in the Government of Archangel, some animal is killed and buried on the spot on which the first log or stone is laid.”[^[144]]

The “upper corner” of a house, in Russia, is peculiarly sacred, having even more honor than the doorway threshold in the ordinary home. Yet this upper corner seems to be in a sense the real threshold, or foundation corner, of the building. A cock is the ordinary victim sacrificed “on the spot which a projected house is to cover.” The head of this cock is buried “exactly where the ‘upper corner’ of the building is to stand.” And this corner is thenceforward a sacred corner. Opposite to it is the stove. It is called the “great” and the “beautiful” corner. The family meal is eaten before it, and every one who enters the cottage makes obeisance toward it. Formerly ancestral images are supposed to have been in that corner, and now holy pictures are there.[^[145]] It would seem to be in accordance with this idea that the foundation-stone, or threshold, of a new building, which in civilized lands is now laid with imposing ceremonies, is known as the “corner-stone.” Yet the “corner-stone” of a modern building is sometimes at the corner of the central doorway.[^[146]]

It is worthy of note that in ancient Egypt the one door of an ordinary dwelling-house was placed at one side, or end, of the front wall, and not in the center; so that the corner-stone of the building was literally a portion of the threshold.[^[147]] The same was true of many an old-time New England house; the “front door” was at the left-hand side (as one approached the house) of the gable end. Thus the threshold of the door was often the corner-stone.

Ancient Romans were accustomed to place statues and images, instead of living persons, under the foundations of their buildings, as has been shown by recent researches in and about Rome.[^[148]] In one instance, where a fine statue of colossal size and in perfect preservation was unearthed, at the foundations of a convent which was being enlarged, “by order of the monks, it was buried again,” as if in deference to the primitive belief that it was essential to the stability of the structure.[^[149]]

There is a Swedish tradition “that under the altar in the first Christian churches a lamb was usually buried, which imparted security and duration to the edifice.”[^[150]] And, “according to Danish accounts, a lamb was buried under every altar, and a living horse was laid in every churchyard before a human corpse was laid in it. Both lamb and horse are to be seen occasionally in the church- or grave-yard, and betoken death. Under other houses pigs and hens were buried alive.”[^[151]]

A new sacrificial stone, or altar of sacrifice, laid on the summit of a Mexican temple, in 1512, was consecrated by Montezuma by the blood of more than twelve thousand captives.[^[152]]

When the new railroad was built between Jaffa and Jerusalem, a few years ago, there were sacrifices of sheep at its beginning. And there were similar sacrifices at the foundations of the Turkish building, at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago.

In all these facts or legends, blood on the threshold of the building, in the foundation-stones of the structure, is shown to have been deemed an essential factor in a covenant with, or in propitiation of, the deity of the place.

6. APPEALS AT THE ALTAR.

Because the threshold is recognized as an altar, nearness to the altar is nearness to God, or to the gods worshiped at that altar. Hence appeals are made and justice is sought at the gate, or at the threshold, as in the presence of deity.

To present one’s self at the tent doorway, or to lay hold of the supports, or cords, at the entrance of an Arab’s “house of hair,” is recognized as an ever-effective appeal for hospitality in the East. Even an enemy can thus secure the protection of the home sanctuary.[^[153]]

In the excavation of Tell-el-Hesy, in Southwestern Palestine, supposed to cover the remains of ancient Lachish,[^[154]] Dr. Petrie discovered various ornamented door-jambs. In one case a simple volute on a pilaster slab suggested to Dr. Petrie “a ram’s horn nailed up against a wooden post;” and “he sees in this the origin of the type of the ‘horns of the altar,’[^[155]] so often mentioned in temple architecture.”[^[156]] If Dr. Petrie be correct in this thought, the horns of the altar were first of all at the house doorway, above the threshold altar.

One of the fundamental laws of the Afghans makes it incumbent on a host to “shelter and protect any one who in extremity may flee to his threshold, and seek an asylum under his roof.” Property or life must be sacrificed in his behalf, if need be. “As soon as you have crossed the threshold of an Afghan you are sacred to him, though you were his deadly foe, and he will give up his own life to save yours.” A favorite poem of the Afghan, entitled, “Adam Khan and Durkhani,” tells of a son who killed his father because that father had betrayed a refugee who sought the sanctuary of his threshold. And all Afghans honor the memory of that son.[^[157]]

Among the Arabs of the Syrian desert, when a man would leave his own tribe and join himself to another, he takes a lamb or a goat with him, and presents himself at the entrance of the tent of the shaykh of the tribe he would find a home in. Slaying the animal there, and allowing its blood to run out on the ground at the threshold of the tent, he makes his appeal to the shaykh to accept him as a member of his tribe, or as a son by adoption. And this appeal has peculiar force, as a voice by blood.[^[158]]

When a man among these tribes is in peril of his life, pursued by an enemy, he can similarly make an appeal for sanctuary at the threshold altar of a shaykh’s tent, with a like outpouring of the blood of an animal brought by him; and protection must be granted him by the shaykh. It is as though he had laid hold of the “horns of the altar.” So, again, when a man would be reconciled with an enemy who has cause for bitter hostility, he goes to the tent of that enemy and sacrifices an animal at the threshold, with an appeal for forgiveness. This offering of a threshold sacrifice secures his safety.

