Ishtar of Nineveh appears as the imperious queen of love and beauty, and was undoubtedly the original of the Latin Venus. Indeed, Anthon says, “There is none of the Olympians of whom the foreign origin is so probable as this goddess, and she is generally regarded as being the same with the Astarte (Ashtaroth) of the Phœnicians.”[106] We find upon the tablets a beautiful legend concerning her visit to Hades. She went in search of her husband Tammuz, as Orpheus was afterward represented as going to recover his wife, when the music from his golden shell stopped the wheel of Ixion, and made Tantalus forget his thirst. So also Hermöd, the son of Odin, in the mythology of the Northmen rode to Hel upon the fleet-footed Sleipnir in order to rescue his brother Balder. It was doubtless through the Phœnicians that this legend reached the Greeks, and was there reproduced in a form almost identical with the fable of the tablets. Adonis, the sun-god, who was the hero, was killed by the tusk of a wild boar, even as Tammuz, the sun-god of Assyria, was slain by the boar’s tusk of winter. Venus, the queen of love and beauty, was inconsolable at his loss, and at last obtained from Proserpina, the queen of hades, permission for Adonis to spend every alternate six months with her upon the earth, while the rest of the time should be passed in hades. Thus also the Osiris of the Egyptians was supposed to be dead or absent forty days in each year, during which time the people lamented his loss, as the Syrians did that of Tammuz, as the Greeks did that of Adonis, and as also the Northmen mourned for Frey. Ishtar is represented as going down to the regions of darkness wearing rings and jewels, with a diadem and girdle set with precious stones, and this fact would seem to indicate that the ancient city, which afterward came under the rule of Persian kings, was the home of the idea that whatever was buried with the dead would go with them to the other shore. Hence India, for ages, burned the favorite wives, with the dead bodies of her rajas, while other tribes placed living women in the graves of their chiefs, and our own Indians provide dogs and weapons for the use of their braves when they reach the “happy hunting grounds.” We give the following legend complete, as it is found upon the tablets: THE DESCENT OF ISHTAR. COLUMN I. “1. To the land of Hades, the region of her desire, 2. Ishtar, daughter of the moon-god Sin, turned her mind. 3. And the daughter of Sin fixed her mind (to go there). 4. To the house where all meet, the dwelling of the god Irkalla, 5. to the house men enter but cannot depart from, 6. to the road men go but cannot return, 7. the abode of darkness and famine, 8. where the earth is their food; their nourishment clay; 9. light is not seen; in darkness they dwell; 10. ghosts like birds flutter their wings there,