This rite, mixed as it is with phallic worship (see Genesis), had its origin in the castration of prisoners of war,[235] and, as far as the Israelites were concerned, probably originated in Egypt,[236] although it has been found to be performed among the tribes of Central Australia with a stone knife just as is recorded of the Israelites. With progress and the fact that use was found for prisoners, castration gave way to marking the prisoners, until the original significance passing, as among the Egyptians according to Herodotus, the practice became one of purely hygienic value. That this covenant with Yahweh was kept when all about them the first-born children of the Egyptians were sacrificed, the feast of the Passover (from חטם, _pesach_, meaning “to pass by, to spare”) attests. Yahweh told Moses that he was to claim the lives of not only the first-born of the Egyptians “from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon,” but also the first-born of all the animals in the land. That the chosen people might not suffer in this contemplated destruction they were instructed, through Moses, to take the blood of a lamb, “a male of the first year,” and “strike it on the two side-posts and on the upper door-post of the houses,” that it might be known wherein the faithful dwelt. [Illustration: A NOTABLE CASE OF ABANDONMENT—THE FINDING OF MOSES (AFTER PAINTING BY SCHOPIN)] Here we see the beginning of the threshold sacrifice or covenant, which became, in time, the foundation sacrifice. So complete was this claiming of the first-born that “there was not a house where there was not one dead.”[237] From their deliverance from this visitation, Yahweh instructed Moses to “sanctify unto me all the first-born, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel; both of man and beast, it is mine.” Already there was the example of the patriarch Abraham that an animal might be substituted; now there was the statement from the One on high that the first-born of the chosen people might be redeemed. Of the temper of the people at this time and their proneness to fall into the vices of their neighbours, and of idolatry, we need only the statement of Joshua[238] that while in Egypt—Renan says that they were not there more than three hundred years—they acquired the habit of worshipping false gods. The speedy fall from grace, as shown by the worship of the golden calf while Moses was away from them for a short time, is another evidence of their excitability, although modern scientists have declared that under adverse circumstances the entire civilized peoples would revert to barbarity in three generations.