In other portions of Arabia this same idea finds a different but similar expression. “With bare and shaven head the offender appears at the door of the injured person, holding a knife in each hand, and, reciting a formula provided for the purpose, strikes his head several times with the sharp blades. Then drawing his hands over his bloody scalp, he wipes them on the door-post. The other must then come out and cover the suppliant’s head with a shawl [covering the offense, in covering the offender], after which he kills a sheep, and they sit down together at a feast of reconciliation.”[^[159]]

A record on a Babylonian clay tablet, of the twenty-eighth year of Nebuchadrezzar, affirms that “on the second day of the month of Ab” a certain “Imbiʿa shall bring his witness to the gate of the house of the chief Bel-iddin, and let him testify” as to a certain matter.[^[160]] The gate of the chief man, or local magistrate, would here seem to have been the recognized court of justice.

In the palace ruins at Persepolis and Susa, the great doorways show, in their architecture, the influence of Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt. And in the relief sculpture of those doorways there is seen a representation of “the king sitting on his throne rendering justice at his palace gate.”[^[161]]

At one of the gates of modern Cairo, the writer has seen a venerable Arab sitting in judgment on a case submitted to him by the contestants. And such a scene may be often witnessed at the gates of an Oriental city.

In accordance with this primitive idea, it became a custom in India for one who would obtain justice from another to seat himself at the door of a house, or a tent, and refuse to move from that position until he starved to death, unless his claim were heeded. If the suitor died at the door, or the household altar, the sin of his death rested upon the householder. The suitor’s blood cried out against the evil-doer.

Even to the present time appeals at the household altar are made in blood, in portions of India. A case recently before the British court in Kathiawar involved an illustration of such an appeal. One of the Charaus, a caste of heralds, had become responsible with his life, according to custom, for the repayment of a loan made to a land owner. The land owner delayed payment, and seemed disposed to avoid it. “The herald and his brother, with their old mother for a sacrifice, went to the door of the debtor’s house and demanded payment, as their family honor was at stake. When the land owner would not pay, the herald struck off the head of his mother with his sword before the door, the brother at the same time wounded (intending to kill) the debtor, and the two brothers sprinkled the mingled blood of the sacrifice on the householder’s door-posts. The land owner, smitten by public infamy and the guilt of the matricide, starved himself to death.”[^[162]] References to this responsibility of the heralds are found in the Mahabharata.[^[163]]

Even where the primitive custom of sacrificing at the doorway has died out, there sometimes seems to be a survival of it in popular phraseology. Talcott Williams, of Philadelphia, relates an incident of his experiences in Morocco, which illustrates this. He says: “As I was riding through the Soko at Tangier on a morning in June, 1889, a servant stopped me, and said: ‘Four men, from near Azila (a town on the seacoast of Morocco, about thirty miles away), are waiting for you at the gate of the house of Mr. Perdicarus, and they have killed a sheep.’ ‘What have they killed a sheep for?’ said I. ‘Oh!’ said the servant, ‘I don’t mean that they have actually killed a sheep, but they are sitting at the gate, asking for your help, and expect you to aid them in their trouble, because they have heard that you have influence with the American consul, and are a man of importance in your own country, and we call that “killing a sheep.”’ I think he added ‘at the gate,’ but my memory is not perfectly clear at this point. I rode on to the house of my friend, where I was stopping, and found there the kinsman of a sheikh, who had been imprisoned by the American consul. They seized my horse’s bridle, and, with the usual Oriental signs of respect, refused to let me dismount until I had heard them and their plea for help.

“I was told by my own servant and the other Orientals there, that this plea ‘at the gate,’ accompanied as it was by the readiness to ‘kill a sheep,’ was one which no man in Morocco would dream of disregarding. I made some inquiry on the subject afterwards, and found that the habit of sitting at the gate waiting for a man of supposed influence or authority, while absent, to return to his house, often actually accompanied, though less frequently at present, by the slaughter of a sheep, whose blood is poured across the road over which he must pass, was a form used only in cases of dire necessity, and one to which a man with whom other pleas would avail nothing, felt compelled to give attention. I am glad to add that in my own case this ancient rite was not without its fruits to those who had used it.”[^[164]]

See the Bible references to this idea. Moses stood “in the gate of the camp,” at a crisis hour in Israel’s history, when he would execute judgment in the Lord’s cause.[^[165]] All Israel was aroused to do judgment against the sinning Benjamites because of the appeal of the dying woman who fell at the door of the house, “with her hands upon the threshold.”[^[166]] Boaz “went up to the gate,” to meet the elders there, when he would covenant to do justice by Ruth and the kinsman of Naomi.[^[167]] Absalom sat in “the way of the gate” when he would show favor to those who came there with their appeals for justice.[^[168]] And when Absalom was dead, David as king was again sitting in the gate.[^[169]] Zedekiah, the king of Judah, was sitting in the gate of Benjamin when Ebed-melech appealed to him in behalf of Jeremiah.[^[170]] Daniel’s post of honor in Babylon was “in the gate of the king,” as a judge in the king’s name.[^[171]]

