This appears, also, in the installing of a Chief Rabbi in modern Jerusalem. In the welcome to the Hakham Bâshi, or the “First in Zion,”[184] “the multitude of those gathered together accompany him to his house, but before he sets the sole of his foot upon the threshold of the outer gate [or court] one of the shokheteem [or official slaughterers] slays a perfect beast, and pronounces the sacrificial blessing, and all those present answer, Amen. Then the rabbi, the Hakham Bâshi, steps over the beast which has been slain, and the shokhet dips the two palms of his hands into the blood, and marks first the vessels of the rabbi’s house. And, with his hands stained with blood, he forms the semblance of a hand above the lintel of the door;–in their trust that this thing is good [the proper thing] for the evil eye;–and the flesh of the beast they distribute to the poor.”[185] A custom in this same line is noted among the Jews in Morocco, in connection with wedding observances. “Whilst the bullock, or other animal, is being slaughtered for the evening’s festivities, a number of boys dip their hands in the blood, and make an impression of an outspread hand on the door-posts and walls of the bride’s house;” supposedly “for the purpose of keeping off the ‘evil eye,’ and thus ensuring good luck to the newly married couple.”[186] There are indications of such a custom in ancient times. Layard says of his researches in Assyria: “On all the slabs forming entrances in the oldest palaces of Nimroud, were marks of a black fluid resembling blood, which appeared to be daubed on the stone. I have not been able to ascertain the nature of this fluid; but its appearance cannot fail to call to mind the Jewish ceremony of placing the blood of the sacrifice on the lintel of the doorway.”[187] In ancient Egypt there were inscriptions, together with the name of the owner, on the side-posts and lintels of the dwellings. “Besides the owner’s name,” says Wilkinson,[188] “they sometimes wrote a lucky sentence over the entrance of the house, for a favorable omen, as ‘The Good Abode,’ the _múnzel mobárak_ of the modern Arabs, or something similar; and the lintels and imposts of the doors in the royal mansions were frequently covered with hieroglyphics, containing the ovals and titles of the monarch. It was, perhaps, at the dedication of the house, that these sentences were affixed; and we may infer, from the early mention of this custom among the Jews, that it was derived from Egypt.”[189]