The fusion in Babylonia of the peoples of the god and goddess cults was in progress before the dawn of history, as was the case in Egypt and also in southern Europe. In consequence independent Pantheons came into existence in the various city States in the Tigro-Euphrates valley. These were mainly a reflection of city politics: the deities of each influential section had to receive recognition. But among the great masses of the people ancient customs associated with agriculture continued in practice, and, as Babylonia depended for its prosperity on its harvests, the force of public opinion tended, it would appear, to perpetuate the religious beliefs of the earliest settlers, despite the efforts made by conquerors to exalt the deities they introduced. Babylonian religion was of twofold character. It embraced temple worship and private worship. The religion of the temple was the religion of the ruling class, and especially of the king, who was the guardian of the people. Domestic religion was conducted in homes, in reed huts, or in public places, and conserved the crudest superstitions surviving from the earliest times. The great "burnings" and the human sacrifices in Babylonia, referred to in the Bible, were, no doubt, connected with agricultural religion of the private order, as was also the ceremony of baking and offering cakes to the Queen of Heaven, condemned by Jeremiah, which obtained in the streets of Jerusalem and other cities. Domestic religion required no temples. There were no temples in Crete: the world was the "house" of the deity, who had seasonal haunts on hilltops, in groves, in caves, &c. In Egypt Herodotus witnessed festivals and processions which are not referred to in official inscriptions, although they were evidently practised from the earliest times. Agricultural religion in Egypt was concentrated in the cult of Osiris and Isis, and influenced all local theologies. In Babylonia these deities were represented by Tammuz and Ishtar. Ishtar, like Isis, absorbed many other local goddesses. According to the beliefs of the ancient agriculturists the goddess was eternal and undecaying. She was the Great Mother of the Universe and the source of the food supply. Her son, the corn god, became, as the Egyptians put it, "Husband of his Mother". Each year he was born anew and rapidly attained to manhood; then he was slain by a fierce rival who symbolized the season of pestilence-bringing and parching sun heat, or the rainy season, or wild beasts of prey. Or it might be that he was slain by his son, as Cronos was by Zeus and Dyaus by Indra. The new year slew the old year. The social customs of the people, which had a religious basis, were formed in accordance with the doings of the deities; they sorrowed or made glad in sympathy with the spirits of nature. Worshippers also suggested by their ceremonies how the deities should act at various seasons, and thus exercised, as they believed, a magical control over them.