Wisdom, personified, says of him who would seek help where it is to be obtained:

“Blessed is the man that heareth me,

Watching daily at my gates,

Waiting at the posts of my doors.”[^[172]]

The Lord’s call to Israel, through the prophets, was: “Establish judgment in the gate,”[^[173]] and “Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates.”[^[174]] A reference to a just and righteous man is to “him that reproveth in the gate.”[^[175]]

Lazarus in his need is laid daily at the gate of the rich Dives, seeking help.[^[176]] So, again, the poor man who was a cripple from his birth was “laid daily at the door of the temple ... called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple.”[^[177]]

It is written in the Mosaic law, that, when a bondman would bind himself and his family in permanent servitude to his loved master, “his master shall bring him unto God [or to the place of judgment and of covenant], and shall bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall [thenceforward] serve him forever;”[^[178]] or, as it is elsewhere said, the master shall thrust the awl “through his ear, unto [or into] the door.”[^[179]] Here, apparently, the master and servant appeal together at the household altar, in witness of their sacred covenant.

The high court of Turkey is still called the “Sublime Porte,” the “Exalted Gateway;” and the subjects of the Sultan seek imperial favor at his palace door. He, or his representative, administers justice there, to those who are waiting at his gate.

A promise to Abraham was: “Thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies.”[^[180]] And again Jesus says of his Church, that “the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”[^[181]] In both these cases “gates” are obviously equivalent to the power of those who are within the gates. Thus, also, when the overthrow of a city is foretold in prophecy, it is said, that “the gate is smitten with destruction.”[^[182]]

7. COVENANT TOKENS ON THE DOORWAY.

Because the threshold of the doorway is the primitive altar of the household, the doorway itself is, as it were, a framework above the altar; and the side-posts and lintel of the doorway fittingly bear tokens or inscriptions in testimony to the sacredness of the passage into the home sanctuary. It would seem that originally the blood poured out in sacrifice on the threshold was made use of for marking the door-posts and lintel with proofs of the covenant entered into between the in-comer and the host; and that afterwards other symbols of life, and appropriate inscriptions, were substituted for the blood itself.

There are survivals in the East, at the present time, of the original method of blood-marking the frame of the doorway; and there are traces of its practice in ancient times in both the East and the West. President Washburn, of Robert College, Constantinople, says:[^[183]] “I remember, after the great fire in Stamboul, in 1865, going over the ruins, and coming to a house that the fire had spared; a sheep had been sacrificed on the threshold, and a hand dipped in the blood and struck upon the two door-posts.”

This appears, also, in the installing of a Chief Rabbi in modern Jerusalem. In the welcome to the Hakham Bâshi, or the “First in Zion,”[^[184]] “the multitude of those gathered together accompany him to his house, but before he sets the sole of his foot upon the threshold of the outer gate [or court] one of the shokheteem [or official slaughterers] slays a perfect beast, and pronounces the sacrificial blessing, and all those present answer, Amen. Then the rabbi, the Hakham Bâshi, steps over the beast which has been slain, and the shokhet dips the two palms of his hands into the blood, and marks first the vessels of the rabbi’s house. And, with his hands stained with blood, he forms the semblance of a hand above the lintel of the door;–in their trust that this thing is good [the proper thing] for the evil eye;–and the flesh of the beast they distribute to the poor.”[^[185]]

A custom in this same line is noted among the Jews in Morocco, in connection with wedding observances. “Whilst the bullock, or other animal, is being slaughtered for the evening’s festivities, a number of boys dip their hands in the blood, and make an impression of an outspread hand on the door-posts and walls of the bride’s house;” supposedly “for the purpose of keeping off the ‘evil eye,’ and thus ensuring good luck to the newly married couple.”[^[186]]

There are indications of such a custom in ancient times. Layard says of his researches in Assyria: “On all the slabs forming entrances in the oldest palaces of Nimroud, were marks of a black fluid resembling blood, which appeared to be daubed on the stone. I have not been able to ascertain the nature of this fluid; but its appearance cannot fail to call to mind the Jewish ceremony of placing the blood of the sacrifice on the lintel of the doorway.”[^[187]]

In ancient Egypt there were inscriptions, together with the name of the owner, on the side-posts and lintels of the dwellings. “Besides the owner’s name,” says Wilkinson,[^[188]] “they sometimes wrote a lucky sentence over the entrance of the house, for a favorable omen, as ‘The Good Abode,’ the múnzel mobárak of the modern Arabs, or something similar; and the lintels and imposts of the doors in the royal mansions were frequently covered with hieroglyphics, containing the ovals and titles of the monarch. It was, perhaps, at the dedication of the house, that these sentences were affixed; and we may infer, from the early mention of this custom among the Jews, that it was derived from Egypt.”[^[189]]

