owers, embodiments of the productive energies of
nature; they are generally treated as persons, without special reference
to bodily parts. The most definite formulation of this conception
appears in Caktism, the worship of the female principle in nature as
represented by various goddesses, often accompanied, naturally, by
licentious rites.[739]

+407+. _Androgynous deities_ represent attempts to combine in a single
person the two sides of the productive power of nature. Such attempts
are relatively late, implying a considerable degree of reflection and
organization; how early they began we have not the data to determine.
They are not found among savage or half-civilized peoples.

+408+. In Semitic lands no artistic representations of a bisexual deity
are now known, but evidence is adduced to show that this conception
existed in early times. It has been sought in two old Babylonian
inscriptions published by the British Museum.[740] The first of these
(written in Sumerian) reads: "For [or, in honor of] the (divine) king of
countries, the (divine) Nana [Ishtar], the lady Nana, Lugaltarsi, king
of Kish, has constructed," etc. Barton takes the two titles "the divine
Ishtar" (='king of countries,' masculine) and "the lady Ishtar" to refer
to the same deity, in whose person would thus be united male and female
beings. If, however, the king of countries and Ishtar be taken to be two
different deities (as is possible), there is no bisexuality. The second
inscription, which is bilingual, has the expressions "the mother-father
Enlil," "the mother-father Ninlil" (Sumerian), rendered in Semitic "the
father-mother Enlil," "the father-mother Ninlil." These expressions
probably signify not that the two deities are bisexual, but that each of
them fulfills the guarding and nourishing functions of a father and a
mother.

The expression in a hymn to Ishtar that "she has a beard like the god
Ashur" may be satisfactorily explained as an astrological statement, the
meaning of which is that the planet Dilbat (Ishtar, Venus) at certain
times equals the sun (represented by Ashur) in brilliancy, her rays
being likened to a beard.[741] A similar astrological interpretation is
offered by Jastrow of a passage (to which attention was called by
Francois Lenormant) in which a female Dilbat and a male Dilbat are
spoken of. Other astrological texts indicate that the terms 'male' and
'female' are employed as expressions of greater or less brilliancy.[74