+Images and Symbols.+--Thutmose III. relates that he carried off from Megiddo and the Lebanon a silver statue in beaten work; also some object [words are lost] with a head of gold, {29} the staff having human faces, and a royal image of ebony wrought with gold, the head of which was adorned with lapis lazuli. Although no sacred statues of Ancient Palestine have as yet come to light--if they escaped the zeal of later iconoclasts--it would seem that they were of no mean workmanship, and it may be inferred that they did not differ radically from the gods and goddesses whose outward appearance can be observed on the monuments of Western Asia. This inference is supported by the repeated discovery, in course of excavation, of representations of a goddess who was evidently the embodiment of life and fertility. A few figurines and numerous small 'Astarte-plaques,' with moulds for their manufacture, prove the prevalence of a mother-goddess and patroness of nature, essentially identical with that familiar in the old Oriental religions. The plaques, which are about 6 to 7 inches in length, offer a large variety of types from the coarsest exaggeration of sexuality to highly conventionalised forms. The goddess is generally nude, but a bronze figurine from Taanach gives her a conical head-dress and a thin robe reaching down to her ankles. The characteristic type at this city, however, depicts a striated crown, rings on neck and feet, and is {30} generally suggestive of Babylonian influence. Otherwise, when depicted with bracelets, necklace and lotus-flowers, she resembles the Egyptian Hathor; indeed she is often marked with the Egyptian uraeus. A specimen from Tell es-Sāfy curiously combines an Egyptianised form of the goddess with typical Babylonian five- and six-rayed stars. Yet a fourth variety with huge and disfiguring earrings finds its parallels in North Syria and Cyprus. The occurrence and combination of elements of different origin are instructive for the culture and religion of Palestine. This fourth type has sometimes a bird-like head, which recalls a curious example from Lachish with large ears and hooked nose or beak. A small bronze image of the goddess, which was found at Gezer, among broken lamps and pottery within the area of the pillars, gives her horns which coil downwards like those of a ram. It is through such development and modification that the horns of the great goddess could come to be regarded as the representation of a crescent moon when philosophical speculation busied itself with the heavenly bodies. The traces of animal attributes take another form in various rude and almost shapeless objects of bronze which have been interpreted, thanks to a more realistic {31} specimen from the Judæan Tell Zakariya, as models of an amphibious creature with human head and the tail of a fish. Here it is natural to see the famous Derceto or Atargatis, well known later as a deity of the Astarte type, and, as an