ia. She was supposed to have been defeated
in the Punjab. After suffering this disaster she died, or abdicated
the throne in favour of her son Ninyas. The most archaic form of the
legend appears to be that she was turned into a dove and took flight
to heaven in that form. After her death she was worshipped as a dove
goddess like "Our Lady of Trees and Doves" in Cyprus, whose shrine at
old Paphos was founded, Herodotus says, by Phoenician colonists from
Askalon.[474] Fish and doves were sacred to Derceto (Attar),[475] who
had a mermaid form. "I have beheld", says Lucian, "the image of
Derceto in Phoenicia. A marvellous spectacle it is. One half is a
woman, but the part which extends from thighs to feet terminates with
the tail of a fish."[476]

Derceto was supposed to have been a woman who threw herself in despair
into a lake. After death she was adored as a goddess and her
worshippers abstained from eating fish, except sacrificially. A golden
image of a fish was suspended in her temple. Atargatis, who was
identical with Derceto, was reputed in another form of the legend to
have been born of an egg which the sacred fishes found in the
Euphrates and thrust ashore (p. 28). The Greek Aphrodite was born of
the froth of the sea and floated in a sea-shell. According to Hesiod,

The wafting waves
First bore her to Cythera the divine:
To wave-encircled Cyprus came she then,
And forth emerged, a goddess, in the charms
Of awful beauty. Where her delicate feet
Had pressed the sands, green herbage flowering sprang.
Her Aphrodite gods and mortals name,
The foam-born goddess; and her name is known
As Cytherea with the blooming wreath,
For that she touched Cythera's flowery coast;
And Cypris, for that on the Cyprian shore
She rose, amid the multitude of waves. _Elton's translation_.

The animals sacred to Aphrodite included the sparrow, the dove, the
swan, the swallow, and the wryneck.[477] She presided over the month
of April, and the myrtle, rose, poppy, and apple were sacred to her.

Some writers connect Semiramis, in her character as a dove goddess,
with Media and the old Persian mother goddess Anaitis, and regard as
arbitrary her identification with the fish goddess Derceto or
Atargatis. The dove was certainly not a popular bird in the religious
art of Babylonia and Assyria, but in one of the hymns translated by
Professor Pinches Ishtar says, "Like a lonely dove I rest".