*** Anat, or Anaiti, or Aniti, has been found in a Phoenician inscription, which enables us to reconstruct the history of the goddess. Her worship was largely practised among the Canaanites, as is proved by the existence in the Hebrew epoch of several towns, such as Beth-Anath, Beth- Anoth, Anathoth; at least one of which, Bit-Aniti, is mentioned in the Egyptian geographical lists. The appearance of Anat-Aniti is known to us, as she is represented in Egyptian dress on several stelae of the XIXth and XXth dynasties. Her name, like that of Astarte, had become a generic term, in the plural form Anathoth, for a whole group of goddesses. **** Asiti is represented at Radesieh, on a stele of the time of Seti I.; she enters into the composition of a compound name, _Asitiiakhuru_ (perhaps "the goddess of Asiti is enflamed with anger "), which we find on a monument in the Vienna Museum. W. Max Mueller makes her out to have been a divinity of the desert, and the place in which the picture representing her was found would seem to justify this hypothesis; the Egyptians connected her, as well as the other Astartes, with Sit-Typhon, owing to her cruel and warlike character. [Illustration: 231.jpg Page Image] The statues sometimes represent her as a sphinx with a woman's head, but more often as a woman standing on a lion passant, either nude, or encircled round the hips by merely a girdle, her hands filled with flowers or with serpents, her features framed in a mass of heavy tresses--a faithful type of the priestesses who devoted themselves to her service, the _Qedeshot_. She was the goddess of love in its animal, or rather in its purely physical, aspect, and in this capacity was styled Qaddishat the Holy, like the hetairae of her family; Qodshu, the Amorite capital, was consecrated to her service, and she was there associated with Rashuf, the thunder-god.* * Qaddishat is know to us from the Egyptian monuments referred to above. The name was sometimes written Qodshu, like that of the town: E. de Bouge argued from this that Qaddishat must have been the eponymous divinity of Qodshu, and that her real name was Kashit or Kesh; he recalls, however, the _role_ played by the Qedeshoth, and admits that "the Holy here means the prostitute."