the Pitris, to their dead progenitors; or which Ulysses offered to the Manes, when he visited the islands of the West. Theodoretus observes upon this passage, that Baal Peor was believed to be Saturn ', and consequently Noah; he was the same person whom the Japonese call Peirun 2, the virtuous king of a very fertile island, whose subjects became so corrupt, that they drew down the vengeance of heaven, and the island was swallowed up in the sea. But Peirun being beloved of the gods was warned of the catastrophe, and saved in a ship, which conveyed him and his family to another country. He disappeared, and still on the fifth day of the Moon in June they look for him in Gondolas, crying out, "Peirun, Peirun!" Jerome makes him the same as Priapus; and Vallancey observes, that the Bal Phearba of the Irish, who was the Baal Peor of the Moabites, the Peor Apis of Egypt, and the Priapus of the Greeks, was also a marine and aquatic deity." So too Orpheus says, that the unwearied and fathomless ocean is subject to Priapus. There is no reason, however, to suppose that he was the Priapus of more modern times; for the licentiousness, into which the Israelites were seduced by the crafty counsel of Balaam, may be imputed to a sort of anniversary celebration of the sensual indulgence enjoyed by the family of Noah, when they were released from the prohibitions and austerities of the Ark. And therefore it is said, that "the people sat down to eat and to drink, and 1 Vossius, note on Maimonides de Idol. p. 38.

2 Kæmpfer, Hist. of Japan.

3 Vallancey, Collectanea, vi. 464.

1

rose up to play." Both Balak and Balaam seem to have been Arkites; and this will account for the neutral position which they occupy, between idolatry and true religion. It does not appear that the king placed any confidence in idols, or in any other than the great invisible God, who inspired the prophet; and he conducted him to three dif ferent summits of the Abarim Mountains, where he was to offer sacrifice, not to Baal, but to God. The number of seven altars, and seven victims, may be explained by the tradition current among the Afghans, that only seven persons were saved from the Deluge. A similar deviation from historical truth may have then prevailed in Aram. The people of Palæstine long retained their local traditions connecting their high places with the Deluge; for the Talmud relates how a Samaritan contended for the holiness of Gerizim, because it was not covered by the waters of the flood; and the Jews claimed the same exemption from that visitation for their own country, because it was the Holy Land.

1 Exodus, xxxii.

2 Bereschith Rabha. Parascha, xxxii. 16. Lightfoot. Hor. Heb. in Joh. iv. 20. Preland. Dissert. de Monte Gerizim, i. 146.

245

CHAP. XX.

CAIRNS AND TEOCALLIS. BABEL AND NIMROD. PYRAMIDS IN EGYPT, PALESTINE, AND INDIA. CAIRNS IN BRITAIN, ON THE ALPS, APENNINES, ATLAS, AND ATHOS.

It was a natural consequence of that fond veneration for mountains, which universally appropriated them to the purposes of religion, that imitations of them in miniature should be constructed to answer the same purpose, with the advantage of greater convenience. Hence arose those sacred heaps of earth or stones, in valleys as well as on heights, denominated by the Hebrews Bamoth, by the Greeks Bomoi, and by the British Cairns. Kern, or Karn, says Richardson, is pure Arabic, a top of a mountain higher than the rest. They could only, therefore, be so entitled mystically and emblematically, when they were constructed, as they frequently were, on plains: in such situations, indeed, they were most wanted. The principal motive for making them in valleys, was to bring them nearer to water, which constituted an important feature in the accuracy of the emblem; and when the practice had once grown common, the fashion would be readily followed by all who consulted their ease; since it was a much more easy matter to visit an artificial mound, than to climb a mountain. But

1 Vallancey's Introduction to Irish Hist. p. 15.

in level tracts of country they were indispensable to those who desired to have sacred places, and to continue the rites, to which they had been accustomed among the mountains. Having no natural hills to which they could resort, they were under the necessity of making them in miniature near the place of their residence; and thus it may be supposed, that every tribe, and almost every distinguished family, would have an oratory, or place of worship of its own. The vast numbers of them which appear in such situations need no other explanation. The whole extent of the Tartar plains, says one traveller', is dotted with small tumuli about six or eight feet in perpendicular height, and perhaps ten times as many at their base. They are perfectly conical, and so numerous, that one or more are always in view. Their regularity seems to declare that they are not natural. "Near Sardis," says another 2, "the plain is covered with tumuli, some of stupendous size; perhaps it was a place of interment of peculiar sanctity." It was indeed a place of peculiar sanctity, but not necessarily a place of interment. The neighbourhood of the temple of Diana, that is, the moon, might have taught him better. Dr. Clarke, who observed many of them both in Poland and in Russia, had too much sagacity to fall into that error. Whatever, says he, may have been the origin of the artificial mounds, so universally spread over the face of these countries, it is certain that some of

1 Memoranda of an Irish Gentleman in Christian Examiner, No. iv. vol. vii.

2 Arundell's Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia, p. 186.

them, both in ancient and modern times, were erected not for tombs. Walsh observed a great number of conical tumuli in travelling from Constantinople, and the plains of Thessaly were covered with them.' This is indeed the country, in which, upon the Arkite hypothesis, we should most expect to find them; for it is the country in which the scene of Deucalion's deluge is laid. And the conical form is an exact imitation of the shape, which travellers in Armenia ascribe to the highest peak of Ararat and as its magnificent representative, Mount Tabor, rearing its mighty cone from the plains of Palestine, is denominated by Isaiah a Keren, so its humbler transcripts on the Celtic plains were denominated Cairns. In Scandinavia, too, they seem to be equally abundant: for Heber observed a vast number of Cairns in Sweden, and one in particular claimed his notice in a barren and desolate region of heath and crag, which had a large circle of Druidical stones, and, consequently, was, beyond all doubt, a place of worship. Similar mounds are found in the plains of Thrace and Mysia; some of which have been examined, and urns, and bricks, and coins, have been found in them; but, as the explorer himself justly observes, nothing can be justly concluded from thence for what purpose those heaps were piled up; for if they had a sacred character, that is a sufficient

1 Walsh's Travels, p. 150.

3 Life by Mrs. Heber, p. 49.

2 Lowth on Isaiah, v. 1.

4 Exinde nihil colligere licet, cui usui fuerint congesti illi acervi. Danubius Pannonico Mysicus ab Aloysio Ferd. Com. Marsili, tom. ii. p. 88.