ip in this case indicates, primarily, the
supremacy exercised by Ur, and also a similarity in the traits of the
two deities. In the fully developed cosmology, Nana is the planet Venus,
whose various aspects, as morning and evening star, suggested an analogy
with the phases of the moon.

Venus, like the moon, served as a guide to man, while her inferiority in
size and importance to the former, would naturally come to be expressed
under the picture of father and daughter. In a certain sense, all the
planets appearing at the same time and in the same region with the moon
were the children of the latter. Sin, therefore, is appropriately called
the father of gods, just as Anu, the personification of the heaven
itself, is the supreme father of Sin and Shamash, and of all the
heavenly bodies. The metaphorical application of 'father' as 'source,'
throughout Oriental parlance, must be kept in mind in interpreting the
relationship between the gods. Still another name of the goddess is
Anunit, which appears to have been peculiar to the North Babylonian city
Agade, and emphasizes her descent from "Anu," the god of heaven. Her
temple at Agade, known as E-ul-mash, is the object of Sargon's devotion,
which makes her, with Bel and Shamash, the oldest triad of gods
mentioned in the Babylonian inscriptions. But the name which finally
displaces all others, is

Ishtar.

Where the name originated has not yet been ascertained, as little as its
etymology,[67] but it seems to belong to Northern Babylonia rather than
to the south.

In time, all the names that we have been considering--Innanna, Nana, and
Anunit--became merely so many designations of Ishtar. She absorbs the
titles and qualities of all, and the tendency which we have pointed out
finds its final outcome in the recognition of Ishtar as the one and only
goddess endowed with powers and an existence independent of association
with any male deity, though even this independence does not hinder her
from being named at times as the associate of the chief god of
Assyria--the all-powerful Ashur. The attempt has been made by Sayce and
others to divide the various names of Ishtar among the aspects of Venus
as morning and evening star, but there is no evidence to show that the
Babylonians distinguished the one from the other so sharply as to make
two goddesses of one and the same planet.

It is more in accord with what, as we have seen, has been the general
character of the Babylonian p