As to the first point. The Second Targum (on Esth. ii. 7) long ago declared that Esther was so called "because she was like the planet Venus." Recent scholars have expressed the same idea more critically. Esther is a modification of Ishtar, the name of the Babylonian goddess of fertility and of the planet Venus, whose myth must have been partially known to the Israelites even in pre-exilic times,[3] and after the fall of the state must have acquired a still stronger hold on Jewish exiles. A general knowledge of the myth of Marduk among the Israelites cannot indeed be proved. Singularly enough, the Babylonian colonists in the cities of Samaria are said to have made idols, not of Marduk, but of a deity called Succoth-benoth[4] (2 Kings xvii. 30). Nor does the Second Targum help us here; it gives a wild explanation of Mordecai as "pure myrrh." Still it is plain that the name of the god Marduk (Merodach) was known to the Jews, and the Cosmogony in Gen. i. is considered by critics to have ultimately arisen out of the myth of Marduk's conflict with the dragon (see COSMOGONY). At any rate the name Mordecai (the vocalization is uncertain) looks very much like Marduk, which, with terminations added, often occurs in cuneiform documents as a personal name.[5] Add to this, that, according to Jensen, Ishtar in mythology was the cousin of Marduk, just as the legend represents Esther as the cousin of Mordecai.[6] The same scholar also accounts for Esther's other name Hadassah (Esth. ii. 7); _hadasshatu_ in Babylonian means "bride," which may have been a title of Ishtar. But we cannot stop short here. Unless the mythological key can also explain Haman and Vashti, it is of no use. Jensen, now followed by Zimmern, is equal to the occasion. Haman, he says, is a corruption of Hamman or Humman or Uman, the name of the chief deity of the Elamites, in whose capital (Susa) the scene of the narrative is laid, while Vashti is Mashti (or Vashti), probably the name of an Elamite goddess. Following the real or fancied light of these names, Prof. Jensen holds that the Esther-legend is based on a mythological account of the victory of the Babylonian deities over those of Elam, which in plain prose means the deliverance of ancient Babylonia from its Elamite oppressors, and that such an account was closely connected with the Babylonian New Year's festival, called Zagmuk, just as the Esther-legend is connected with the festival of Purim.