When it is understood that the inscribing, on the doorways, of dedications to protecting deities, was common among primitive peoples, it would seem to be in accordance with that custom that the Hebrews were commanded to dedicate their doorways to the one living God. It is said of the words of the covenant of God with his people, as recorded in Deuteronomy 6 : 4–9 and 11 : 13–21, “Thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy house, and upon thy gates.” To this day, among stricter Jews, these covenant words inscribed on parchment, and enclosed in a cylinder of glass, or a case of metal or of wood, are affixed to the side-posts of every principal door in the house. This case and inscription are called the “mezuza.” On the outside of the written scroll, the divine name, Shaddai,–“the Almighty,”–is so inscribed that it may be in sight through an opening in the case or cylinder. This name stands for “the Guardian of the dwellings of Israel,” whose protection is thus invoked above the primitive altar of the household on the threshold of the entrance way.[^[190]]

“Every pious Jew, as often as he passes the mezuza, touches the divine name with the finger of his right hand, puts it to his mouth and kisses it, saying in Hebrew, ‘The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth, and for evermore;’[^[191]] and when leaving on a business expedition he says, after touching it, ‘In thy name, kuzu bemuchsaz kuzu (=God), I go out and shall prosper.’”[^[192]] In some cases the covenant words are inscribed directly upon the door-posts, instead of being written on parchment and enclosed in a case.

On the lintels of the ancient synagogues in Palestine there were sculptured symbolic figures, such as the paschal lamb, a pot of manna, a vine, or a bunch of grapes, together with inscriptions; and the door-posts were ornamented more or less richly.[^[193]] Evidences of this are still abundant.

Speaking of the writing over the door and all round the room at the office of the consul in Sidon, Dr. Thomson says that Muhammadans “never set up a gate, cover a fountain, build a bridge, or erect a house, without writing on it choice sentences from the Koran, or from their best poets. Christians also do the same.”[^[194]] These writings are deemed a protection against harm from evil spirits.

In Persia, both the Muhammadans and the Armenians inscribe passages from their sacred books above their doorways, with ornamental adornings, in “strange, fantastic patterns.”[^[195]] The palace doorways in ancient Persia were inscribed and ornamented in a high degree.[^[196]]

At the present time, in China, coins are put under the door-sill at the time of its laying, and charms are fastened above the door;[^[197]] the gods of the threshold are invoked at the doorway by shrines and inscriptions, while sentences, as in ancient Egypt, are written on the side-posts and lintel.[^[198]] At the festival of the fifth month of the Chinese year, “charms, consisting of yellow paper of various sizes, on which are printed images of idols, or of animals, or Chinese characters, are pasted upon the doors and door-posts of houses, in order to expel evil spirits.” In times of pestilence, sentences written in human blood are fastened on the door-posts for protection from disease.[^[199]]

Describing a ceremony on a large Chinese junk when starting out on a long voyage, an observer tells of the sacrifice of a fowl in honor of the divinity called Loong-moo, or the Dragon’s Mother. A temporary altar was erected at the bow of the vessel, as its beginning, or threshold, and the blood of the sacrificed fowl was shed there. Pieces of silver paper were “sprinkled with the blood [of the fowl], and then fastened to the door-posts and lintels of the cabin.”[^[200]] The cabin door is the home door of the voyager.

Above the house door of almost every home, in large portions of Japan, there is suspended the shimenawa, or a thin rope of rice straw, which is one of the sacred symbols of ancient Shintoism. Above the doors of high Shinto officials, this symbol is of great size and prominence. Its presence is as a sign of a covenant with the gods.[^[201]]

The Greeks certainly recognized the entrance of the house as the place for an altar to the protecting deity. “Before each house stood, usually, its own peculiar altar of Apollo Agyieus, or an obelisk rudely representing the god himself;” and that over the house door, “for good luck,” or as a talisman, “an inscription was often placed.”[^[202]] And on occasions, as when a bride entered her husband’s house, the doorway was “ornamented with festive garlands.”[^[203]] Theocritus refers to a Greek custom of smearing the side-posts of the gateway with the juice of magic herbs, as a method of appeal to the guardian deity to influence the heart of the dweller within toward the suppliant at the door.[^[204]]

Roman householders affixed to the lintels and side-posts of their doors the spoils and trophies taken by them in battle. Branches, and wreaths of bay and laurel, were hung by them in the doorway on a marriage occasion; and lamps and torches were displayed at their doors at other times of rejoicing; while cypresses were shown there at the time of a death.[^[205]]

Texts of Scripture, and other inscriptions, as a means of invoking a blessing at the doorway, are frequently found at the present time above the entrance of houses in South Germany.

In Central America and in South America the blood of sacrificial offerings was smeared on the doorways of houses as well as of temples, as a means of covenanting with the local deities. Illustrations of this are found in the records and remains of Peru[^[206]] and Guatemala.[^[207]]

In both Europe and America, the practice of nailing horseshoes on the side-posts of a doorway, for “good luck,” or as a means of guarding the inmates of the house from evil, is very common. So lately as the seventeenth century it was said: “Most houses of the West End of London have the horseshoe on the threshold.”[^[208]] Even at the threshold of Christian churches, in recent years, the symbol of the horseshoe was to be found as a means of protection.[^[209]] The horseshoe is often to be found on a ship’s mast. At the present time, horseshoes of various sizes, for use as doorway guards against evil, are found on sale in Philadelphia, and other centers of civilization.

