In all these facts or legends, blood on the threshold of the building, in the foundation-stones of the structure, is shown to have been deemed an essential factor in a covenant with, or in propitiation of, the deity of the place. 6. APPEALS AT THE ALTAR. Because the threshold is recognized as an altar, nearness to the altar is nearness to God, or to the gods worshiped at that altar. Hence appeals are made and justice is sought at the gate, or at the threshold, as in the presence of deity. To present one’s self at the tent doorway, or to lay hold of the supports, or cords, at the entrance of an Arab’s “house of hair,” is recognized as an ever-effective appeal for hospitality in the East. Even an enemy can thus secure the protection of the home sanctuary.[153] In the excavation of Tell-el-Hesy, in Southwestern Palestine, supposed to cover the remains of ancient Lachish,[154] Dr. Petrie discovered various ornamented door-jambs. In one case a simple volute on a pilaster slab suggested to Dr. Petrie “a ram’s horn nailed up against a wooden post;” and “he sees in this the origin of the type of the ‘horns of the altar,’[155] so often mentioned in temple architecture.”[156] If Dr. Petrie be correct in this thought, the horns of the altar were first of all at the house doorway, above the threshold altar. One of the fundamental laws of the Afghans makes it incumbent on a host to “shelter and protect any one who in extremity may flee to his threshold, and seek an asylum under his roof.” Property or life must be sacrificed in his behalf, if need be. “As soon as you have crossed the threshold of an Afghan you are sacred to him, though you were his deadly foe, and he will give up his own life to save yours.” A favorite poem of the Afghan, entitled, “Adam Khan and Durkhani,” tells of a son who killed his father because that father had betrayed a refugee who sought the sanctuary of his threshold. And all Afghans honor the memory of that son.[157] Among the Arabs of the Syrian desert, when a man would leave his own tribe and join himself to another, he takes a lamb or a goat with him, and presents himself at the entrance of the tent of the shaykh of the tribe he would find a home in. Slaying the animal there, and allowing its blood to run out on the ground at the threshold of the tent, he makes his appeal to the shaykh to accept him as a member of his tribe, or as a son by adoption. And this appeal has peculiar force, as a voice by blood.[158]