lper. The bull, however, was killed, and a portion of the animal
having been cut off, Enki-du threw it at the goddess, saying at the
same time that, if he could only get hold of her, he would treat her
similarly. Apparently Istar recognised that there was nothing further
to be done in the matter, so, gathering the hand-maidens, pleasure-women
and whores, in their presence she wept over the portion of the
divine bull which had been thrown at her.

The worship of Istar, she being the goddess of love and war, was
considerably more popular than that of her spouse, Tammuz, who, as
among the western Semitic nations, was adored rather by the women than
the men. Her worship was in all probability of equal antiquity, and
branched out, so to say, in several directions, as may be judged by
her many names, each of which had a tendency to become a distinct
personality. Thus the syllabaries give the character which represents
her name as having also been pronounced /Innanna/, /Ennen/, and /Nin/,
whilst a not uncommon name in other inscriptions is /Ama-Innanna/,
"mother Istar." The principal seat of her worship in Babylonia was at
Erech, and in Assyria at Nineveh--also at Arbela, and many other
places. She was also honoured (at Erech and elsewhere) under the
Elamite names of Tispak and Susinak, "the Susian goddess."

Nina.

From the name /Nin/, which Istar bore, there is hardly any doubt that
she acquired the identification with Nina, which is provable as early
as the time of the Lagasite kings, Lugal-anda and Uru-ka-gina. As
identified with Aruru, the goddess who helped Merodach to create
mankind, Istar was also regarded as the mother of all, and in the
Babylonian story of the Flood, she is made to say that she had
begotten man, but like "the sons of the fishes," he filled the sea.
Nina, then, as another form of Istar, was a goddess of creation,
typified in the teeming life of the ocean, and her name is written
with a character standing for a house or receptacle, with the sign for
"fish" within. Her earliest seat was the city of Nina in southern
Babylonia, from which place, in all probability, colonists went
northwards, and founded another shrine at Nineveh in Assyria, which
afterwards became the great centre of her worship, and on this account
the city was called after her Ninaa or Ninua. As their tutelary
goddess, the fishermen in the neighbourhood of the Babylonian Nina and
Lagas were accustome