), pp. 56-66.

[Illustration: 190.jpg ISHTAR AS A WARRIOR-GODDESS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Menant's
_Recherches sur la Glyptique orientale_.

In Southern Chaldaea she was worshipped under the name of Nana,
the supreme mistress.* The identity of this lady of the gods,
"Belit-ilanit," the Evening Star, with Anunit, the Morning Star, was
at first ignored, and hence two distinct goddesses were formed from the
twofold manifestation of a single deity: having at length discovered
their error, the Chaldaeans merged these two beings in one, and their
names became merely two different designations for the same star under a
twofold aspect. The double character, however, which had been attributed
to them continued to be attached to the single personality.

* With regard to Nana, consult, with reserve, Fk. Lenormant,
Essai de Commentaire de Berose, pp. 100-103, 378, 379, where
the identity of Ishtar and Nana is still unrecognized.

[Illustration: 191.jpg NEBO]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian statue in alabaster
in the British Museum.

The Evening Star had symbolized the goddess of love, who attracted
the sexes towards one another, and bound them together by the chain
of desire; the Morning Star, on the other hand, was regarded as the
cold-blooded and cruel warrior who despised the pleasures of love and
rejoiced in warfare: Ishtar thus combined in her person chastity and
lasciviousness, kindness and ferocity, and a peaceful and warlike
disposition, but this incongruity in her characteristics did not seem
to disconcert the devotion of her worshippers. The three other planets
would have had a wretched part to play in comparison with Nebo and
Ishtar, if they had not been placed under new patronage. The secondary
solar gods, Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal, led, if we examine their role
carefully, but an incomplete existence: they were merely portions of the
sun, while Shamash represented the entire orb. What became of them apart
from the moment in the day and year in which they were actively engaged
in their career? Where did they spend their nights, the hours during
which Shamash had retired into the firmament, and lay hidden behind the
mountains of the north? As in Egypt the Horuses identified at first with
the sun became at length the rulers of the planets, so in Chaldaea
the three suns of Ninib, Merodach, and Nergal became respectively
assimilated to Saturn, Ju