Graeco-Roman world; such at times was Athena for the Athenians; such is the Virgin for Mediterranean Christendom. Or the goddess may be more merciless than any god, more delighting in bloodshed, more savage in resisting progress: such often was Artemis for the Greeks, such is Kala at this moment in India, a dangerous and living force that threatens our rule. Again, the goddess may encourage purity in the sexual relations; this was the potential value of the ideal of Artemis in Greece, and perhaps the actual value of Mariolatry in the Middle Ages. Or the goddess-cult may be the source of what to us appears gross licentiousness, as was the case in Babylon and some parts of Asia Minor. This discordance in the character of goddess-cults may reflect the diversity of the masculine feeling towards women, and also to some extent the position of women at different stages of culture in the family and in the State. The whole subject has many fascinating aspects, which relevance prevents me presenting in detail. I have considered elsewhere the sociologic questions involved in goddess-cult;[82.1] and I must limit my attention here to its value as ethnic evidence. In Mesopotamia the phenomenon presents itself at the very earliest period of which we have record. The {83} monument already described[83.1] on which the goddess Nini is presenting captives to the King Annabanini, attests the prevalence of goddess-cult in the third millennium; and Tiele supposes--without, I think, sufficient evidence--that it was stronger in the Sumerian than in the Semitic period. At all events, the conquering Semites may have found the cult of goddesses well developed in the land; and in all probability they brought at least one of their own with them, namely, Ishtar, whose name has its phonetic equivalents in Semitic Anatolia. Also at least by the second millennium B.C., the Babylonian pantheon was organised after the type of the human family to this extent, that each male divinity has his female consort; and it would not help us now to consider the theorem put out by Jeremias and others that the various Babylonian goddesses are all emanations and varieties of one original All-mother. Only the mighty Ishtar remains for the most part aloof from the marriage system, and her power transcends that of the other goddesses. Originally the chief goddess of the Sumerian Erech, she was raised by the Assyrians to the highest position next to their national god Asshur;[83.2] and for them she is the great divinity of war, who, armed with bow, quiver, and sword, orders the battle-ranks. In a famous hymn,[83.3] perhaps the most fervent and moving of all the Babylonian collection, she seems exalted to a supreme place above all other divinities; another[83.4] displays the same ecstasy in adoration of the goddess Belit, imputing omnipotence to her, as one to whom the very gods offer prayers. The same idea may be expressed in a difficult {84} phrase in a hymn to Nebo[84.1] which contains his