146 



known were at a future period to wrest from them the Land of 

 Canaan. 



The pillar-stone appears here in its ancient patriarchal character, 

 simply as a memorial or testimony. By degrees this primitive pur- 

 pose was lost, but the durability of the character of sanctity at- 

 tached to it remaining, accompanied by the mystery of antiquity, it 

 became an object, first simply of reverence, then of worship, and 

 finally, it seems to have been considered as an emblem of the undivided 

 unchanging essense of the greater gods. Hence Buddha is now, 

 and has been from time immemorial, worshipped in the shape of a 

 large black stone, in India, Ceylon, Pegu, and indeed over all the 

 east.* Cubic stones, according to Proclus, were dedicated to Baal, 

 Pluto, and all the mundane gods. The stone of Butis was of im- 

 mense size, a cube of sixty feet ; the famous Caaba-f was also a 

 black cubic stone, over which Mahomet sagaciously built the temple 

 of Mecca, thereby securing on his side the superstitious feelings of 

 the wavering Arabians, who had anciently worshipped this stone, 

 and who, along with the pilgrims from all parts of the Mahom- 

 medan world, continue to offer to it, even now, a species of ado- 

 ration. | 



Serapis is in the hieroglyphical paintings of Egypt frequently re- 

 presented in the form of a plain column, with one eye, and a scroll 

 depending from the eye, painted upon it. Sometimes the column 

 has a human face, the eyes drawn with depending scrolls in the 

 same mysterious manner, surmounted by four capitals. § The Se- 



* Maurice Ind. Antiq. iii. p 31 — Mithra, the Persian sun deity's name, is derived from a 

 word signifying a rock. — Maurice Ind. Ant. vol. ii. p. 306.— Clas. Jour. No. Ixi. p. 167. 

 + Caabah signifies a die, a square, a cube. — Sale's Alkoran. 

 X Burchard's Account of Mecca, and Bruce's Travels, II. p. 436, Octavo Edit. 

 § Class. Jour. No. LXIV. p. 372. 



