With knife iu paw, Mi-jH'iHlrd from the sky; Gods germinatiiiL' men. and men turned gods, Seated in honor, with gilt crooks and rods ; Vast scarabaai, globes by hands upheld. Prom chaos springing, 'mid an endless field : Of forms grotesque, the sphinx, the crocodile, And other reptiles from the slime of Nile."
In ordc
this inner chamber that Ezekiel saw was constructed after the Egyptian fashion, we subjoin an extract from the work of another traveller, descriptive of the great temple of Edfu, one of the admirable relics of antiqui- ty, from which it will be seen that the degenerate priests of Jeru.salem had borrowed the whole style of the edifice in which they were celebrating their hidden rites — its form, its entrance, as well as its pictorial ornaments on the walls — from their idolatrous neighbors of E,g\-pt: " Considerably below the surface of the adjoining build- ing," says he, " my conductor pointed out to me a chink in an old wall, which he told me I should creep through on my hands and feet ; the apertiu-e was not two feet and a half high, and scarcely three feet and a half broad. My companion had the courage to go iirst, thrusting in a lamp before him : I followed. The passage was so narrow that my mouth and nose were almost buried in the dust, and I was nearly suifocated. After proceeding about ten yards in utter darkness, the heat became excessive, the breathing was laborious, the per- spiration poured down my face, and I would have given the world to have got out ; but my companion, whose person I could not distinguish, though his voice was audible, called out to me to crawl a few feet further, and that I should find plenty of room. I joined liim at length, and had the inexpressible satisfaction of stand- ing once more upon my feet. We fomid ourselves in a splendid apartment of great magnitude, adorned with an incredible profusion of sacred paintings and hieroglyph- ics" (]Madden's Travels in Turkey, Egypt, etc. ; see also jNIaiu-ice, Indian Antiq. ii, 212). In the dark recesses of such a chamber as this, which they entered like the traveller through a hole in the outer wall, and in which was painted to the eye the grotesque and motley group of Egjqitian divinities, were the cliief men at Jerusa- lem actually employed when Ezekiel saw them. With minds highly excited by the dazzling splendor, and the clouds of fragrant smoke that filled the apartment, the performers of those clandestine rites seem to have sur- passed even the enthtisiastic zeal of their ancestors in the days of Moses, when, crowding romid the pedestal of the golden calf, they rent the air with their cries of " These be thy gods, O Israel!" Beneath a calmer ex- terior, the actors in the scene pointed out to Ezekiel concealed a stronger and more intense passion for idola- try. Every form of animal life, from the noblest quad- ruped to the most loathsome reptile that spawned in Egypt, received a share of their insane homage; and the most extraordinary' feature of the scene was that the individual who appeared to be the director of these fold mysteries, the master of ceremonies, was Jaazaniah, a descendant of that zealous scribe who had gained so much renown as the principal adviser of the good king Josiah, and whose family had for generations been re- garded as the most illustrious for piety in the land. The presence of a scion of this venerated house in such a den of impurity struck the prophet as an electric shock, and showed, better than all the other painful spectacles this chamber exhibited, to what a fearful extent idolatry had inundated the land. See Idolatry.
It mi.ght have been supposed impossible for men to have sunk to a lower depth of superstition than that of imitatin.g the Egyptians in worshipping the monsters of the Nile, or the vegetable produce of their fields and gardens, had not the prophet been directed to turn yet again, and he would see greater abominations that they did. " Then he brought me to the gate of the Lord's house, which was towards the north ; and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz" (ver. 14). This, the principal deity of the Phoenicians, and who was often called also by that people Adoni, that is, Sly Lord, be- came afterwards famous in the Grecian mythology mr- dcr the well-known name of Adonis ; and the circum- stance of his being selected for the subject of their most beautiful fiction hy so many of the classic poets is a sufficient proof of the great popular interest his name and ritual excited among the idolaters of the ancient
IMAGE-WORSHIP
503
BIAGE-WORSHIP
■world. It is said to have originated in a tragic adven- ture tliat befell an intrepid and beautiful prince of Phoe- nicia, who was killed while hunting a wild boar, bj^ which that land was infested, and whose untimely death in the cause of his country was bewailed in an annual festival held to commemorate the disastrous event. During the seven days that the festival lasted, tlie rhoenicians appeared to be a nation of mourners; and in every town and village a fictitious rc'iircsmtation of Tammuz was got up for the occasion, and the whole population assembled to pour forth their unhouiulod sor- row for his hapk'ss fate, more especially at Byblos, in Syria, where a ttniiilc was erected in honor of this na- tional deity. A strange imposture was practised to in- fluence the public lamentations. Tliere was in this temple a gigantic statue of tlie god, the eyes of which were filled with lead, which, on fire being applied with- in, of course melted and fell in big drops to the ground, a signal for the loud wailings of the by-standers, whose eyes, in sympathetic imitation, were dissolved in tears. Conspicuous among the crowd on such occasions, a band of mercenary females directed the orgies; and, in con- formity with an ancient custom of bewailing the dead on anniversaries at the doors of houses (Potter's Grecian Antiq. bk. iv, ch. iii), others took their station at the gate, with their faces directed northwards, as the sun was said to have been in that quarter of the heavens at the time when Tammuz died. Tliese violent efforts in mourning were always followed by scenes of the most licentious and revolting revelry, which, though not men- tioned, are manifestly implied among the "greater abominations" which degraded this other group of idol- aters. See Tammuz.