In another
the worshipper tries to touch Ishtar's heart by crying, "Like the dove
I moan". A Sumerian psalmist makes a goddess (Gula, who presided over
Larak, a part of Isin) lament over the city after it was captured by
the enemy:

My temple E-aste, temple of Larak,
Larak the city which Bel Enlil gave,
Beneath are turned to strangeness, above are turned to
strangeness,
With wailings on the lyre my dwelling-place is surrendered to the
stranger,
_The dove cots they wickedly seized, the doves they entrapped_....
The ravens he (Enlil) caused to fly.[478]

Apparently there were temple and household doves in Babylonia. The
Egyptians had their household dovecots in ancient as in modern times.
Lane makes reference to the large pigeon houses in many villages. They
are of archaic pattern, "with the walls slightly inclining inwards
(like many of the ancient Egyptian buildings)", and are "constructed
upon the roofs of the huts with crude brick, pottery, and mud.... Each
pair of pigeons occupies a separate (earthen) pot."[479] It may be
that the dove bulked more prominently in domestic than in official
religion, and had a special seasonal significance. Ishtar appears to
have had a dove form. In the Gilgamesh epic she is said to have loved
the "brilliant Allalu bird" (the "bright-coloured wood pigeon",
according to Sayce), and to have afterwards wounded it by breaking its
wings.[480] She also loved the lion and the horse, and must therefore
have assumed the forms of these animals. The goddess Bau, "she whose
city is destroyed", laments in a Sumerian psalm:

Like a dove to its dwelling-place, how long to my dwelling-place
will they pursue me,
To my sanctuary ... the sacred place they pursue me....
My resting place, the brick walls of my city Isin, thou art
destroyed;
My sanctuary, shrine of my temple Galmah, thou art destroyed.

_Langdon's translation._

Here the goddess appears to be identified with the doves which rest on
the walls and make their nests in the shrine. The Sumerian poets did
not adorn their poems with meaningless picturesque imagery; their
images were stern facts; they had a magical or religious significance
like the imagery of magical incantations; the worshipper invoked the
deity by naming his or her various attributes, forms, &c.

Of special interest are the references in Sumerian psalms to the
ravens as well as the dov