Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

91 o The stone of Dousares

rock-cut niches adjoining the hewn chamber called el-Diwdn offer
similar groups of sacred stones (figs. 764—766)1. Such triads of
stones, massebhoth, are indeed wide-spread throughout the Semitic
world2 and presumably stand in some relation to the 'asherim3—
tree-stems or sacred posts frequently figured in Cypriote art4.
Possibly the plurality of the 'asherim led to the pluralisation of the
massebhoth. But the problem is a complex one and still awaits
solution5.

1 C. M. Doughty Travels in Arabia Deserto? London 1921 i. 120 figs. 1—3 ( = my
figs. 764—766).

2 See e.g. S. A. Cook The Religion of Ancient Palestine in the light of Archaeology
London 1930 p. 24 pi. 6, 2.

3 L. B. Paton in J. Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Edinburgh 1910
iii. i86a_b, G. L. Robinson ib. 1913 vi. 678b—679% D. M. Kay ib. 1915 viii. 487a_b>
T. Davidson ib. 1918 x. 5ia~b, G. A. Barton ib. 1918 x. 92b—94b, A. Alt in Ebert
Reallex. i. 235 f., W. Robertson Smith Lectures on the Religion of the Semites3 London
1927 p. 187 ff. with the comments of S. A. Cook ib. p. 560 ff.

4 Ohnefalsch-Richter Kypros pp. 172 ff., 410 pi. 69.

6 The analogy of Woodhenge and Stonehenge in the west suggests that the sacred
tree or trees were genetically prior to the standing stone or stones. It seems not unreason-
able to suppose that a tree, which in time became a leafless tree or bare trunk (e.g. sttfa
ii. 681 figs. 621—624), might be conventionalised into a post or pole (supra ii. 157 n. i)-
And, since any object of timber ultimately decays, it might—like the wooden columns of
the oldest Greek architecture—be replaced by the substitution of a permanent stone piHar
(supra ii. 56 ff.). If so, the earlier forms would of course continue to subsist alongside
of their later equivalents. Some such evolution has in fact already been indicated and
exemplified (supra ii. 149).

Nevertheless this pedigree remains, in part at least, conjectural. Confining ourselves
to verifiable facts, we might conclude with A. Lods La croyance a la vie future et le cuU1
des morts dans I'antiquiti israilite Paris 1906 p. 201 f. : 'nous avons la preuve que 'a

massebdh servait a un veritable culte des morts____II serait pourtant possible aussi que, al1

temps de David, on regardat la massebdh funeraire comme destinee simplement a perpitt'^

le souvenir du defunt____Mais, meme dans ce cas, la stele n'etait pas un simple aide

memoire pour les vivants; c'etait une sorte d'incarnation du defunt lui-meme, l"1
permettant de "faire figure parmi les vivants" [F. M. J. Lagrange Etudes sur les rdigW
se'mitiques^ Paris 1905 p. 199]....La masslbdh a done, au fond, le meme sens lorsqu'e'jjj
est dressee sur une tombe et lorsqu'elle est erigee dans un sanctuaire; elle est le corps,
demeure d'un esprit.' Id. Israel from its Beginnings to the Middle of the Eighth Centw
trans. S. H. Hooke London 1932 pp. 87 f. with pi. 5, r and 2, 94 f., 116 n. 2,
258—263 (' the most probable explanation seems to be that advanced by Roberts
Smith: the purpose of the sacred stone was to provide the god who had manife5'^
himself in a particular place, with an abode, a body, and to enable the worshipped
establish permanent relations with him. The reason why a stone was selected for
purpose was because it was the most suitable object to receive the sacrificial f)
As such, the massebhoth had a long history, not to say pre-history, behind them!
whether they marked a sepulchre or a sanctuary, they cannot be separated from
megalithic erections of Palestine and Syria, and so take us back through the Bronze ^
to Neolithic times (see now P. Thomsen in Ebert Reallex. viii. 106—115 pis. 34—'37
especially id. ib. pp. 139—143 pi. 44). jji

At a late stage in their evolution they began, like the standing stones of Sal
or the menhirs-sculptis of France, Siebenbiirgen, etc., to be shaped into quasi-ba $
form—witness a curious block of grey, polished, stone (height o'74m) found in i9jJ