“Letters of marque” were letters of commission, or permission, granted by the government to individuals, in time of war, to pass over the boundary mark, or national threshold, for purposes of seizure or reprisal. And a “marquee” is primarily a tent over, or before, the threshold of a military commander’s tent.
An altar would have no meaning unless sacrifices were offered at it. If, therefore, the boundary threshold of an empire were an altar for that empire, sacrifices would surely be offered there; and the records of history, and the customs of old times and later, show this to have been the case.
Sacrifices were offered at the new boundary of an empire, by ancient Assyrian and Egyptian kings, when they set up a pillar, or stele, at the freshly acquired threshold in that direction. Thus, for example, Ashurnâsirapli (king of Assyria, 885–860 B.C.), telling of his far-reaching conquests, says that he marched with his armies to the slopes of the Lebanon, and to the great sea of the Westland, and that at the mountains of Ammanus he made and set up a stele of victory, and offered sacrifices unto his gods.[507]
At the Egyptian boundary line in the Sinaitic Peninsula, there was a temple with its sacrifices to “the sublime Hathor, queen of heaven and earth and the dark depths below, whom the Egyptians worshiped as the protectress of the land of Mafkat.” There were other temples with their sacrifices at that point.[508] On the southern boundary of Egypt, in the gold district of Nubia, there was “the temple of Amon in the holy mountain,” where threshold sacrifices were offered.[509]
One of the most ancient of Chinese classics is the Shih King. Its age is not known, but it is certain that it was a classic in the days of Confucius, five centuries before the Christian era. This work contains frequent references to sacrifices at the border altars, or the altars of the boundary. There were public sacrifices at the “border altar” in the beginning of every new year; and again when a ruler crossed his border line on a warlike mission.[510]
When, in ancient times, a Chinese emperor passed over the outer threshold of his empire, he offered a sacrifice of a dog, by running over it with the wheels of his chariot. This is supposed to have been a propitiatory offering to the dog-shaped guardians of the roadway threshold, known also among the Indo-Aryans and the Assyro-Babylonians.[511]
