This strange persistence of a primitive religion in the very birthplace of a most exalted spiritual worship is an additional evidence of its remarkable vitality. For there is no country in the world where the tree was ever more ardently worshipped than it was in ancient Palestine. Amongst the Canaanites every altar to the god had its sacred tree beside it, and when the Israelites established local sanctuaries under their influence, they set up their altar under a green tree, and planted beside it as its indispensable accompaniment an _ashêra_, which was either a living tree or a tree-like post, and not a “grove,” as rendered in the Authorised Version. This _ashêra_ was undoubtedly worshipped as a sacred symbol of the deity. Originally it appears to have been associated with Ashtoreth or Astarte, the Syrian Istar, the revolting character of whose worship perhaps explains the excessive bitterness of the biblical denunciations.[8] But the _ashêra_ was also erected by the altars of other gods, and in pre-prophetic days even beside that of Jehovah Himself, whence it may be concluded that “in early times tree-worship had such a vogue in Canaan, that the sacred tree or the pole, its surrogate, had come to be viewed as a _general_ symbol of deity.”[9] The great antiquity of the cult in Syria was recognised in the local traditions, for an old Phoenician cosmogony, quoted by Eusebius, states that “the first men consecrated the plants shooting out of the earth, and judged them gods, and worshipped them, and made meat and drink offerings to them.”[10] In addition to the _ashêra_, the Chaldaean symbol of the sacred tree between its supporters was also familiar to the Phoenicians, and is found wherever their art penetrated, notably in Cyprus and on the archaic pottery of Corinth and Athens.[11] It is highly probable that both these sacred symbols had a common origin, but the connection must have been lost sight of in later times, for we find Ezekiel, to whom the prophetic denunciations of the _ashêra_ must have been familiar, decorating the temple of his vision with designs evidently derived from the Chaldaean sacred tree, “a palm-tree between a cherub and a cherub.”[12] A similar ornamentation with palm-trees and cherubim, it will be remembered, had been used in the temple built by Solomon.[13]