Importance of the phenomenon in the history of religions--In Mesopotamia and other Semitic regions the chief deity male, except Astarte at Sidon--Evidence from Hittite kingdoms doubtful, but at points on the Asia-Minor coast, such as Ephesos, and notably in Phrygia, the supremacy of the goddess well attested--The same true on the whole of Cretan religion--The earliest Hellenes, like other Aryan communities, probably inclined to exalt the male deity, and did not develop the cult of Virgin goddesses--Therefore Athena and Artemis probably pre-Hellenic CHAPTER VI. The Deities as Nature-Powers. Shamash the sun-god derives his personal character from the nature-phenomenon; but the Babylonian deities develop their personality independently of their nature-origin, which is often doubtful--Importance of Sin, the moon-god--Star-worship in Babylonian cult--No clear recognition of an earth-goddess--Tammuz a vegetation-power--Western Canaanites worship nature-deities in the second millennium, probably with moral attributes--The Hittites a thunder-god and corn-god--The Phrygians a mother-goddess of the earth and lower world--On the whole, pre-Homeric Hellas worships ethical personalities rather than nature-powers--Distinguished from Mesopotamia by comparative insignificance of solar, lunar, astral cults--Also by the great prominence of the earth-goddess and the association of certain eschatological ideas with her {ix} CHAPTER VII. The Deities as Social-Powers. The religious origin of the city--Slight evidence from Mesopotamia, more from early Greece--Early Mesopotamian kingship of divine type--The king inspired and occasionally worshipped--The Hittite monuments show the divine associations of the king--Proto-Hellenic kingship probably of similar character--Social usages protected by religion in the whole of this area--No family cult of the hearth at Babylon--The code of Hammurabi--Comparatively secular in its enactments concerning homicide--Religious feeling perceptible in the laws concerning incest--The legal system attached to religion at certain points, but on the whole, independent of it--In early Hellas the religion an equally strong social force, but many of its social manifestations different--Religion tribal and “phratric” in Greece; not so in Babylon--Purification from bloodshed could not have been borrowed from Mesopotamia CHAPTER VIII. Religion and Morality.