er primitive character at this time appears
in the account of her marriages with animals, in which there is to be
recognized the trace of the old zooelatrous period; but as patron of
fertility she becomes in time a great goddess and takes on universal
attributes--she is the mother of gods and men, universal protector and
guide. Where war was the chief pursuit she became a goddess of war; in
this character she appears in Babylonia as early as the time of
Hammurabi, and later in Assyria. In the genealogical constructions she
was brought into connection, as daughter, wife, or other relation, with
any god that the particular conditions suggested. As the Assyrians grew
morally she was endowed with all the highest virtues (so in the
Penitential Psalms), and occupied so preeminent a position that under
favorable circumstances she might perhaps have become the only god of
the land.

+763+. If her name signified originally 'lord' or 'lady,' the occurrence
of several Ishtars in Assyria (particularly Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar
of Arbela) is easily understood; so in Canaan, as we learn from the Old
Testament, there was a great number of local Ashtarts.[1308] We can thus
also explain the male deities Ashtar in Moab and Athtar in South
Arabia.[1309] None of these, however, attained the eminence of the
Babylonian and Assyrian Ishtar; her supremacy in Mesopotamia was due
doubtless in part to the political importance of the cities that adopted
her. She had her rivals, as we have seen, in Marduk and Ashur and
others; and that she was able to maintain herself is to be ascribed in
some measure to the importance attached by her worshipers to the
fertilizing power of nature.

+764+. The other Semitic peoples, with the exception of the Hebrews,
offer little material for tracing the development of the great gods. For
the Aramean region the records are sparse; Aramean deities appear to be
of the same character as the Canaanite.[1310] In Canaan (including
Phoenicia) out of the vast number of local divinities, the Baals and
Ashtarts, few attained to eminence, and it is doubtful whether any one
of them deserves the title "great."[1311] The divine patrons of cities
were locally powerful; such were the Baal of Tyre, called Melkart ('the
king of the city'), the Ashtart of Sidon, and Tanit of Carthage;[1311]
these owed their reputation to their official positions, and there is no
other record of their development. The same thing is true of the Moab