These indications all agree with the impression that Greek tradition and the Hittite monuments have already left upon our minds. The worship of the Mother-Goddess, to which we have alluded, would seem, indeed, to have been paramount throughout the Hittite lands, from Carchemish to Ephesus, from Kadesh to the coast of the Black Sea. Originally a nature cult, derivable from the productivity of the earth, this had now taken divine form with the quality of self-reproduction, to develop later into the conception of a universal mother. Though this worship was general throughout western Asia, its introduction into Asia Minor is traceable to the Hittites, upon whose monuments its symbolism appears earlier than it is known elsewhere, notably at Boghaz-Keui,[832] Eyuk,[833] Fraktin,[834] and on Sipylus.[835] We do not wish to imply a local development of the cult, though that may be admitted as a possibility when we consider the simple and general nature of its origins, and the power of the human mind then as now to attain in a few years the standpoint reached only by generations of ancestral experiences, and thereon to build up new conceptions, to be transmitted in like manner together with those inherited. Yet on the fertile plains of Babylonia the seasonal productivity of nature was more conspicuous and almost spontaneous; there indeed, as it seems, man was earlier able to give up his wandering life and settle, noting with satisfaction and gratitude that earth and sunshine with other elemental forces provided him with the means of living. Taking also the evidence as it stands, it would seem that the embodiment of these conceptions in divine form (under the name Istar) is earliest attributable to Babylonia; and from there consequently we are disposed to derive her when found in Asia Minor, whether by general contact, as is historically admissible, or introduced, as seems more probable, by some early migration of Hittite peoples that had already assimilated her to themselves.