8. SYMBOL OF THE RED HAND.

It would seem that, in primitive practice, the hand of the covenanter dipped in the sacrificial blood on the threshold, and stamped on the door-posts and lintel, was the sign-manual of the covenant between the contracting party or parties, and God, or the gods, invoked in the sacrifice. Illustrations of this custom, as still surviving in the East, have been given, from Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Morocco.[^[210]] Naturally, therefore, the sign-manual by itself came to stand for, or to symbolize, the covenant of the threshold altar; and the stamp of the red hand became a token of trust in God or the gods covenanted with in sacrifice, and of power or might resulting from this covenant relation. Wherever the red hand was shown, or found, it was a symbol of covenant favor with Deity, and it came to be known, accordingly, as the “hand of might.”

In the region of ancient Babylonia, also, the red-hand stamp is still to be seen on houses and on animals, apparently as the symbol of their covenant consecration by their owner. Dr. Hilprecht says: “Over all the doors of the rooms in the large khan of Hillah, on the Euphrates, partly built upon the ruins of ancient Babylon, I noticed the red impression of an outspread hand, when I was there in January, 1889. Several white horses in our caravan from Bagdâd to Nippur had the stamp of a red hand on their haunches.”

This symbol is much used in Jerusalem. Referring to its frequency, Major Conder says: “The ‘hand of might’ is another Jewish belief which may be supposed to have an Aryan origin. This hand is drawn on the lintel or above the arch of the door. Sometimes it is carved in relief, and before one house in the Jews’ quarter, in Jerusalem, there is an elaborate specimen, carefully sculptured and colored with vermilion. Small glass charms, in the form of the hand, are also worn, and the symbol is supposed to bring good luck. The Jewish and Arab masons paint the same mark on houses in course of construction; and, next to the seven-branched candlestick, it is probably the commonest house-mark in Jerusalem.”[^[211]]

A Jerusalem Jew thus tells of its use among a portion of his co-religionists in that city: “Our brethren the Sephardeem [the Spanish Jews], like all the remnant of the sons of the East, consider the semblance of a hand as good against the power of the evil eye in a man. And they draw this shape upon the doors of their houses with a red finger. So, too, they place upon the heads of their children a hand wrought in silver, saying that this hand–or this picture of the five fingers–is noxious to the man who delights to bring the evil upon the child, or upon those dwelling in the house. So, again, when men quarrel, the one sets his five fingers before the other’s evil eye, saying that this sign neutralizes the evil.”[^[212]]

This sign of the hand is “found on the houses of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, in various parts of Palestine.” It is generally painted on or above the door, often in blue; but frequently, especially when a Jew or a Muhammadan enters a new house, a lamb is sacrificed at the door, and the stamp of the hand in the fresh blood is affixed to the post or to the walls.[^[213]] No one claims to know the origin of this symbol, but all recognize its importance.

In its ruder form the figure of the hand is much like a five-branched candlestick. Indeed, it has sometimes been mistaken for that symbol. This was the case when such a figure was noticed, not long ago, by Dr. Noetling, on Jewish houses in Safed, and reported to a European journal. This symbol is sometimes called the “Hand of Moses.” A similar figure on Muslim houses is said to represent the “Hand of the Prophet;” while in Syria, among Christians, it is called the Kef Miryam, the “Virgin Mary’s Hand.”[^[214]] Obviously these terms suggest the idea of power through divinely derived strength.

One of the sights in the Mosk of St. Sophia, in Constantinople, is the stamp of a red hand. It is said that when Sultan Muhammad II. entered this sanctuary as a conqueror, he dipped his right hand in the blood of the slaughtered Christians, and stamped it on the wall, as if to seal his victory, and to pledge his covenant devotion to his God.[^[215]] Whether this story be fact or legend, it is a witness to the idea of such a custom in the minds of Oriental peoples.

An open hand is, or was, a common symbol on a banner, as also on a prayer-rug, in both Turkey[^[216]] and Persia. At the annual festival in Persia in commemoration of the death of Hossein, son of Alee, two large banners, each surmounted with an open hand, are borne in front of the representation of the tomb of Hossein; and the same symbol appears in various ways during the celebration.[^[217]]

“In the East Indies, to this day, the figure of a hand is the emblem of power and governmental sway. When the Nabob of Arcot was the viceroy of five provinces, if he appeared in public there were carried before him certain little banners, each with a hand painted on it, and a larger banner with five hands.”[^[218]]

Siva, the destroyer, in the Hindoo triad, is also the re-creator; since death is only the entrance into a new life. One of Siva’s well-known symbols is a hand, which is a token of might and life.

The uplifted open hand was prominent on or above the doors in ancient Carthage.[^[219]] And a traveler in Northern Africa, writing of the Jews in Tunis, near the site of Carthage, says: “What struck me most in all the houses was the impression of an open bleeding hand on every wall of each floor. However white the walls, this repulsive sign was to be seen everywhere. A Jewess never goes out here without taking with her a hand carved in coral or ivory–she thinks it a talisman against the ‘evil eye,’ or ‘mal occhio.’... When his children’s pictures or horses are praised, the Tunisian Jew extends his five fingers, or pronounces the number ‘five;’ he tries by this means to prevent the praise doing damage.”[^[220]]

This symbol of the open hand is frequently found above the graves in the vicinity of Tunis. It is also seen in old Jewish cemeteries in Europe, as, for instance, in Prague.[^[221]]

An open hand, in stone, or metal, or enamel, or bone, used as a talisman or an amulet, to guard the wearer against evil, was in common use in ancient Egypt. Specimens of these can be seen in museums in Europe and America to-day.

