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ALDO MAGRIS (2005)
STONES. Sacred stones have been known from the earli-
est times, and they occur all over the world in different cul-
tures and religions. Often they are used as objects of sacrifice,
elements in various magical rites, or instruments of divina-
tion. They may also serve practical purposes as witness or
boundary stones, or as memorials; in such cases they may also
evoke religious veneration. The unseen powers that are repre-
sented by such monuments are of as many different kinds
as the reasons why people turn to them.
The general term stone includes many different objects,
some of them characterized by names of Celtic origin: men-
hirs (tall, upright monumental stones); cromlechs (circles of
standing stones); dolmens (table stones or large, flat, unhewn
stones resting horizontally on upright ones); and cairns
(heaps of stones). These four types as well as other monu-
ments shaped like pillars or columns are all raised up or built
by humankind (see Eliade, 1978, secs. 34ff.). But natural
rocks that, in whole or in part, have peculiar or startling
shapes or otherwise contrast with a flat or desolate landscape
may also be venerated as sacred. Smaller, movable stones can
serve as cult objects at home or can be carried as magical
protection.
The symbolic meaning of sacred stones is not fixed.
They may represent qualities such as firmness or barrenness
but they also may represent fertility. Interpretation is made
difficult by the fact that many sacred stones come to us from
religions and cultures for which there is little or no literary
evidence. Under such circumstances, it is understandable
that historians of religion have applied many different theo-
ries to such ancient religions, speaking of ancestor cults, na-
ture worship, fetishism, noniconic (nonfigurative) cults, ani-
mism, and dynamism. If written sources are lacking (as in
the case of prehistoric times) or few (as generally occurs with
ancient historic cultures), the field is open for sheer specula-
tion. Oral traditions recorded from illiterate peoples who are
still living—or who lived into comparatively recent times—
contain much detailed and valuable information that may
throw light on older times. Treating primitive material in
this way means, however, that one adopts the much-
criticized survival theory, although this theory seems to be
more applicable in the case of sacred stones than in other
cases. Altogether, the immensity and variety of the material
illustrates well the difficulties of a phenomenological method
(see Eliade, 1958, secs. 74ff.; Heiler, 1961, pp. 34ff.). In the
following discussion, I shall restrict myself to observations on
sacred stones from various cultures for which there is at least
some literary evidence to guide the interpretation.
ANCIENT WESTERN TRADITIONS. Stones or stone pillars
(Heb., matstsevah, from the Semitic ntsb, “to stand”) figure
prominently in the biblical story of the patriarch Jacob.
When his wife Rachel died, Jacob erected a funerary stele on
her grave (Gn. 35:20), probably as a memorial to keep her
name alive. Such a pillar could also commemorate an impor-
tant event, such as the pact between Jacob and the Arameans
(Gn. 31:43ff.). However, the cultic use of stones was most
common. During Jacob’s flight from the wrath of Esau, God
appeared to him in a dream, and he was struck with awe.
Jacob took the stone that had served him as a pillow, raised
it as a pillar, anointed it with oil, and called it beit-El (Be-
thel), the “house of God” (Gn. 28:16ff., 35:14). In this case,
the stone appears to have signified the presence of God.Such cultic pillars could be connected with altars as in
Exodus 24:4. Such use was proscribed by the Deuteronomic
Code (see, for example, Dt. 16:22) as a consequence of the
polemics against the corresponding Canaanite cult that was
condemned as the worship of pagan gods. Indeed, archaeolo-
gists have frequently overinterpreted large, upright stones
from the early Palestinian excavations as cult pillars from an-
cient Canaan. More critical study has unveiled them as, for
example, ruins of mortuary shrines or remnants of Iron Age
house structures. Actual pillars were discovered at Beit
SheDan and the ancient city of Megiddo in Israel, and at Jub-
ayl, the ancient Byblos, in Lebanon; their meaning, however,
is still not quite clear. The earliest pillar of this kind was dis-
covered in 1933 at ancient Mari, a site on the Middle Eu-
phrates, now in Syria (Tell Hariri). It dates from the Old Ak-
kadian period, circa 2300 BCE (Kennedy and Wevers, 1963).Light may be thrown on the cult of sacred stones in the
ancient Near East by the later, rich material from pre-Islamic
Arabia collected by the authority on Arab paganism Ibn
al-Kalb ̄ı (737–829?). Sacrificial stones are alluded to in the
QurDa ̄n (70:43), and they are explicitly forbidden by
Muh:ammad (5:490–492). Observations by ancient Greek
authors confirm the existence of sacred stones among the
Arabs from much earlier times (Buhl, 1936; see also Clement
of Alexandria, Proprepticus 4, 46). The rites that take place
around the KaEbah in Mecca represent a legitimated survival
of the ancient worship of Dans:a ̄b (stones). As elsewhere, such
worship originally existed together with the veneration of
trees, wooden trunks, and posts, or has been interchangeable
with such veneration (Höfner, in Gese et al., 1970,
pp. 359ff.).8744 STONES