i 2 8 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



and prolific dove as a type of the family concord and 

 productiveness she represented; and white doves were 

 sold to worshippers at Babylon to be offered as sacrifices 

 in her temple. Her worship was spread to Asia Minor 

 and the shore of the iEgean by Babylonian and Assyrian 

 conquests, and she became known to the Phrygians as 

 Cybele, to the Syrians as Darketo, and to the Phoenicians 

 as Atagartis, whom the Ionian Greeks called Astarte. 



In these transformations the primitive Ishtar gradually 

 fell from her original state as a type of motherhood to 

 the baser one of physical love-indulgence, and among 

 her votaries were troops of maidens who publicly offered 

 their virginity at her shrine, as a form of sacrifice and 

 service. 



Some of the Syrians are said to have thought of their 

 goddess Darketo as "Semiramis," but this was by con- 

 fusion with her fabled daughter. Whether or not a real 

 woman and queen of that name ever existed, I leave 

 to the historians, but a mythical Semiramis belongs to my 

 story, and her history was first written by Ctesias, an 

 Asiatic-Greek historian of the fourth century B.C. 

 Ctesias says that near Askalon was a large lake beside 

 which Darketo (otherwise Atagartis) had a habitation; 

 she is represented with the face of a woman and the body 

 of a fish — perhaps the most antique conception of a mer- 

 maid. She fell in love with a fair youth and a girl-baby 

 resulted. Then, in shame, Darketo destroyed her lover, 

 exposed the child in a rocky desert, and flung herself 

 into the lake. The babe, nurtured by doves on milk and 

 cheese, was discovered and reared by a herdsman, who 

 called the child Semiramis — a Syrian word for "doves." 

 At the close of her life this mythical Semiramis changed 

 herself into a dove and flew away with certain other 



