Note 50 — XIX. EXCREMENT GODS OF ROMANS AND EGYPTIANS.
Reading edition
L’adorateur présentait devant l’autel son postérieur nu, soulageait ses entrailles et faisait à l’idole une offrande de sa puante déjection.—(Dulaure, “Des Divinités Génératrices,” Paris, 1825, p. 76.)
Philo says the devotee of Baal-Peor presented to the idol all the outward orifices of the body. Another authority says that the worshipper not only presented all these to the idol, but that the emanations or excretions were also presented,—tears from the eyes, wax from the ears, pus from the nose, saliva from the mouth, and urine and dejecta from the lower openings. This was the god to which the Jews joined themselves; and these, in all probability, were the ceremonies they practised in his worship.—(Robert Allen Campbell, Phallic Worship, St. Louis, 1888, p. 171.)
Still another authority says the worshipper, presenting his bare posterior to the altar, relieved his bowels, and offered the result to the idol: “Eo quod distendebant coram illo foramen podicis et stercus offerebant.”—(Hargrave Jennings, Phallicism, London, 1884, quoting Rabbi Solomon Jarchi, in his Commentary on Numbers xxv.)
These two citations go to show that the worshipper intended making not a merely ceremonial offering of flatulence, but an actual oblation of excrement, such as has been stated, was placed upon the altars of their near neighbors, the Assyrians, in the devotions tendered their Venus.