surmounted by a pair of doves and divided into three compartments or chapels, of which the central one is crowned by a lofty superstructure. In the golden models each chapel contains a pillar standing in a pair of horns: the central superstructure is crowned by two pairs of horns, one within the other; and the two side chapels are in like manner crowned each with a pair of horns and a single dove perched on the outer horn of each pair. On the coins each of the side chapels contains a pillar or candelabra-like object: the central chapel contains a cone and is flanked by two high columns, each terminating in a pair of ball-topped pinnacles, with a star and crescent appearing between the tops of the columns. The doves are doubtless the sacred doves of Aphrodite or Astarte,(96) and the horns and pillars remind us of the similar religious emblems which have been found in the great prehistoric palace of Cnossus in Crete, as well as on many monuments of the Mycenaean or Minoan age of Greece.(97) If antiquaries are right in regarding the golden models as copies of the Paphian shrine, that shrine must have suffered little outward change for more than a thousand years; for the royal graves at Mycenae, in which the models were found, can hardly be of later date than the twelfth century before our era. (M24) Thus the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Paphos was apparently of great antiquity.(98) According to Herodotus, it was founded by Phoenician colonists from Ascalon;(99) but it is possible that a native goddess of fertility was worshipped on the spot before the arrival of the Phoenicians, and that the newcomers identified her with their own Baalath or Astarte, whom she may have closely resembled. If two deities were thus fused in one, we may suppose that they were both varieties of that great goddess of motherhood and fertility whose worship appears to have been spread all over Western Asia from a very early time. The supposition is confirmed as well by the archaic shape of her image as by the licentious character of her rites; for both that shape and those rites were shared by her with other Asiatic deities. Her image was simply a white cone or pyramid.(100) In like manner, a cone was the emblem of Astarte at Byblus,(101) of the native goddess whom the Greeks called Artemis at Perga in Pamphylia,(102) and of the sun-god Heliogabalus at Emesa in Syria.(103) Conical stones, which apparently served as idols, have also been found at Golgi in Cyprus, and in the Phoenician temples of Malta;(104) and cones of sandstone came to light at the shrine of the “Mistress of Torquoise” among the barren hills and frowning precipices of Sinai.(105) The precise significance of such an emblem remains as obscure as it was in the time of Tacitus.(106) It appears to have been customary to anoint the sacred cone with olive oil at a solemn festival, in which people from Lycia and Caria participated.(107) The custom of anointing a holy stone has been observed