i6o GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



patent or more touching than that well-known one 

 of Ishtar, the Astarte of the Syrians, the Artemis of 

 the Greeks, and who has been identified with the 

 chief female divinity of many other ancient nations* 

 even with that Diana whom 'all Asia and the 

 inhabited world worshippeth.' 



The Chaldean deluge tablets for the first time 

 introduce her to us as an antediluvian goddess, and 

 inform us that she is the deified mother of men, the 

 same with the Biblical Isha, or Eve. In the crisis of 

 the Deluge we are told, * Ishtar spoke like a little 

 child, the great goddess pronounced her discourse. 

 Behold how mankind has returned to clay. I am 

 the mother who brought forth men> and like the fishes 

 they fill the sea. The gods because of the angels of 

 the abyss are weeping with me.' Ishtar is thus the 

 mother of men, herself deified and gone into the 

 heavens, but even there mourning over her hapless 

 children. She may be a star-goddess, or the moon 

 may be her emblem ; but for all that she appears in 

 this old legend as a deified human mother, -with a 

 mother's heart yearning over the progeny that had 

 sprung from her womb, and had been nourished in 

 her breast. It was this, more than her crescent or 

 starry diadem, that commended her worship to her 

 children. Her representative in Genesis, the first 

 mother, Isha, or Eve, is no goddess, but a woman. 

 Yet is she the emblem of life and the mother of a 

 promised Redeemer of humanity, who is to undo the 

 results of sin and to restore the Paradise of God 



