FABLE AND FOLKLORE 129 



birds. Hence, in Ctesias's time, divine honors were paid 

 in the East to doves; and a dove is the badge of Semi- 

 ramis in Syrian monumental art. Diodorus Siculus re- 

 peats this account with additional details. 



The sceptre in the hand of the revered image of 

 Atagartis in her great temple at Hierapolis bore the 

 golden figure of a dove on its summit ; and in Phoenicia, 

 Cyprus, Sardinia, and wherever the Phocians and other 

 Levantine traders of that day traded and colonized, have 

 been found small terra-cotta figures of this goddess, or of 

 one of her priestesses, always with a dove. 



To the devotees of this cult, which was confined to the 

 coastal region, and in which the Hebrews and other 

 Semites of the interior desert-plains took no part, a dove 

 was so sacred that if a person even accidentally touched 

 one he was "unclean" throughout the day. Hence the 

 birds thronged in the villages and houses and swarmed 

 about the temple yards, where they were fed by visitors, 

 as still is the custom in the Mohammedan mosques that 

 have taken their place. This was noted especially at 

 Hierapolis, where, according to Lucian, one of the vene- 

 rated images had a pigeon's head. 



This religious doctrine, and more particularly the 

 Phrygian cult of Cybele, was undoubtedly carried to the 

 iEgean islands and to Greece, while civilization was still 

 in its infancy there, for the "sea-born" Aphrodite — an 

 epithet indicative of her arrival from across the waters — - 

 is only Astarte transformed in Greek thought, which 

 seems to explain the classic story that Aphrodite was born 

 from an egg, with a dove brooding upon it, rolled ashore 

 by a fish. 



The focus of religious emotion in those early centuries 

 of Greece, at least in Attica, was probably in the most 



