[169] See Lenormant’s Ancient History of the East, vol. ii, p. 230. A pillar, cone, or tree-stem, more or less ornamented, constituted the Ashêrah of the Syrians and others, which many of the Israelites long looked on with favor (see Numbers, xxv, and 2 Judges, xxii), and which is in the authorized version of the Bible translated “grove,” as in the phrase, “the women wove hangings for the grove” (2 Judges, xxxiii, 7). It was the image of the goddess of fertility and life, the Istar of the Babylonians, The Baal-peor of the Moabites, Midianites, and others, and the Priapus of the Greeks and Romans were practically similar. I may add that the _Phallus_ (derived from Apis, the Egyptian sacred bull), the _linga_ of the Hindus, has been taken by many peoples as emblematic of the widely-worshipped, active, renovating power in nature, the sun; just as an oval or round figure, the _cteis_ of the Greeks, the _yoni_ of the Hindus, has been of the passive power, the earth. (See Cox’s Mythology of the Aryans). The latter is the Mipleçeth, or “abominable image for an Ashêrah,” spoken of in the Bible (1 Kings, xv, 13, and 2 Chronicles, xv, 16). The whole subject is well presented in a little book by Messrs. Westropp and Wake,—Ancient Symbol Worship. New York, 1874. [170] Ancient Art and its Remains, p. 442. [171] A name given to Hermes. [172] Transactions of the Victoria Institute, vol. vi, p. 329. London, 1873. [173] “Aaron’s rod” is similarly constituted, but of different import. [174] Gemmæ Selectae. Amsterdam, 1703. [175] Mercury of the Romans was not much, except the god of commerce. [176] The posture only approximates that assumed in the act of generation. In this act the two serpents, in the words of Aristotle, “are folded together with the abdomens opposite.... They roll themselves together so closely that they seem to be one serpent with two heads.” Natural History, p. 103. Bohn’s edition. London, 1862. [177] Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme, p. 38. [178] Natural History, xxix, 12. [179] Æneid, iv. [180] Zoological Mythology, p. 406. [181] See Cory’s Ancient Fragments, p. 23. Edition by Hodges. London, 1876. [182] McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia of Biblical and Religious Literature. [183] Historic Devices, Badges, and War-Cries. London, 1870. [184] Natural History, xxix. [185] _Ibid._ [186] Myths of the New World, p. 3. New York, 1868. [187] Household Tales. [188] See Hyginus. Poet. Astr., ii, 14. [189] The literal meaning of _nagas_ is snakes. In his Indian Arts (London, 1882), Dr. Birdwood says: “The worship of the snake still survives everywhere in India, and at Nagpur was, until very recently, a public danger, from the manner in which the city was allowed to be overrun with cobras.” p. 83. [190] “Serpent-Myths of Ancient Egypt,” in Transactions of the Victoria Institute, vol. vi, p. 321. London, 1873. [191] Mythology, vol. ii, p. 460. [192] Egyptian Mythology, p. 36. London, 1863. [193] Numbers, xxi, 9.