+Oracles+ are obtained at those places where supernatural beings have manifested themselves, or from their symbols or their human representatives. In the stone enclosures at Serabit Professor Petrie would recognise the sacred places visited by those who worked the mines and hoped for useful dreams. The value attached to visions of the night needs no telling, and when the {53} Egyptian king Merneptah saw in his sleep the god Ptah offering him the sword of victory, or when the god Ashur directed the Lydian Gyges to 'lay hold of the feet' of Ashurbanipal (_i.e._ place himself under his protection), we perceive among relatively advanced societies important factors in the growth of all religions. Divine advice and help could be granted by the statues of the gods: a cuneiform tablet from Taanach refers to an omen given by the finger of the goddess Ashirat, and the writer asks for the sign and its interpretation. As in the 'nodding' of the gods in Egyptian records the _modus operandi_ must not be too closely examined. Some of the old caverns of Palestine were certainly used for magical or religious purposes, and when we find them connected by small and curved passages, it is not improbable that they were the scenes of oracles, theophanies, and the like (p. 15 _sq._). As Mr. Macalister has observed, apropos of such caverns in the lowlands of Judah and at Gezer, mysterious responses and wonders could be easily contrived, and would be as convincing to the ignorant as the Miracle of the Holy Fire is to the modern Russian pilgrim in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The association of caves and other hidden resorts with the {54} worship of deities and oracles is well-known in other fields (_e.g._ Greece). Susa also had a god of oracles who dwelt in secret retreats, and other deities whose remote haunts were burned by Ashurbanipal when he carried them off.