But the sacred stone was not only an object of worship or the consecrated altar of a deity, it might also take the place of a temple, and so be in very truth a beth-el, or “house of God.”  Thus at Medain Salih in North-western Arabia Mr. Doughty discovered three upright stones, which an inscription informed him were the mesged or “mosque” of the god Aera of Bozrah.  In the great temple of Melkarth at Tyre Herodotus saw two columns, one of gold, the other of emerald, reminding us of the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, which the Phoenician architect of Solomon erected in the porch of the temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings vii. 21).  Similar columns of stone have been found in the Phoenician temple, called that of the Giants, in Gozo, one of which is still standing in its place.

While certain stones were thus regarded as the abode of deity, the high places whereon so many of them stood also received religious worship.  The most prominent of the mountains of Syria were deified:  Carmel became a Penu-el or “Face of God,” Hermon was “the Holy One,” and Mount Lebanon was a Baal.  The rivers and springs also were adored as gods, and the fish which swam in them were accounted sacred.  On the Phoenician coast was a river Kadisha, “the holy,” and the Canaanite maiden saw in the red marl which the river Adonis brought down from the hills the blood of the slaughtered Sun-god Tammuz.

The temple of Solomon, built as it was by Phoenician architects and workmen, will give us an idea of what a Canaanitish temple was like.  In its main outlines it resembled a temple in Babylonia or Assyria.  There, too, there was an outer court and an inner sanctuary, with its parakku or “mercy-seat,” and its ark of stone or wood, in which an inscribed tablet of stone was kept.  Like the temple of Jerusalem, the Babylonian temple looked from the outside much like a rectangular box, with its four walls rising up, blank and unadorned, to the sky.  Within the open court was a “sea,” supported at times on oxen of bronze, where the priests and servants of the temple performed their ablutions and the sacred vessels were washed.

The Canaanitish altar was approached by steps, and was large enough for the sacrifice of an ox.  Besides the sacrifices, offerings of corn and wine, of fruit and oil were also made to the gods.  The sacrifices and offerings were of two kinds, the zau’at or sin-offering, and the shelem or thank-offering.  The sin-offering had to be given wholly to the god, and was accordingly termed kalil or “complete”; a part of the thank-offering, on the other hand, might be carried away by him who made it.  Birds, moreover, might constitute a thank-offering; they were not allowed when the offering was made for sin.  Such at least was the rule in the later days of Phoenician ritual, to which belong the sacrificial tariffs that have been preserved.