BETILO. - Current etymology from the Hebrew bēth-ēl "house of El (God)," rendered in Greek as βατθαός, βατθάλον, in Latin as baetilos. This name is given:
1) to stones generally situated near a grove or a spring, regarded by the Semites as a symbol 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 set up nearby. These stones are aniconic, like those of the sanctuaries of Paphos (Tacitus, Hist., II, 50), of Emesa (Herodian., V, 3) and of Byblos; more rarely squared, like that of the ka'bah at Mecca. They are not idols, that is, images of the divinity, even if later some element of anthropomorphization (face, arms, eyes, genitals) was traced upon them, but only a symbolic representation of the same, for cultic purposes.
2) to stones, likewise aniconic, that were believed to have fallen from the sky (meteorites) and therefore rich in sacro-magical power, which led them to be considered "living stones" (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 goat's skin (βαίτη), Rhea made Cronus swallow in place of the newborn Zeus. This etymology was upheld 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 has the opinion of M.-J. Lagrange met with any better fortune, who saw in the b. a reduction of the multi-storied Babylonian temple tower (siggurrat). The veneration of b. belongs to the broader phenomenon of litholatry, on which v. PIETRA, adorazione della.
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Nicola Turchi