Note 84.2 — Chapter V · The Predominance of the Goddess.

From such isolated indications we might conclude that the Babylonian-Assyrian religion was more devoted to the goddess than to the god. We should certainly be wrong, as a more critical and wider survey of the facts, so far as they are at present accessible, would convince us. These hymns imputing supreme omnipotence to the goddess, whether Ishtar or another, may be merely examples of that tendency very marked in the Babylonian liturgies, to exalt the particular divinity to whom worship is at that moment being paid above all others. The ecstatic poet is always contradicting himself. To the omnipotent Belit, in the last-mentioned hymn, a phrase is attached which Zimmern interprets as “she who carries out the commands of Bel,” as if after all she were only a vicegerent. In the beautiful prayer to Ishtar proffered by the Assyrian King Asurnasirabal (18th cent. B.C.) he implores her to intercede for him, “the Priest-King, thy favourite… with Thy beloved the Father of the gods.”84.2 The beloved wife naturally plays the Madonna part of the intercessor; thus Sanherib prays that Ninlil “the consort of Ashur, the mother of the great gods, may daily speak a favourable word for Sanherib, the king of Assyria, before Ashur.”84.3 But the intercessor is not supreme; and in spite of the great power of Ishtar and the fervent devotion she aroused, the state-pantheon is predominantly masculine.