**** The source of the Jordan, near Banias, was the seat of
a Baal whom the Greeks identified with Pan. This was
probably the Baal-Gad who often lent his name to the
neighbouring town of Baal-Hermon: many of the rivers of
Phoenicia were called after the divinities worshipped in the
nearest city, e.g. the Adonis, the Belos, the Asclepios, the
Damuras.

They required that offerings and prayers should be brought to them
at the high places,* but they were also pleased--and especially the
goddesses--to lodge in trees; tree-trunks, sometimes leafy, sometimes
bare and branchless (_asherah_), long continued to be living emblems
of the local Astartes among the peoples of Southern Syria. Side by side
with these plant-gods we find everywhere, in the inmost recesses of the
temples, at cross-roads, and in the open fields, blocks of stone hewn
into pillars, isolated boulders, or natural rocks, sometimes of meteoric
origin, which were recognised by certain mysterious marks to be the
house of the god, the Betyli or Beth-els in which he enclosed a part of
his intelligence and vital force.

* These are the "high places" (bamoth) so frequently
referred to by the Hebrew prophets, and which we find in the
country of Moab, according to the Mesha inscription, and in
the place-name Bamoth-Baal; many of them seem to have served
for Canaanitish places of worship before they were resorted
to by the children of Israel.

The worship of these gods involved the performance of ceremonies more
bloody and licentious even than those practised by other races. The
Baalim thirsted after blood, nor would they be satisfied with any common
blood such as generally contented their brethren in Chaldaea or Egypt:
they imperatively demanded human as well as animal sacrifices. Among
several of the Syrian nations they had a prescriptive right to the
firstborn male of each family;* this right was generally commuted,
either by a money payment or by subjecting the infant to circumcision.**

* This fact is proved, in so far as the Hebrew people is
concerned, by the texts of the Pentateuch and of the
prophets; amongst the Moabites also it was his eldest son
whom King Mosha took to offer to his god. We find the same
custom among other Syrian races: Philo of Byblos tells us,
in fact, that El-Kronos, god of Byblos, sacrificed his
firstborn son and set the example of this k