BAAL AND AStarté.

563

remarks that, on the coins of various cities, Venus is sometimes represented as a cone, sometimes as a pyramid, and sometimes, again, as an obelisk; perfectly resembling the antique fresco discovered at Herculaneum. The idol placed upon the altar in this extraordinary painting exactly corresponds with the description of Tacitus, and nearly approaches the form of the meta delineated on medals and other ancient monuments.† Other gods, endued, though in an inferior degree, with the same generative influence, are likewise supposed to have been represented in the pyramidal form: among others, the god Baal, or the sun, worshipped at Emesa, in Syria. Such is the opinion of the learned author of the "Pitture Antiche;" but as, throughout Syria, the rites of Baal and Astarté were intermingled, and and their fanes frequently the same, it seems more reasonable to conclude, that the pyramidal stone brought to Rome by Heliogabalus, though found in the temple of Baal §, was the symbol of Astarté, the cotemplar divinity. From Syria and Phoenicia the joint worship of these deities passed into Greece, where Baal, transformed into Apollo or Adonis,

Dissert. de Us. et Præs. Num. Ant. pp. 481-483.

+ Conf. Dialog. in Num. Vet. Ant. Augustin. Archiep. Tarrac. Lat. Red. And. Schott. pl. 29. No. 609., pl. 36. No. 737., pl. 54. No. 1121., pl. 56. No. 1166.— Pitture Antiche d'Ercolano, t. ii. 274, 275.

Conf. Hamaker Miscell. Phanic. 118, 119.-" Jam quod ad singulas illius triadis personas attinet, Astarté ex numinis apo evolýλous natura eadem est ac Sol Edessenus, &c. p. 131.

§ Λίθος τίς ἐστι μέγιστος κατωθὲν περιφερὴς, λέγων εἰς ὀξύτητα. Herodian., iii. 3. Vide et Casaub. ad Lamprid. et Salm. ad Vopisc. - Selden. de Düs Syris. Syntagm. ii. 3. — Conf. Hamaker. Miscell Phonic. p. 119.

564

PYRAMIDAL SYMBOLS.

received the impassioned adoration of the dames of Hellas. At Mægara, says Pausanias, Apollo Carinus is represented by a small pyramidal stone.* Apollo Agiæus, or, according to others, Bacchus, commonly placed by the ancients before the doors of their houses, was fashioned like an obelisk, or conical pillar: xwvosions xiwy, as Suidas expresses it. At Sicyon, Jupiter, also, according to Pausanias, was represented in the form of a pyramid, and Diana like a column t: "et ratio in obscuro," as Tacitus, on another occasion, observes.

DCCLXX. But, perhaps, if we consider the nature of the ancient pagan theology, this obscurity may, in some degree, disappear; for the primitive divinity, the root of all existence, the fountain of life and fecundity, was regarded as masculo-feminine; and might, therefore, be represented of either sex, or as a hermaphrodite uniting both. Pierius Valerianus conjectures that, by the pyramid, the ancients intended to typify nature itself, or matter, springing from chaos into life.‡ And in this he

* Εστι δὲ ....λίθος παρεχόμενος πυραμίδος σχῆμα οὐ μεγαλῆς· τουτὸν ̓Απόλλωνα ὀνομάζουσι Κάρινον. — v. 1.

† Πυραμίδι δὲ ὁ Μειλίχιος (Ζεὺς) ἡ δὲ (Αρτεμις πατρώα) κίονι ἐστὶν εἰκασuévn. ii. The author of the "Pitture Antiche," &c. conjectureshowever, with considerable ingenuity, that, as Jove and Apollo, according to Selden (De Düs Syris, Synt. ii. 2.), were only so many personifications of the element of fire, they may here be regarded as identical with Venus, the mother of Love; who is herself a subtile flame pervading all things; "est mollis flamma medullas."

"Per pyramidem Veteres rerum naturam et substantiam illam inormem formas recipientem significare voluerunt," lib. lx. On the triangular base of a bronze statue of Apollo or Bacchus, engraved in

THE PAPHIAN VENUS.

