Herodotus mentions[34] that, in the annual feast in honor of the god Osiris, “every Egyptian sacrifices a hog before the door of his house” on the evening before the festival. Osiris was the god who was the judge of the soul after death, and who in a peculiar sense stood for the truth of the life to come. Every Egyptian desired, above all, to be in loving covenant with Osiris, and when he would offer a welcoming sacrifice to him, he did so before the door of his own house, as before the primitive family altar. That it was the _blood_ poured out at the threshold which was the essential act of covenanting in this sacrifice to Osiris, is evidenced in the fact that the animal sacrificed was not eaten in the family of the sacrificer, but was carried away by the swineherd who furnished it. Bunches of grass dipped in blood, and touched by the king, as if made representative of his dignity and power, are to-day placed on the threshold, as an offering, and as averters of evil, in Equatorial Africa. This is known there as an ancient custom. In Uganda, “every house has charms hung on the door, and others laid on the threshold.” An offering to the _lubare_, or local spirit, must be thrown across the threshold, from within the house, before a native ventures to leave his home in the morning.[35] Charms for this purpose are kept behind the door. One of the requirements in the Vedic law (the sacred law of the Hindoos) was, that “on the door-sill (a bali must be placed) with a mantra addressed to Antariksha (the air),”[36] by a house father, in his home;[37] that is, that an offering, with an invocation to a deity, should be a sacrifice at the threshold altar. Other references in the Hindoo laws seem to demand bali offerings “at all the doors, as many as they are,” in a house, and evidence the importance and sacredness attaching to the doorway.[38] The threshold seems to have special reverence in Northwestern India, in connection with the seasons of seedtime and harvest. At seedtime “a cake of cowdung formed into a cup” is placed on the threshold of the householder; it is filled with corn, and then water is poured over it as a libation to the deities. Cowdung is not only a means of enrichment to the soil, but it is a gift from the sacred cow, and so, in a sense, represents or stands for the life of the cow. It is laid on the threshold altar as an offering of life. The libation of water is an accompaniment of that offering; water is essential to life and growth, and it is a gift of the gods accordingly. Seed-sowing is recognized as an act which needs the blessing of the gods, and on which that blessing is sought in covenant relations.