[95] And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.--Genesis, xxviii., 18, 22. [96] Herodotus, iii., 8, refers to an Arabian rite in which seven stones are smeared with blood among peoples whose only gods were Dionysos and Urania, whom they called Orotalt and Alilat. [97] Sayce, _Babylonians and Assyrians_, p. 234. [98] _Nili op. quaedam_ (Paris, 1639), pp. 28, 117, quoted by Robertson Smith, p. 151. [99] “Pre-Aryan Syntax in Insular Celtic,” in the _Welsh People_, by Rhys and Brynmor-Jones, pp. 617-641. CHAPTER XXIII THE SIMILARITY OF THE SEMITIC AND BRITISH WORSHIPS I propose in this chapter to bring into juxtaposition the various British and Semitic-Egyptian practices which we have so far considered. I confess I am amazed at the similarities we have come across in the first cast of the net; we have found so much that is common to both worships in connection with all the points we considered separately. I will, for convenience, deal with the various points seriatim. 1. The cult of sacred stones or cairns. The only objection which, so far as I can see, may be raised to these practices being absolutely common is the idea among many British archæologists that the cairns, in which term I include chambered barrows or dolmens and their skeletons, the cromlechs and stone passages, were set up for burial and not for worship. This idea has arisen because some of them have been used for burials. But I cannot accept this argument, because since the burials might have taken place at any time subsequent to their erection they prove nothing as to the reason of the erection; and further, if these chambered cairns were meant for burials, there should be burials in all of them, and yet there are none in the most majestic of them all, Maeshowe. Let us consider a few facts in relation to the Semitic use of cairns referred to on p. 244. That the cromlechs found both in Britain and Syria--there are 780 in Ireland and 700 in Moab--are the remains of chambered cairns is pretty clear from the evidence brought forward by Borlase.[100] Mr. John Bell, of Dundalk, disinterred over sixty cromlechs from cairns in Ulster. All dolmens were covered by tumuli according to Mr. Bell and Mr. Lukis. Monuments called cairns in the earliest Ordnance Survey have been marked dolmens in subsequent surveys (_e.g._ Townland of Leana in Clare) because the earth covering the stones had disappeared in the meantime. Among the evidences of natural and artificial caves preceding cairns which replaced them are the twenty-four caves which have been explored in France (_op. cit._, p. 568).[101]