The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

314 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

similarly demanded the service of its daughters.
It was the same in Canaan as at Erech. Did the rites, and the
beliefs on which the rites were based, migrate from Babylonia to
the West along with Babylonian culture, or were they a common
Semitic heritage in which Erech and Phœnicia shared alike? It
is difficult to give a precise answer to the question. On the one
hand, we know that the Ashtoreth of Canaan was of Babylonian
birth, and that in days far remote the theology of the Canaanite
was profoundly influenced by that of Babylonia; on the other
hand, the rites with which Istar was worshipped were confined
in Babylonia to Erech; it was there only that her“handmaids”
and eunuch-priests were organised into communities, and that
unspeakable abominations were practised in her name. The Istar
who was adored elsewhere was a chaste and passionless goddess,
the mother of her people whom she had begotten, or their stern
leader in war. It does not seem likely that a cult which was unable
to spread in Babylonia or Assyria should nevertheless have taken
deep root in Phœnicia, had there not already been there a soil
prepared to receive it. Erech was essentially a Semitic city; its
supreme god Anu had all the features of the Semitic Baal,“the
lord of heaven”; and its goddess Istar, Sumerian though she may
have been in origin, like Anu himself, had clothed herself in a
Semitic dress.
Moreover, there was another side to the worship of Istar which
bears indirect testimony to the Semitic origin of her cult at Erech.
By the side of the Istar of the official faith there was another Istar,
who presided over magic and witchcraft. Her priestesses were
[343] the witches who plied their unholy calling under the shadow of
night, and mixed the poisonous philtres which drained away the
strength of their hapless victims. The black Istar, as we may call
her, was a parody of the goddess of love; and the rites with which
she was adored, and the ministers by whom she was served, were
equally parodies of the cult that was carried on at Erech. But
the black Istar was not only a parody of the goddess of the State