The ceremony points to a well-established ritual which has its roots deep down in Semitic usage. For a trumpet of horn was sounded on special occasions among the Hebrews long before the Exodus. “Blow up the trumpet (_shophar_) in the new moon in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day. For this was a statute for Israel and a law of the God of Jacob. This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went out through the land of Egypt, where I heard a language that I understood not” (Psa. lxxxi. 3-5). In the Moslim world, nowadays, it falls to the _mu-ezzin_ to call the announcement or prayer (the _azan_) from the tower of the mosque in the early morning, when a man of piety may respond.[104] The theophany on high bearing witness to the presence of the Divinity, Moses prepared for the tribal sacrifice below by erecting an altar and setting up twelve pillars (_mazzeboth_). The young men slew the oxen, and Moses sprinkled the blood on the pillars and the people. Then, taking with him three priests and seventy elders, he went up into the mountain. “And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone and as it were the very heaven for clearness” (Exod. xxiv. 10, 11). And they ate and they drank there. We read that Moses’ second stay in the Mount lasted forty days and forty nights, during which he fasted (Exod. xxxiv. 28). The Moslim identified this fast as Ramadan, which, before Mohammad interfered with its date, happened during the heat of summer.[105] The Israelites at the foot of the mountain, probably observed the same fast, since Aaron’s reason for making the calf was that “to-morrow shall be a feast of the Lord,” _i.e._ at the conclusion of the fast, there was feasting, drinking, throwing off of clothes, dancing and much noise (Exod. xxxii. 6, 17, 25). In this case it was a question of a full moon festival, for, on a later occasion, Jeroboam made two calves of gold, one of which he set up in Bethel and one in Dan, and ordained a feast on the 15th day (1 Kings xii. 28, 32).