It is a noteworthy fact that the uplifted hand is prominent in the representation of the deities of Babylonia, Assyria, Phenicia, and Egypt, especially of the gods of life, or of fertility, who have covenant relations with men. And the same is true of the representations of sovereigns, in the ancient East, who are supposed to be in peculiar covenant relations with the gods.

Thus, on the seal of Ur-Gur, the earliest ruler of “Ur of the Chaldees,”[^[222]] the ruler and his attendants appear with uplifted hands before the moon-god Sin, who in turn is represented with his hand uplifted, as if he were making covenant with them.[^[223]] It is the same with the sun-god Shamash and his worshipers.[^[224]]

When a king of ancient Babylon was recognized as having a right to the throne, he must lift up his hand and clasp the hand of the image of Bel-Merodach, in order to show that he had “become the adopted son of the true ruler of the city.” This giving and taking of the hand was a symbol of covenanting in Babylonia. In this way a child was adopted into a family, and a husband and a wife covenanted to become one.[^[225]]

The god Asshur, and his worshipers, kings or princes, are similarly represented in Assyria with the hand uplifted. And it is the same there with other deities and their worshipers.[^[226]] In Phenicia, and its colonies, the same idea has prominence.[^[227]]

Deities of ancient Egypt are frequently represented with the uplifted hand, and their accepted worshipers appear before them with the right hand uplifted.[^[228]] As showing that this is not the attitude of supplication or of adoration, like the bowed form, the crossed arms, or the upturned palms, it is to be noted that in the representation of Amenophis IV., or Khuen-aten, with his family, before the aten-ra or the solar disk, the worshipers stand with their right hands uplifted, while the sun-god reaches down a series of open hands, as if in covenant proffer to the uplifted hands below.[^[229]]

In the county of Roscommon, in Ireland, there is a stone known as “a druidical altar,” which the common people say was thrown there by the giant Fin-mac-Coole, “the print of whose five fingers, they say, is to be seen on it.” The hand-print is pointed to confidently as the proof of authenticity, as if it were the veritable signature of the giant.[^[230]]

Among the ruins in Central America, there were found at the doorways and on the walls of many of the ruined buildings of Yucatan the stamp of a red hand on the plaster or on the stone. “They were the prints of a red hand, with the thumb and fingers extended, not drawn or painted, but stamped by the living hand, the pressure of the palm upon the stone. He who made it had stood before it alive, ... and pressed his hand, moistened with red paint, hard against the stone. The seams and creases of the palm were clear and distinct in the impression.” As showing the idea prevalent among the natives of that region with reference to the source and meaning of these signs-manual, the Indians of Yucatan said that the stamp was of “the hand of the owner of the building,” as if he had affixed it to his dwelling in token of his covenant with its guardian deity; and, again, it was thought that “these impressions were placed there in a formal act of consecration to the gods.”[^[231]]

There is a clear recognition of this idea in many Bible references to the lifting up of the hands unto God, as if in covenant relations with him. Thus, Abraham says to the king of Sodom, “I have lift up my hand unto the Lord;”[^[232]] as if he would say, I have pledged myself to him. I have given him my hand. And the Psalmist says: “I will lift up my hands in thy name.”[^[233]] God himself says, by his prophet: “I will lift up mine hand to the nations;”[^[234]] that is, I will covenant with them.[^[235]] And so in many another case. Indeed, the Assyrian word for swearing (nish) is literally “lifting up the hand;”[^[236]] and the Hebrew word nasa means to lift up the hand or to swear.[^[237]] The uplifted hand in a judicial oath seems to be a survival of the same thought, that an appeal is thus made to God, as one’s covenant God.

Again, there may be a reference to the “hand of might” in a covenant relation, in those passages where God is spoken of as bringing his people out of Egypt by “a strong hand,” or “a mighty hand,” and as dealing with them afterwards in the same way.[^[238]]

An uplifted hand is a symbol found also on the stepped pyramid temples of Polynesia.[^[239]]

This sign of the red hand is still a familiar one among the aborigines of America. It is stamped on robes and skins, and on Indian tents.[^[240]] Schoolcraft says of it: “The figure of the human hand is used by the North American Indians to denote supplication to the Deity or Great Spirit, and it stands in the system of picture-writing as the symbol for strength, power, or mastery, thus derived [through a covenant relation]. In a great number of instances which I have met with of its being employed, both in the ceremonial of their dances and in their pictorial records, I do not recollect a single one in which this sacred character is not assigned to it.”[^[241]]

