In Babylonia, however, Istar was not so completely without a rival as she was in Assyria. There was another city of ancient fame which, like Erech, was under the protection of a goddess rather than of a god. This was one of the two Sipparas on the banks of the Euphrates, which is distinguished in the inscriptions from the Sippara of Samas as the Sippara of Anunit. The feminine termination of the name of Anunit indicates that here again we have a goddess who, in the form in which we know her, is essentially Semitic. But it is only in the form in which we know her that such is the case. The origin of Anunit goes back to Sumerian times. She was in the beginning merely an Anunna or “spirit” of the earth, as sexless as the other spirits of Sumerian belief, and lacking all the characteristics of a Semitic divinity.(266) It was not till Sippara became the seat of a Semitic empire that the Anunna or Sumerian “spirit” was transformed into Anunit the goddess. The transformation here was accompanied by the same outward change as that which turned the Babylonian Istar into the Ashtoreth of Canaan. For a time it seemed as though Anunit rather than Istar would become the supreme goddess of Semitic cult; but the political predominance of Sippara passed away with the fall of the empire of Sargon of Akkad, and historical conservatism alone preserved the name and influence of its goddess. As time went on, Anunit tended more and more to sink into the common herd of Babylonian goddesses, or to be identified with Istar. As long as the Sumerian element continued to be strong in the Babylonian people and their religion, Anunit retained the position which the mixture of the Semite and Sumerian had created for her; with the growing dominance of the Semitic spirit, her independence and individuality departed, and she became, like Beltis or Gula, merely the female complement of the god. Perhaps the process was hastened by the grammatical termination that had been added to her name.