We are thus brought to a curious part of the story, the romance of Izdubar and Istar. One of the strange and dark features of the Babylonian religion was the Istar or Venus worship, which was an adoration of the reproductive power of nature, accompanied by ceremonies which were a reproach to the country. The city of Erech, originally a seat of the worship of Anu, was now one of the foremost cities in this Istar worship. Tammuz, the young and beautiful Sun-god, the dead bridegroom of Istar, seems to be also spoken of as the brother of her handmaid Kharimat. This explains, as M. Lenormant has pointed out, the passage in Jeremiah xxii. 18, which preserves a portion of the wailing cry uttered by the worshippers of Tammuz or Adonis when celebrating his untimely death. This should be rendered: “Ah me, my brother, and ah me, my sister! Ah me, Adonis, and ah me, his lady!” Reference is made to the worship of Tammuz, which was carried on within the Temple itself at Jerusalem, in Ezek. viii. 14, Amos viii. 10, (where we should translate “as at the mourning for the only son” Tammuz), and Zech. xii. 10, 11. Tammuz is the Semitic form of the Accadian Dumuzi which signified in that language “the only son.” [Illustration: BOWAREYEH MOUND AT WARKA (ERECH), SITE OF THE TEMPLE OF ISTAR.] The struggle with a bull on the part of Izdubar and Hea-bani, represented on the Babylonian cylinder figured on the next page, and numerous similar representations, refer to the struggle with the bull created by Anu to avenge the slight offered to Istar. It would appear from the broken fragments of Column IV. that Hea-bani laid hold of the bull by the head and tail while Izdubar killed it, and Hea-bani in the engraving is represented holding the bull by its head and tail. At the close of the sixth tablet the story is again lost, only portions of the third and fourth columns of the next tablet being preserved, but light is thrown on this portion of the narrative by the remarkable tablet describing the descent of Istar into Hades. It is possible that this tablet formed an episode in the sixth tablet of the Izdubar legends. [Illustration: IZDUBAR AND HEA-BANI IN CONFLICT WITH THE LION AND BULL.] This tablet containing the descent of Istar into Hades was first noticed by Mr. Fox Talbot in the “Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature,” but his attempt at a translation was a failure. Mr. Smith subsequently published a short notice of it in the “North British Review,” and afterwards a translation of it in the “Daily Telegraph.” Prof. Schrader brought out a monograph upon it in 1874, and both M. Lenormant and Dr. Oppert have worked at it. The most recent translation is one made into Italian by M. Lenormant in a publication entitled “Il mito di Adone-Tammuz,” 1879, upon the basis of the one made by Dr. Oppert.