THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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Baal, or Bel, was also an important character, and indeed, according to Dr. Oppert, all of the Phoenician gods were included under the general name of Baal, and human sacrifices were often made upon their blood-stained altars. Baal had a magnificent temple in Tyre, which was founded by Hiram, the King of Tyre. Not only human sacrifices, but also the grossest sensuality characterized the worship of Baal.

Tammuz is another form of the sun-god who is represented as being slain by the boar’s tusk of winter. June is the month of Tammuz, and his festival began by the cutting of the sacred fir-tree in which the god had hidden himself. Tammuz is the proper Syriac name for Adonis of the Greeks, and doubtless Adonis is merely a later form of the same myth.

Ishtar, the goddess who is sometimes called Astarte, was the most important female deity in this early pantheon. The Persian form of the word is Astara. In Phoenician it is Ashtaroth, and it is said that all the Phoenician goddesses were included under this general term. Another form of the name afterward appeared in Greek mythology as Asteria, and it was applied to the beautiful goddess who fled from the suit of Jove, and, flinging herself down from Heaven into the sea, became the island afterward named Delos.

Ishtar of Arbela was the goddess of war, the “ Lady of Battles.” She was the daughter of Anü, whose messengers were the “ Seven Evil Spirits,” and she was the favorite goddess of King Assur-bani-pal, who claims that he received his bow from her. Her image, according to Pliny, was of solid gold, and her high priest was second only to the king himself.

The character of Ishtar is apparently a prototype not only of Hecate, but also of Medea, whose chariot was drawn by winged serpents, and the caldron or pot which Ishtar filled with her magic herbs suggests the statement of Ovid that Medea on one occasion spent no less than nine days and nights in collecting herbs for her caldron.

The character of Ishtar may also have suggested that of Circe, who

“ Mixed the potion, fraudulent of soul,

The poison mantled in a golden bowl.”

And she loved Ulysses as Ishtar loved Izdubar, even though she had transformed all his companions into swine.

In Column II. of the tablet under consideration we find the story of the king whom Ishtar changed into a leopard, “and his own dogs bit him to pieces.” No one can doubt that, we see here the original of the Greek fable of Actaeon, the hero who offended the goddess Diana, when she revenged herself by changing him into a deer, and his dogs no longer knowing their master, fell upon him and tore him to pieces.

Ishtar of Nineveh, who is identified with Beltis, the wife of Baal, became the goddess of love. She is the prototype of Freyja, the weeping goddess of love among the Northmen, and the Aphrodite of the Greeks—the beautiful nymph who sprang from the soft foam of the sea and was received in a land of flowers by the gold-filleted seasons, who clothed her in garments immortal. Her chariot was drawn by milk-white swans, and her garlands were of rose and myrtle. Ishtar of Nineveh appears as the imperious queen of love and beauty, and was undoubtedly the original of the Latin Venus. Indeed, Anthon says: “There is none of the Olympians of whom the foreign origin is so probable as this goddess, and she is generally regarded as being the same with Astarte or Ashtaroth of the Phoenicians.” We find upon the tablets a beautiful legend concerning her visit to Hades. She went in search of her husband Tammuz, as Orpheus was afterward represented as going to recover Eurydice, when the music of his golden shell stopped the wheel of Ixion, and made Tantalus forget his thirst.

It was doubtless through the Phoenicians that this legend reached Greece, and was there reproduced in a form almost identical with the fable of the tablets. Adonis, the sun-god, who was the hero of the Greek fable, was killed by the tusk of the wild boar, even as Tammuz, the sun-god of Assyria, was slain by the boar’s tusk of winter. Venus, the queen of love and beauty, was inconsolable at his loss, and at last obtained

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