d by a name which was not
derived from that of her husband, but she was not animated by a more
intense vitality than Anat or Belit: she was called Damkina, the lady
of the soil, and she personified in an almost passive manner the earth
united to the water which fertilized it. The goddesses of the second
triad were perhaps rather less artificial in their functions. Ningal,
doubtless, who ruled along with Sin at Uru, was little more than an
incarnate epithet. Her name means "the great lady," "the queen," and her
person is the double of that of her husband; as he is the man-moon, she
is the woman-moon, his beloved, and the mother of his children Shamash
and Ishtar. But A or Sirrida enjoyed an indisputable authority alongside
Shamash: she never lost sight of the fact that she had been a sun like
Shamash, a disk-god before she was transformed into a goddess. Shamash,
moreover, was surrounded by an actual harem, of which Sirrida was the
acknowledged queen, as he himself was its king, and among its members
Gula, the great, and Anunit, the daughter of Sin, the morning star,
found a place. Shala, the compassionate, was also included among them;
she was subsequently bestowed upon Ramman. They were all goddesses of
ancient lineage, and each had been previously worshipped on her own
account when the Sumerian people held sway in Chaldaea: as soon as the
Semites gained the upper hand, the powers of these female deities became
enfeebled, and they were distributed among the gods. There was but one
of them, Nana, the doublet of Ishtar, who had succeeded in preserving
her liberty: when her companions had been reduced to comparative
insignificance, she was still acknowledged as queen and mistress in her
city of Eridu. The others, notwithstanding the enervating influence
to which they were usually subject in the harem, experienced at times
inclinations to break into rebellion, and more than one of them, shaking
off the yoke of her lord, had proclaimed her independence: Anunit, for
instance, tearing herself away from the arms of Shamash, had vindicated,
as his sister and his equal, her claim to the half of his dominion.
Sippara was a double city, or rather there were two neighbouring
Sipparas, one distinguished as the city of the Sun, "Sippara sha
Shamash," while the other gave lustre to Anunit in assuming the
designation of "Sippara sha Anunitum." Rightly interpreted, these family
arrangements of the gods had but one reason for their existen