The Greeks certainly recognized the entrance of the house as the place for an altar to the protecting deity. “Before each house stood, usually, its own peculiar altar of Apollo Agyieus, or an obelisk rudely representing the god himself;” and that over the house door, “for good luck,” or as a talisman, “an inscription was often placed.”[202] And on occasions, as when a bride entered her husband’s house, the doorway was “ornamented with festive garlands.”[203] Theocritus refers to a Greek custom of smearing the side-posts of the gateway with the juice of magic herbs, as a method of appeal to the guardian deity to influence the heart of the dweller within toward the suppliant at the door.[204]
Roman householders affixed to the lintels and side-posts of their doors the spoils and trophies taken by them in battle. Branches, and wreaths of bay and laurel, were hung by them in the doorway on a marriage occasion; and lamps and torches were displayed at their doors at other times of rejoicing; while cypresses were shown there at the time of a death.[205]
Texts of Scripture, and other inscriptions, as a means of invoking a blessing at the doorway, are frequently found at the present time above the entrance of houses in South Germany.
In Central America and in South America the blood of sacrificial offerings was smeared on the doorways of houses as well as of temples, as a means of covenanting with the local deities. Illustrations of this are found in the records and remains of Peru[206] and Guatemala.[207]
In both Europe and America, the practice of nailing horseshoes on the side-posts of a doorway, for “good luck,” or as a means of guarding the inmates of the house from evil, is very common. So lately as the seventeenth century it was said: “Most houses of the West End of London have the horseshoe on the threshold.”[208] Even at the threshold of Christian churches, in recent years, the symbol of the horseshoe was to be found as a means of protection.[209] The horseshoe is often to be found on a ship’s mast. At the present time, horseshoes of various sizes, for use as doorway guards against evil, are found on sale in Philadelphia, and other centers of civilization.
It would seem that, in primitive practice, the hand of the covenanter dipped in the sacrificial blood on the threshold, and stamped on the door-posts and lintel, was the sign-manual of the covenant between the contracting party or parties, and God, or the gods, invoked in the sacrifice. Illustrations of this custom, as still surviving in the East, have been given, from Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Morocco.[210] Naturally, therefore, the sign-manual by itself came to stand for, or to symbolize, the covenant of the threshold altar; and the stamp of the red hand became a token of trust in God or the gods covenanted with in sacrifice, and of power or might resulting from this covenant relation. Wherever the red hand was shown, or found, it was a symbol of covenant favor with Deity, and it came to be known, accordingly, as the “hand of might.”