A frequent use of the hand-print among the American Indians is as “a symbol applied to the naked body after its preparation and decoration for sacred and festive dances.” These preparations are “generally made in the arcanum of the medicine, or secret lodge, or some private place, and with all the skill of the priest’s, the medicine-man’s, or the juggler’s art. The mode of applying it in these cases is by smearing the hand of the operator with white or colored clay, and impressing it on the breast, the shoulder, or other part of the body. The idea is thus conveyed that a secret influence, a charm, a mystic power, is given to the dancer, arising from his sanctity, or his proficiency in the occult arts.” Schoolcraft, speaking of this custom, says: “The use of the hand is not confined to a single tribe or people. I have noticed it alike among the Dacotah, the Winnebagoes, and other Western tribes, as among the numerous branches of the red race still located east of the Mississippi River, above the latitude of 42°, who speak dialects of the Algonquin language.”[^[242]]

Is there possibly any connection with this idea in the custom of “the laying on of hands,” as a symbol of imparting virtue or power to one newly in covenant relations with those who are God’s representatives, so frequently referred to in the Bible?[^[243]] This would seem to be indicated by the power imparted to an Egyptian king by the touch of the uplifted hand of the deity, as shown in the representations on the monuments of Egypt. It was known as “the imposition of the Sa,” or increased vitality.[^[244]]

A remarkable illustration of the use of the red-hand print among American Indians is given in the story of a famous Omaha chief, who, when dying, enjoined it upon his followers to carry his body to a prominent look-out bluff above the Missouri River, and bury him there, full armed, on the back of his favorite war-horse, who was to be buried alive, that he might watch from that place the passing of the whites up and down the river. It would seem as if he wanted to be known as dying in the faith of his covenant relations with the Great Spirit, for himself and for his people.

Because of this request, in the presence of his assembled tribe “he was placed astride his horse’s back, with his bow in his hand, and his shield and quiver slung; with his pipe and his medicine bag; with his supply of dried meat, and his tobacco pouch replenished; ... with his flint and steel, and his tinder, to light his pipe by the way. The scalps that he had taken ... were hung to the bridle of his horse. He was in full dress and equipped; and on his head waved ... his beautiful head-dress of the war-eagle’s plumes.” As he stood thus on the threshold of the life beyond, when the last funeral honors were performed by the medicine-men, “every warrior of his band painted the palm and fingers of his right hand with vermilion, which was stamped and perfectly impressed on the milk-white sides of his devoted horse,”–as if in covenant pledge of fidelity to their chief in the sight of the Great Spirit.[^[245]]

There is another phase of the red-hand symbolism among the American Indians, which has been noted by Frank H. Cushing, who is so experienced and careful an observer of their customs and ceremonies. This phase connects the symbol directly with the idea of life and its transmission. Mr. Cushing says:[^[246]]

“By reference to the paintings (and writings, to some extent) of such men as Catlin and Stanley, and to the works of Schoolcraft, Matthews, Bourke, and others, you will find that the red-hand symbol was painted on the lodges, sometimes on the clothing and person, and sometimes on the shields of various of the hunter tribes of the plains,–as, for example, of the Ioways, Sauks and Foxes, Sioux, Arickarees, Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Comanches. Precisely what the significance of the symbol was, with these peoples and others like them, I am not able to say, save that in some cases it was connected with war, in others with treaties, and in yet others as expressive of power. There were yet other meanings attached to the sign; but neither the former significances nor these latter were, I take it, as definite or fixed [with the hunter tribes] as with the more advanced and settled tribes of the farther south.

“Of these tribes, the typical Pueblos and the peoples more or less directly influenced by them–such as the Jicarillas on the north and east, and the Apaches to the south and west[^[247]]–made frequent use of not only the red-hand symbol, but also of the black-hand symbol. I have seen both, not only in the modern but also in the very ancient pueblos–as those of the Pecos, and those of the great cliff-dweller towns in the Chelly and other canyons. In the Pecos ruins, to give a special example, I copied beautiful hand-paintings and prints from the rafters, as well as from the walls of ordinary dwelling-rooms. Sometimes these paintings were in red, but more often in black. They invariably represented the hands of women, as could be seen by their delicacy and smallness of outline and by their shapeliness. There was, I think, a reason for this, which the following facts will explain.

“It was my good fortune to witness, early in the eighties, a ceremonial celebrating the attainment to puberty, or womanhood, of a young girl of the Jicarilla Apaches. The latter people are not to be confounded with the Apaches proper. They are a mixed people, descended not only from the Apaches, but also the Comanches, and in large part also from the Pueblos of the north, the so-called Tañoans of whom the Pecos people were a branch. It was clear from the character of the masks and other paraphernalia used in the ceremonials I witnessed, that the latter were almost, if not quite, wholly derived from the pueblo, rather than from the wilder, ancestry of the Jicarillas who performed them.

