Among the mixed population of Babylonia, with its mixed culture and language and religion, the character and position of Istar underwent but little change. But when the conquerors of Sargon of Akkad and his predecessors carried the civilization of Babylonia to the West, Istar assumed a new form. Among the Canaanites she became Ashtoreth with the feminine termination, and was identified with the Moon, the consort and reflection, as it were, of Baal the Sun-god. But even so, the existence, of an independent goddess by the side of Baal seemed strange to the Semitic imagination, and among the Semites of Southern Arabia she was transformed into a male god, while the Moabites made her one with the god Chemosh. Even among the learned classes of Semitic Babylonia it was whispered that she was of both sexes, a goddess when imaged in the evening star, a god when visible in the star of the morning. Closely connected with the worship of Istar was that of Tammuz. Tammuz among the Sumerians appears to have been the “spirit” of the rivulets and waters of spring, and his name signified literally “the son of life” or “of the spirit.” But among the Semites he became the young and beautiful shepherd, the beloved of Istar, slain by the boar’s tusk of winter, or, as others held, of the parching heats of the summer. He symbolized the fresh vegetation of the spring and the Sun-god who called it forth. Once each year, in the sultry heats of June, the women wept and tore their hair in memory of his untimely death, and Istar, it was said, had descended into Hades in the vain hope of bringing him back to life. One of the most famous of Babylonian poems was that which told of the descent of Istar through the seven gates of the underground world, and which was chanted at the annual commemoration of his death. At each gate, it is said, the goddess left behind her some one of her adornments, until at last she arrived stripped and naked before the throne of the goddess of the infernal world. The poem was composed at a time when astronomical conceptions had laid hold of the old mythology, and the poet has interwoven the story of the waning and waxing of the moon into the ancient tale. The world was generally believed to have originated out of a watery chaos, and to float, as it were, upon the deep. This belief was derived from Eridu, where it was also taught that the deep surrounded the earth like the coils of a serpent.