+762+. These names appear to be titles signifying 'mistress,' 'lady,' and this is probably the meaning of the name of the great goddess who finally ousted or absorbed her sisters, Ishtar.[1307] In the earliest form in which Ishtar appears, in the old poetry, she is the deity of fertility; when she goes down to the Underworld all productiveness of plants and men ceases; and her primitive character at this time appears in the account of her marriages with animals, in which there is to be recognized the trace of the old zoölatrous period; but as patron of fertility she becomes in time a great goddess and takes on universal attributes--she is the mother of gods and men, universal protector and guide. Where war was the chief pursuit she became a goddess of war; in this character she appears in Babylonia as early as the time of Hammurabi, and later in Assyria. In the genealogical constructions she was brought into connection, as daughter, wife, or other relation, with any god that the particular conditions suggested. As the Assyrians grew morally she was endowed with all the highest virtues (so in the Penitential Psalms), and occupied so preëminent a position that under favorable circumstances she might perhaps have become the only god of the land. +763+. If her name signified originally 'lord' or 'lady,' the occurrence of several Ishtars in Assyria (particularly Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbela) is easily understood; so in Canaan, as we learn from the Old Testament, there was a great number of local Ashtarts.[1308] We can thus also explain the male deities Ashtar in Moab and Athtar in South Arabia.[1309] None of these, however, attained the eminence of the Babylonian and Assyrian Ishtar; her supremacy in Mesopotamia was due doubtless in part to the political importance of the cities that adopted her. She had her rivals, as we have seen, in Marduk and Ashur and others; and that she was able to maintain herself is to be ascribed in some measure to the importance attached by her worshipers to the fertilizing power of nature.