I must likewise premise that the worship of the Baalim, within and without Israel, was specially directed to upright conical stones, the most sacred objects at all the sanctuaries; and that these stones are generally admitted to have {190}possessed for their worshippers a phallic significance. Certain writers have further endeavoured to show that a few animal-gods entered into the early worship of the Hebrews. I do not feel sure that their arguments are convincing; but for the sake of completeness I include the two most probable cases in this brief review of the vague and elusive deities of early Israel. One of these is the god in the form of a young bull, specially worshipped at Dan and Bethel, as the bull Apis was worshipped at Memphis, and the bull Mnevis at On or Heliopolis. This cult of the bull is pushed back in the later traditions to the period of the exodus, when the Israelites made themselves a “golden calf” in the wilderness. Kuenen, indeed, lays stress upon the point that this Semitic bull-worship differed essentially from the cult of Apis in the fact that it was directed to an image or idol, not to a living animal. This is true, and I certainly do not wish to press any particular connexion between Egypt and the golden bulls of Jeroboam in the cities of Ephraim: though I think too much may perhaps be made of superficial differences and too little of deep-seated resemblances in these matters, seeing that bull-worship is a common accompaniment of a phallic cult in the whole wide district between Egypt and India. It is the tendency of the scholastic mind, indeed, to over-elaborate trifles, and to multiply to excess minute distinctions. But in any case, we are on comparatively safe ground in saying that a bull-god was an object of worship in Israel down to a very late period; that his cult descended from an early age of the national existence; and that the chief seats of his images were at Dan and Bethel in Ephraim, and at Beersheba in Judah.