, which included, in addition to the halls and
courts reserved for religious rites, dwelling-rooms for the priesthood,
and storehouses for provisions: though not to be compared in size with
the sanctuaries of Thebes, they yet answered the purpose of strongholds
in time of need, and were capable of resisting the attacks of a
victorious foe.* A numerous staff, consisting of priests, male and
female singers, porters, butchers, slaves, and artisans, was assigned
to each of these temples: here the god was accustomed to give forth his
oracles, either by the voice of his prophets, or by the movement of his
statues.** The greater number of the festivals celebrated in them
were closely connected with the pastoral and agricultural life of
the country; they inaugurated, or brought to a close, the principal
operations of the year--the sowing of seed, the harvest, the vintage,
the shearing of the sheep. At Shechem, when the grapes were ripe, the
people flocked out of the town into the vineyards, returning to the
temple for religious observances and sacred banquets when the fruit had
been trodden in the winepress.***

* The story of Abimelech gives us some idea of what the
Canaanite temple of Baal-Berith at Shechem was like.

** As to the regular organisation of Baal-worship, we
possess only documents of a comparatively late period.

*** It is probable that the vintage festival, celebrated at
Shiloh in the time of the Judges, dated back to a period of
Canaanite history prior to the Hebrew invasion, i.e. to the
time of the Egyptian supremacy.

In times of extraordinary distress, such as a prolonged drought or a
famine, the priests were wont to ascend in solemn procession to the high
places in order to implore the pity of their divine masters, from whom
they strove to extort help, or to obtain the wished-for rain, by their
dances, their lamentations, and the shedding of their blood.*

*Cf., in the Hebraic period, the scene where the priests of
Baal go up to the top of Mount Carmel with the prophet
Elijah.

Almost everywhere, but especially in the regions east of the Jordan,
were monuments which popular piety surrounded with a superstitious
reverence. Such were the isolated boulders, or, as we should call
them, "menhirs," reared on the summit of a knoll, or on the edge of
a tableland; dolmens, formed of a flat slab placed on the top of two
roughly hewn supports, cromlechs, or