“The ceremonial in question was performed by four medicine-men, or priests, as one might call them, within and around a rectangular enclosure of evergreen boughs set in the plain near to the village. Inside of this enclosure, which was designed to screen from view the more secret operations of the priest dancers in question, stood a little conical skin lodge, the snow-white top of which appeared above the screen of evergreen, and within which the young girl, over whom these rites were being enacted, was ensconced, together with one or two old women of the tribe. As I have said before, each of the priests, on appearing (and this they did successively; that is, the first on the first day, the second on the second day, and so on), wore a conical mask or helmet, which entirely concealed, not only the face, but also the head. This mask was painted black or red, and upon the face of it appeared one of these hand symbols. Unfortunately, I did not see the mask as worn by the first priest, but, as worn by the second priest on the morning of the second day, it bore upon its face the symbol of the red hand; and as worn upon the third day, this symbol recurred, but, if I remember aright, was surrounded by an outline of another color, either black or yellow, whilst the hand painted on the mask as worn on the fourth day was black surrounded by white, that it might stand out more conspicuously; and in turn, below it, were two or more dots alternating with dotted circles.

“My means of communicating with these people were but limited, but on learning that the ceremonials they were performing were designed to celebrate the attainment to maturity, or womanhood, of a virgin, I had little difficulty in understanding the significance of the succession of these various hand symbols. I recognized in the ceremonial as a whole the dramatic epitomization, to state it briefly, of the four ages of a woman’s life. Thus the white hand (which I was told had been painted on the mask of the first day) symbolized her infancy and girlhood, the consummation of which was effected by the first day’s ceremonial performed by the medicine-man of the white hand.

“The red hand was obviously significant of this girl’s attainment to young womanhood, the color in this case symbolizing the blood of her perfected life. I imagine that the black hand painted on the mask as worn during the third day’s ceremonial was significant of not only the betrothal of the girl, which was said to have taken place during that day of the ceremonial, but also of her prospective maternity; the change of color, in the hand, from red to black, being naturally a symbolic representation of the change from red to black in blood that has been exposed to the sunlight and dried, and has thus become black, and is no longer virgin. Likewise the hand painted on the mask as worn during the fourth day’s ceremonial, which was wholly black, doubtless represented the fuller life of not only a matron but a grandmother. From this I would infer that the signs of the red and black hands found in the ruined pueblos like those of Pecos, and on the cliffs at the mouths of caves, or in the houses of the cliff villages, symbolized respectively virginity, and maternity or betrothal.

“What would seem to indicate the correctness of this conclusion is the fact that, as I have mentioned before, there were below the signs of the black hand of the last day’s ceremonial of the Jicarillas dots and dotted circles. It is well known that these dots and dotted circles represent, primarily, grains of corn, male and female; and, secondarily, children, male and female. Their occurrence, then, below the painted black hand or symbol of maternity, would indicate that in this case they represented the children and perhaps grandchildren, male and female, of the matron it was hoped this young girl might become.

“The hand symbol as occurring amongst the Zuñi, with whom, of course, I am much more familiar, has not only some such significances as these, but also many others,–the significance of a given symbol depending upon the ceremonial with which it is associated, and particularly upon the coloring which is given to it, the colors being as various as are the well-known seven sacramental colors employed to symbolize the seven regions of the world by the priesthood of these people.

“I will only add, that the hand symbol painted upon the walls of the estufas, or Kiva temples, or upon the little sacred sand mounds, which are made to symbolize mythic mountains of the six regions during the ceremonials of initiation performed once every four years over the new children of the pueblo, are designed to signify the various ritualistic precepts which are taught to the children according as they are held to pertain to one or another of these little sand mounds or so-called mountains of generation.

“In the case above described I was told, although I did not myself see it, that the symbol of the red hand was painted by the side of the entrance to the little tent in which the girl sat through the ceremonials, and that later the same symbol in black was added to the other side of the entrance to this tent. In the case of the Pueblos the position of the hand symbols depends, as, no doubt, you have already inferred, upon the sort of ceremonial which is being performed in connection with them.

“It would seem, however, that the placing of these symbols at the entrance of the cave villages would correspond to such usages as I have above described as pertaining to the Jicarilla ceremonial, and that the painting of them on the rafters of rooms in ancient pueblos had a like connection; for it must be remembered that in the older pueblos there were no doorways proper [hence no thresholds]. The rooms were entered by means of ladders through scuttles in the roof.”[^[248]]

A hand-print is a signature. A hand-print in blood is a pledge of life in a sacred covenant. A hand-print in the blood of life is symbolic of a covenant of life with a view to the transmission of life. When a woman of Korea is married, she affixes her sign manual to the covenanting contract by placing her hand on the paper and having “the outline drawn round the fingers and wrist with a fine brush dipped in Chinese ink,” or again she employs “the simpler process of smearing her hand with black paint, and hitting the document with it.[^[249]]

Formal documents have often been signed by a hand stamp, or a finger stamp, in blood or in ink. The monks of the convent of St. Catharine at Mt. Sinai, for instance, show a copy of the certificate of protection given to them by the Prophet of Islam, the signature to which is an impression of Muhammad’s open hand. A letter to Muhammad Issoof, from the king of Mysore, in 1754, was sealed with the king’s seal, “and on the back was stamped the print of a hand, a form equivalent, with the Mysoreans, to an oath.”[^[250]]

The very term “sign manual,” employed for a veritable signature, may point to an origin in this custom. Indeed, may it not be that the large red seal attached to important documents, at the present time, is a survival of the signature and seal of the bloody hand?