be traced there, and on its slopes, or perched above its ravines,
are the ruins of other temples of Baal--at Der el-'Ashair, at Rakleh, at
Ain Hersha, at Rasheyat el-Fukhar--all pointing towards the central
sanctuary on the summit of the mountain.

The name of Hermon, "the consecrated," was but an epithet, and the
mountain had other and more special names of its own. The Sidonians, we
are told (Deut. iii. 9), called it Sirion, and another of its titles was
Sion (Deut. iv. 48), unless indeed this is a corrupt reading for Sirion.
Its Amorite name was Shenir (Deut. iii. 9), which appears as Saniru in
an Assyrian inscription, and goes back to the earliest dawn of history.
When the Babylonians first began to make expeditions against the West,
long before the birth of Abraham, the name of Sanir was already known.
It was then used to denote the whole of Syria, so that its restriction
to Mount Hermon alone must have been of later date.

Another holy peak was Carmel, "the fruitful field," or perhaps
originally "the domain of the god." It was in Mount Carmel that the
mountain ranges of the north ended finally, and the altar on its summit
could be seen from afar by the Phoenician sailors. Here the priests of
Baal called in vain upon their god that he might send them rain, and
here was "the altar of the Lord" which Elijah repaired.

The mountains of the south present no striking peak or headland like
Hermon and Carmel. Even Tabor belongs to the north. Ebal and Gerizim
alone, above Shechem, stand out among their fellows, and were venerated
as the abodes of deity from the earliest times. The temple-hill at
Jerusalem owed its sanctity rather to the city within the boundaries of
which it stood than to its own character. In fact, the neighbouring
height of Zion towered above it. The mountains of the south were rather
highlands than lofty chains and isolated peaks.

But on this very account they played an important part in the history of
the world. They were not too high to be habitable; they were high enough
to protect their inhabitants against invasion and war. "Mount Ephraim,"
the block of mountainous land of which Shechem and Samaria formed the
centre, and at the southern extremity of which the sacred city of Shiloh
stood, was the natural nucleus of a kingdom, like the southern block of
which Hebron and Jerusalem were similarly the capitals. Here there were
valleys and uplands in which sufficient food could be grown for the
needs