The Syrians did not remain content with combining the beneficent and destructive powers into one form only, into Baal-Melkarth and Astarte-Ashera. While searching for the unity of the divine powers and the divine nature, they also combined the male and female deities into one figure, and the creative and receptive powers were amalgamated in one and the same form. As the combination of mighty heroic power with luxurious sensuality is the practical ideal of the East, so in theory also the highest union of the powers of nature and divine being, the amalgamation of male and female is attained by the same combination. When Astarte had become Ashera, and had surrendered herself to the god, the god in turn surrendered himself to the goddess. He plied female tasks, she carried the weapons. But even their nature became one, their forms were combined. Astarte and the Baal placed at her side became one deity. The male deity of the Moabites was Camos. When Mesha, king of Moab, took Nebo from the Israelites, he dedicated it to Ashtor-Camos.[552] At Carthage Dido-Astarte was represented with the beard of Melkarth.[553] At Paphos there was a standing image of the bearded Aphrodite, which was worshipped as a great divinity. It is this unification which lies at the root of the legends of Heracles (Melkarth) and Omphale (perhaps, mother[554]), of Semiramis and Sardanapalus. At certain festivals of Baal the priests and worshippers of the androgynous deity appeared in red transparent female garments, and were otherwise dressed as women, while the women were dressed as men, and carried swords and lances.[555] The law of the Jews strictly forbids the erection of Astartes and pillars, the bringing of the hire of the harlot or the pay of the fornicator into the house of Jehovah, the tearing of the skin, or the cutting of the hair (which was customary among the Syrians in different ways as the symbol of the worship of certain deities), and insists that no eunuch shall come into the people of Jehovah, that no woman shall wear a man's clothes, and no man the clothes of a woman.[556]