It naturally happens in a religion of unstable anthropomorphism that the different personalities are unfixed and may melt away one into the other, or may become conceived as metaphysical emanations, thus losing concrete individuality. As Dr. Langdon remarks of Babylonian religious phraseology, “the god himself becomes mystified, he retires into the hazy conception of an all-pervading spirit, and his _word_ becomes the active agent.”[56.3] Thus even the strongly personal goddess “Nana” is identified with the word of Enlil; she herself exclaims, “Of the Lord his word am I.” His statement accords with the general impression that the liturgies and monuments of this vast and complex religion make upon the student. One discerns that the religious art, and to some extent the religious poetry, developed {57} and strengthened the anthropomorphic faith and perception of the people, but not so powerfully as to preclude a mysticising tendency towards metaphysical speculation that transcended the limits of a polytheism of concrete personalities. Even Allatu, the goddess of Hell, she who was presented with the dog’s head and the lions at the breast, was half spiritualised by the epithet which is rendered “spirit-wind of the consecrate.”[57.1] In the other ancient Semitic communities we find the same phenomenon, a prevailing anthropomorphism with some slight admixture of theriomorphic idea. At Bambyke, the later Hierapolis, we have the record and tradition of Atargatis-Derketo, of human and fish-form combined. In the cult of Esmun in Phoenicia, Baudissin[57.2] suspects the incarnation of the god in a snake, which brought about his later identification with Asklepios, and he suggests that the bronze serpent that healed the Israelites in the desert was borrowed from a Canaanite idol of a healing snake. The Astarte-images found in prehistoric Palestine are mainly of human type, but one gives her the curving horns of a ram, and a rude bronze was found at Tel Zakariya of an amphibious goddess with human head and the tail of a fish.[57.3] Something real underlies the statement of Sanchuniathon, quoted by Eusebios, {58} that Astarte placed on her own head the head of a bull.[58.1] But these are exceptional phenomena; and as the Hellenes in the later period were usually able to identify the leading Semitic deities with their own, we may see in this another proof that the Western and Eastern religions were nearly on the same plane as regards their perception of divine personality.