{40} Mohammed in his day tried to prohibit such sacrifices to the _jinn_, but the inveterate sentiment is summed up in the words of a modern native: 'every house must have its death, either man, woman, child, or animal.' The animal-victim is recognised as a substitute, and vulgar superstition still associates with the foundation of buildings some vague danger to human life--if not its loss. Traditions of human sacrifice are recorded by mediæval and older writers, and excavation has disclosed authentic examples. At Gezer the skeleton of an adult female had been placed under the corner of a house, and the bones of infants were often found in or under the walls of houses down to the later Israelite period. At Megiddo, a young girl of about fifteen was laid across a foundation-stone, and a victim at the foot of a tower in Taanach was a child scarcely in its teens. A jar with the remains of a new-born infant rested upon a platform in the Gezer crematorium, and the evidence allowed the inference that it was a dedicatory sacrifice when the cave was taken over and used for inhumation. Infants buried in jars were found, together with bowls and lamps, under the foundations in Gezer as late as the latter part of the Israelite monarchy, although a modification had already been {41} introduced in the simple deposits of lamps and bowls, usually at the corners of houses or chambers or under the jambs of doors. If the bowls represent the sacrificial offerings, the significance of the lamps is uncertain. The victim in the rite had not been burned, but probably buried alive, and it may be conjectured that the identification of life and light (familiar from the Old Testament) underlies the symbolical lamp. The modern Palestinian custom of hanging lights in shrines, etc., in cases of sickness possibly involves the same association of ideas. On the other hand, the lamps found in tombs naturally recall the widespread custom of lighting the soul on its dark journey, or of kindling a lamp in the home to enable it to retrace its steps on the anniversary. These purely burial lamps are very well known (_e.g._ in Carthage), and they survive in Palestine to the Christian age, when they are inscribed with such distinctive mottoes as 'Christ is my light,' or 'the light of Christ shines for all.'