ddess whom the Egyptians sometimes
identified with their Hathor, and whom they represented as
crowned with a crescent.

** Gad, the goddess of fortune, is mainly known to us in
connection with the Aramaeans; we find mention made of her by
the Hebrew writers, and geographical names, such as Baal-Gad
and Migdol-Gad, prove that she must have been worshipped at
a very early date in the Canaanite countries.

*** Anat, or Anaiti, or Aniti, has been found in a
Phoenician inscription, which enables us to reconstruct the
history of the goddess. Her worship was largely practised
among the Canaanites, as is proved by the existence in the
Hebrew epoch of several towns, such as Beth-Anath, Beth-
Anoth, Anathoth; at least one of which, Bit-Aniti, is
mentioned in the Egyptian geographical lists. The appearance
of Anat-Aniti is known to us, as she is represented in
Egyptian dress on several stelae of the XIXth and XXth
dynasties. Her name, like that of Astarte, had become a
generic term, in the plural form Anathoth, for a whole group
of goddesses.

**** Asiti is represented at Radesieh, on a stele of the
time of Seti I.; she enters into the composition of a
compound name, _Asitiiakhuru_ (perhaps "the goddess of Asiti
is enflamed with anger "), which we find on a monument in
the Vienna Museum. W. Max Mueller makes her out to have been
a divinity of the desert, and the place in which the picture
representing her was found would seem to justify this
hypothesis; the Egyptians connected her, as well as the
other Astartes, with Sit-Typhon, owing to her cruel and
warlike character.

[Illustration: 231.jpg Page Image]

The statues sometimes represent her as a sphinx with a woman's head,
but more often as a woman standing on a lion passant, either nude,
or encircled round the hips by merely a girdle, her hands filled
with flowers or with serpents, her features framed in a mass of heavy
tresses--a faithful type of the priestesses who devoted themselves to
her service, the _Qedeshot_. She was the goddess of love in its animal,
or rather in its purely physical, aspect, and in this capacity was
styled Qaddishat the Holy, like the hetairae of her family; Qodshu,
the Amorite capital, was consecrated to her service, and she was there
associated with Rashuf, the thunder-god.*

* Qaddishat is kno