In regard to the number of trees which they held sacred the Semitic nations rivalled the Greeks. They venerated “the pines and cedars of Lebanon, the evergreen oaks of the Palestinian hills, the tamarisks of the Syrian jungles, the acacias of the Arabian wadies,” besides such cultivated trees as the palm, the olive, and the vine. But there is no clear evidence to prove that they ever coupled a particular species of tree with a particular god. In Phoenicia the cypress was sacred to Astarte, but it was equally connected with the god Melcarth, who was believed to have planted the cypress-trees at Daphne. “If a tree belonged to a particular deity, it was not because it was of a particular species, but because it was the natural wood of the place where the god was worshipped.”[87] It is true that the Chaldaeans regarded the cedar as the special tree of the god Ea, but the association was probably borrowed, like the god himself, from the non-Semitic Accadians, while the connection of the Nabataean god, Dusares, with the vine may be traced to Hellenic influence. Outside the Semitic area individual gods are often found, as in Greece, linked with particular kinds of trees. In Persia the cypress was the sacred tree of the god Mithra, while in Egypt the acacia was intimately associated with Osiris. On an ancient sarcophagus an acacia is represented with the device, “Osiris shoots up.”[88] And in mortuary pictures the god is sometimes represented as a mummy covered with a tree or with growing plants. In both cases the idea of life arising out of death is probably implied. [Illustration: Fig. 19.—The Bodhi-tree of Kanaka Muni (Ficus glomerata).(The Stûpa of Bharhut, by Major-General Cunningham, Plate xxiv. 4.)]