565

approaches philosophical accuracy; since, as I have already shown, they understood by this mysterious symbol that power of nature by which matter, previously inanimate, is moulded into form, and endued with vitality. In the obelisk, the emblems of the masculine and feminine divinities are united; the shaft, so to say, typifying the solar beam, and its pyramidal crest the kteis, or yoni, symbolical of the universal mother; who, as Pausanias expresses it, was older even than the Fates. That no doubt might remain respecting the nature and office of the deity represented by the pyramid, we find her rites mingled at Paphos with the adoration of the Phallus. Cinyras, says Clemens of Alexandria, the king who introduced the worship of Venus into Cyprus, and erected the temple in which her mysterious image was set up, ordained that to each of the initiated should be given an image of the Phallus, τεκμήριον τῆς γονῆς, as a symbol of fertility.*

DCCLXXI. Even those nations of the East who, having lost, in process of time, the knowledge of their original purpose, regarded the pyramids as

Middleton's Antiquities, tab. xii., is a small pyramidal projection, closely resembling the image of the Paphian Venus.- Vide Antiq. Middleton, p. 147.—Licet. de Lucern. 1. vi. c. 14. p. 667.— Dulaure, Dieux Génératrices, pp. 180, 181.

Protreptric. p. 10.

Pitture Antiche d'Ercolano, t. ii. p. 275 — 278.-" Qui verò Cypria Veneri initiabantur, eos certas quasdam stipes Deæ intulisse legimus, et retulisse Phallos, a sacerdotibus sibi donatos, tanquam propitii numinis signa."— Arnob. Cont. Gent. 1. v. ap. Antiquit. Middleton. pp. 67, 68.

566

TRADITIONS OF THE SABEANS.

tombs, still, nevertheless, invested them with a sacred character. The Sabæans "go on pilgrimage to a place near the city of Harran, in Mesopotamia, where great numbers of them dwell; and they have also great respect for the temple of Mekka, and the pyramids of Egypt; fancying these last to be the sepulchres of Seth, and of Enoch and Sabi, his two sons, whom they look on as the first propagators of their religion. At these structures they sacrifice a cock and a black calf, and offer up incense."* A similar adoration was offered up in caves of a certain form, which were likewise supposed to represent the same object. "The most ancient oracle and place of worship at Delphos, was that of the Earth, in a cave which was called Delphi, an obsolete Greek word, synonymous with yoni in Sanscrit: for it is the opinion of devout Hindoos, that caves are sybmols of the sacred yoni. This opinion prevailed also in the West; for, perforations and clefts in stones and rocks were called aidoia Diaboli, by the first Christians; who always bestowed the appellation of Devils on the deities of the heathen. Perforated stones are not uncommon in India; and devout people pass through them, when the opening will admit of it, in order to be regenerated. If the hole be too small, they put either the hand or foot through it, and with a sufficient degree of faith, it answers nearly the same purpose."+ "The Yavanas originally worshipped the sacred yoni alone, which they considered as the sole author of

Sale, Preliminary Discourse to the Koran, vol. i. + Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. p. 502.

MYSTIC DIVINITY OF INDIA.

567

their being; but learned pundits suppose, that, when we read in the above legend (not here repeated) that the king of the Yavanas adopted for his son an avatara of Mahadeva, it implies also, that himself, with his subjects, admitted the worship of the Lingam or Phallus."*

DCCLXXII. It was remarked, at the commencement, that the worship of the Paphian Venus, which the ancients could trace no farther eastward than Assyria, probably took its rise in India, where a similar religion still prevails. Grose, an able and inquisitive traveller, discovered and investigated with considerable ingenuity the identity of this mystic deity of the Hindoos with the goddess adored in the West, and the similarity of the rites practised in honour of each. Amongst many other conjectural instances, may be quoted the image of the Paphian Venus, for the form of which Tacitus could not account, not being in any thing resembling the human but orbicularly rising from a broad basis, and, in the nature of a race-goal, tapering to a narrow apex a-top which is exactly the figure of the idol in India, consecrated to such an office as that heathen deity was supposed to preside over, and to which, on the borders especially of the Ganges, the Gentoo virgins

one,

* Idem, p. 510.—" During the flood, Brahma, or the creating power, was asleep at the bottom of the abyss: the generative power of nature, both male and female, reduced to their simplest elements, — the Lingam and the Yoni, - assumed the shape of the hull of a ship, since typified by the Argha, whilst the Lingam became the mast." p. 523.