Note 168.1 — Chapter IX · Purity a Divine Attribute.

As regards the other polytheistic Semitic races, we can infer that the same religious ideas concerning ritual-purity were in vogue; but our scanty records do not enable us to determine whether and how far they were quickened by spiritual significance.168.1 But we can trace through Asia Minor the double concept of mother and virgin in the personality of the goddesses; though it is difficult to decide whether they ever coincided, and with what degree of definiteness, in the same personage. Astarte must have been imagined generally as a mother-goddess, and she appears conspicuously as the female consort of Baal; thus her Hellenic equivalent is often given as Aphrodite; yet in another aspect of her worship she must have appeared as virginal, for she is also often identified with Artemis, just as a similar goddess Anath in Cyprus was identified with Athena.168.2 The goddess Atargatis of Hierapolis, described by Lucian, was evidently a mother-goddess, bearing, according to him, a marked resemblance to Rhea, and placed in the temple by the side of her husband, Bel or Zeus. Among the Sabaean inscriptions of South Arabia, we find a dedication by some parents in behalf of their children to the goddess Umm-Attar, a name that signifies “Mother-Attar” (or “Mother Astarte”168.3; and a late record, too late to serve as witness for the early period we are considering, speaks of a virgin-mother among the Arabs.168.4 Finally, the earliest Carthaginian inscriptions record the cult of the great goddess Tanit, addressed usually as the “Lady Tanit, the Face of Baal,” and called in one dedication “The Great Mother.”168.5 If she is the same as the divinity whom Augustine describes as the Virgo Caelestis, the Heavenly Virgin,169.1 then either the dual concept was mystically combined in the same personage, or the Carthaginian goddess was worshipped at different times and at different seasons as the mother and then as the maid. But the evidence is quite uncertain, and we must not combine too rashly the records of different ages.