o be as majestic as a king or high
priest; his Istar is the spouse, the mother, the nurse; she is the goddess
"who," as the inscriptions say,[109] "rejoices mankind," who, when
fertilized by love, assures the duration and perpetuity of the species. It
was this method of interpretation that was in later years to lead to those
great creations of Greek art whose beauty is still the wonder of mankind.
Between these Chaldaean figures and those of the Greek sculptors the
difference was one of degree. The anthropomorphism of the Chaldees was
franker than that of the Egyptians, and so far the art of Chaldaea was an
advance upon that of Egypt, although it was excelled by the latter in
executive qualities. The method to which it had committed itself, the
diligent and passionate study of the human figure, was the royal road to
all excellence in the plastic arts.

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Statue of Nebo; from Nimroud. British Museum.
Calcareous stone. Height 6 feet 5 inches.]

But our present business is to discover this people's real conceptions of
its gods and to get a clear idea of their characteristic qualities. We
shall not attempt, therefore, to show how most of them belonged to one of
those divine triads which are to be found, it is believed, in Chaldaea as
well as in Egypt: we shall not ask how these triads were subordinated,
first, one to another, and secondly, to a single supreme being, who, in
Mesopotamia as elsewhere, was in time perceived more or less clearly and
placed at the head of the divine hierarchy. These triads are nearly
always found in polytheistic religions, and that for sufficiently
obvious reasons.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.--Terra-cotta Statuette; from Heuzey's _Figurines
antiques du Musee du Louvre_.]

The most simple relationship offered by the organic world to the mind of
man is the relationship of the sexes, their contrast, and the necessity for
their union. Wherever religious conceptions spring up gods and goddesses
are created together. All the forces divined by human intelligence are
doubled into two persons, closely united, the one the complement of the
other. The one has the active, the other the passive _role_. Egypt,
Chaldaea, Greece, all had these divine couples; Apsou, or, as Damascius
calls him, Apason and Tauthe; Anou and Antou, the Anaitis of the Greek
writers; Bel and Belit, or Beltu, perhaps the Greek Mylitta; Samas, the
sun, and Allat, the queen of the dead; Merodach (or Marduk) and Za