Circumcision is one of the most ancient religious rites with which we are acquainted, and, as practised in some countries, there seems reason to suppose that it was of a phallic character. "It can scarcely be doubted," says one writer, "that it was a sacrifice to the awful power upon whom the fruit of the womb depended, and having once fixed itself in the minds of the people, neither priest nor prophet could eradicate it. All that these could do was to spiritualise it into a symbol of devotion to a high religious ideal." Bonwick says: "Though associated with sun worship by some, circumcision may be accepted as a rite of sex worship." Ptolemy's _Tetrabiblos_, speaking of the neighbouring nations as far as India, says: "Many of them practise divination, and devote their genitals to their divinities." It is not possible, perhaps, to speak with any degree of certainty about the origin of this rite; the enquiry carries the student so far back in history, that the mind gets lost in the mists of the past. It is regarded by some as a custom essentially Jewish, but this is altogether wrong; it was extensively practised in Egypt, also by the tribes inhabiting the more southern parts of Africa; in Asia, the Afghans and the Tamils had it, and it has been found in various parts of America, and amongst the Fijians and Australians. It has been argued, and with considerable plausibility, that it existed long before writing was known, and from the fact of its having been employed by the New Hollanders, its great antiquity may be inferred with certainty. It has been noticed by historians that sometimes a nation will pledge itself to a corporal offering of such a kind, that every member shall constantly bear about its mark on himself, and so make his personal appearance or condition a perpetual witness for the special religion whose vows he has undertaken. Thus several Arabian tribes living not far from the Holy Land, adopted the custom, as a sign of their special religion (or, as Herodotus says, "after the example of their God"), of shaving the hair of their heads in an extraordinary fashion, viz., either on the crown of the head or towards the temples, or else of disfiguring a portion of the beard. Others branded or tattooed the symbol of a particular god on the skin, on the forehead, the arm, the hand. Israel, too, adopted from early times a custom which attained the highest sanctity in its midst, where no jest, however trifling, could be uttered on the subject, but which was essentially of a similar nature to those we have just mentioned. This was circumcision.[17] It was this special character which no doubt gave rise to the idea so common amongst the uninformed that it was a Jewish rite.