(M57) More to our purpose is to note that prophecy of the ordinary sort appears to have been in vogue at Byblus, the sacred city of Adonis, centuries before the life-time of the earliest Hebrew prophet whose writings have come down to us. When the Egyptian traveller, Wen-Ammon, was lingering in the port of Byblus, under the King’s orders to quit the place, the spirit of God came on one of the royal pages or henchmen, and in a prophetic frenzy he announced that the King should receive the Egyptian stranger as a messenger sent from the god Ammon.(243) The god who thus took possession of the page and spoke through him was probably Adonis, the god of the city. With regard to the office of these royal pages we have no information; but as ministers of a sacred king and liable to be inspired by the deity, they would naturally be themselves sacred; in fact they may have belonged to the class of sacred slaves or _ḳedeshim_. If that was so it would confirm the conclusion to which the foregoing investigation points, namely, that originally no sharp line of distinction existed between the prophets and the _ḳedeshim_; both were “men of God,” as the prophets were constantly called;(244) in other words, they were inspired mediums, men in whom the god manifested himself from time to time by word and deed, in short temporary incarnations of the deity. But while the prophets roved freely about the country, the _ḳedeshim_ appear to have been regularly attached to a sanctuary; and among the duties which they performed at the shrines there were clearly some which revolted the conscience of men imbued with a purer morality. What these duties were, we may surmise partly from the behaviour of the sons of Eli to the women who came to the tabernacle,(245) partly from the beliefs and practices as to “holy men” which survive to this day among the Syrian peasantry.