BETĪLO. – The current etymology derives from the Hebrew bēth-ēl “house of El (God),” rendered in Greek as βατθαός, βατθάλον, and in Latin as baetilos. This name is given:
1) to stones generally situated near a grove or spring, regarded by the Semites as symbols of the
divinity, upon which oil is poured and the blood of sacrificed animals is sprinkled; often, in memory of the sacrifice, a stele is erected nearby. These stones are aniconic, like those of the sanctuaries of Paphos (Tacitus, Hist., II, 50), Emesa (Herodian., V, 3), and Byblos; more rarely they are square, like the one in the ka'bah at Mecca. They are not idols, that is, images of the divinity, even though at a later stage some element of anthropomorphization (face, arms, eyes, genitals) was traced upon them, but only symbolic representations of the divinity itself for cultic purposes.
2) to stones, likewise aniconic, believed to have fallen from the sky (meteorites) and therefore to be endowed with sacromagical power, which led them to be regarded as “living” (λῆθοι ἄμψυχοι: Philo of Byblos, in Fr. Hist. Graec., III, 568). According to the Byzantine lexicographer Hesychius (Lex., s. v.), b. was the name of the stone which, wrapped in a goatskin (βαίτη), Rhea made Cronus swallow instead of the newborn Zeus. This etymology was defended by Svoronos (in Zeitschr. für Numism., 1888) and by M. Meier, s. V. Kronos, in Roscher, Lexikon, II, col. 1524, but with little success. Nor did the view of M.-J. Lagrange gain acceptance: he saw in the b. a reduction of the multi-tiered Babylonian temple tower (siggurrat). The veneration of b. belongs to the broader phenomenon of litholatry, on which V. PETRA, adorazione della.