“An ancient Chaldean legend, as recorded by Bero-sus, ascribes a new creation of mankind to the mixture by the gods of the dust of the earth with the blood that flowed from the severed head of the god Belus. ‘On this account it is that men are rational and partake of divine knowledge,’ says Berosus. The blood of the god gives them the life and nature of a god. Yet, again, the early Phœnician and the early Greek theogonies, as recorded by Sanchoniathon and by Hesiod, ascribe the vivifying of mankind to the outpoured blood of the gods. It was from the blood of Ouranos, or of Saturn, dripping into the sea and mingling with its foam, that Venus was formed, to become the mother of her heroic posterity. ‘The Orphies, which have borrowed so largely from the East,’ says Lenormant, ‘said that the immaterial part of man, his soul, his life, sprang from the blood of Dionysus Zagreus, whom... Titans had torn to pieces, partly devouring his members.’ “Homer explicitly recognizes this universal belief in the power of blood to convey life and to be a means of revivifying the dead. “Indeed, it is claimed, with a show of reason, that the very word (_surquinu_) which was used for ‘altar’ in the Assyrian was primarily the word for ‘table’—that, in fact, what was known as the ‘altar’ to the gods was originally the table of communion between the gods and their worshippers.” From the writings of Livingstone, the African explorer, as well as from the reports of Stanley, it appears that the custom of blood-covenanting is kept up in Africa in these modern times. Describing the ceremony, Livingstone says: “It is accomplished thus: The hands of the parties are joined (in this case Pitsane and Sambanza were the parties engaged). Small incisions are made on the clasped hands, on the pits of the stomach of each, and on the right cheeks and foreheads. A small quantity of blood is taken from these points, in both parties, by means of a stalk of grass. The blood from one person is put into a pot of beer, and that of the second into another; each then drinks the other’s blood, and they are supposed to become perpetual friends or relations. During the drinking of the beer some of the party continue beating the ground with short clubs and utter sentences by way of ratifying the treaty.” The primitive character of these customs is the more probable from the fact that Livingstone first found them existing in a region where, in his opinion, the dress and household utensils of the people are identical with those represented on the monuments of ancient Egypt. Concerning the origin of this rite in this region, Cameron says: “This custom of making brothers, I believe to be really of Semitic origin.”