position. Though at times brought into
close contact with Ashur she is not regarded as the mere consort to any
god--no mere reflection of a male deity, but ruling in her own right on a
perfect par with the great gods of the pantheon. She is coequal in rank
and splendor with Ashur. Her name becomes synonymous for goddess as Marduk
becomes the synonym for god. The female deities, both foreign and native,
came to be regarded as so many forms of Ishtar."

A curious fact connected with Ishtar, which proves that she had developed
from an original divinity, conceived as dual or bi-sexual, is that among
Semites Ishtar appears both as a male and female deity. This seems to show
that at a certain stage of thought Ishtar was also a centralization of
attributes, a fact which undoubtedly explains the supreme position
accorded to this divinity at one time as the feminine form of Polaris. The
most striking illustration of this supremacy is furnished by the famous
bas-relief figured by Layard ("Ninive and its remains" I, 238), which
represents Ishtar, the mother-goddess, the female form of Assur, as seated
on a throne which is borne on the back of a lion in the procession formed
by the seven chief divinities of the Assyrian pantheon, six of whom are
figured as bearded men standing on different animals. On the fine stela of
Esarhaddon, discovered by Dr. von Luschan at Sendschirli, the goddess,
accompanied in this case by three standing gods, is likewise represented
as seated on a throne holding a large ring or circle in her left hand.

The fact that the "All-mother, the female creator of mankind," is
represented as the only occupant of the throne, reveals a distinct phase
in the evolution of the Babylonian state religion, which curiously concurs
with the supremacy of female sovereignty at Babylon, at the period of its
greatest power under Semiramis. It may be safely assumed that it was at
this time, when the queen represented the goddess, that the cult of the
female principle of nature reached its highest development.

At Nippur the clay images chiefly represent Bel and Belit either
separately or in combination, but figurines of Ishtar have also been
found, in some cases representing her as nursing a child (Jastrow, _op.
cit._ p. 674). It is probable that the symbols of duality connected with
Ishtar had some reference to the mystic unity and duality of the mother
and unborn child, and suggested the installation of the goddess as the
m