TREES IN ARCHITECTURE 175 



brick chimney. And when the tree-worshipper 

 built himself a house of the trees he worshipped, 

 his god had not ceased to be in becoming his 

 house. The tree-spirit was in the house as it 

 had been in the living tree from which the 

 materials of the house had been taken. 



Such beliefs as this persisted into historical 

 times. Mr. Arthur Evans, in The Mycencsan 

 Tree and Pillar Cult, quotes a legend pre- 

 served by Plutarch. **The divine tamarisk, 

 whose trunk had grown about the chest of 

 Osiris, was cut down by the King ' Malkan- 

 dros ' of Byblos the husband of * Queen Astarte,' 

 who had been amazed at its size, and made the 

 principal support of his roof, — in other words 

 it was 'the pillar of the house' of Melkart. 

 Removed at I sis' request to enable her to cut 

 out the concealed chest of Osiris, the rest of the 

 wooden pillar was transferred to the temple 

 of Isis at Byblos, where it was still an object 

 of worship in Plutarch's day. ... In all this," 

 says Mr. Evans, "we see the columnar idol 

 of the architectonic type taking its rise in 

 the most natural way from the hewn trunk of 

 a sacred tree made use of as * a pillar of the 

 house,' with the object of securing the presence 



