te, the sacred tree, and the winged cherub were taken over and
developed in a special way. At times the combination with them of
designs borrowed from Egypt produced a new kind of artistic ornament.

But it was in the realm of religion that the influence of Babylonia was
most powerful. Religion, especially in the ancient world, was
inextricably bound up with its culture; it was impossible to adopt the
one without adopting a good deal of the other at the same time.
Moreover, the Semites of Babylonia and of Canaan belonged to the same
race, and that meant a community of inherited religious ideas. With both
the supreme object of worship was Baal or Bel, "the lord," who was but
the Sun-god under a variety of names. Each locality had its own special
Baal: there were, in fact, as many Baals, or Baalim, as there were names
and attributes for the Sun-god, and to the worshippers in each locality
the Baal adored there was the supreme god. But the god resembled his
worshipper who had been made in his image; he was the father and head of
a family with a wife and son. The wife, it is true, was but the
colourless reflection of the god, often indeed but the feminine Baalah,
whom the Semitic languages with their feminine gender required to exist
by the side of the masculine Baal. But this was only in accordance with
the Semitic conception of woman as the lesser man, his servant rather
than his companion, his shadow rather than his helpmeet.

The existence of an independent goddess, unmarried and possessing all
the attributes of the god, was contrary to the fundamental conceptions
of the Semitic mind. Nevertheless we find in Canaan an Ashtoreth, whom
the Greeks called Astarte, as well as a Baal. The cuneiform inscriptions
have given us an explanation of the fact.

Ashtoreth came from Babylonia. There she was known as Istar, the evening
star. She had been one of those Sumerian goddesses who, in accordance
with the Sumerian system, which placed the mother at the head of the
family, were on an equal footing with the gods. She lay outside the
circle of Semitic theology with its divine family, over which the male
Baal presided, and the position she occupied in later Babylonian
religion was due to the fusion between the Sumerian and Semitic forms of
faith, which took place when the Semites became the chief element in
Babylonia. But Sumerian influence and memories were too strong to allow
of any transformation either in the name or in the att