Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/112

110 was but the successor of an older one, and that Carchemish had once been the 'Holy City' of Northern Syria. The legends, therefore, which referred to the foundation of the sanctuary were said to relate to one which had formerly existed, but had long since fallen into decay. The origin of the temple visited by Lucian was ascribed to a certain 'Stratonikê, the wife of the Assyrian king.' But Stratonikê is merely a Greek transformation of some Semitic epithet of 'Ashtoreth,' and marks the time when the Phœnician Ashtoreth took the place of the earlier Athar-'Ati. A strange legend was told of the youthful Kombabos, who was sent from Babylon to take part in the building of the shrine. Kombabos was but Tammuz under another name, just as Stratonikê was Istar, and the legend is chiefly interesting as testifying to the religious influence once exercised by the Babylonians upon the Hittite people.

Semiramis may turn out to have been the Hittite name of the goddess called Athar-'Ati by the Aramean inhabitants of Hierapolis. In this case the difficulty of accounting for the existence of the two names would have been solved in the old myths by making her the daughter of Derketo. But while Derketo was a fish-goddess, Semiramis was associated with the dove, like the Ashtoreth or Aphroditê who was worshipped in Cyprus. The symbol of the dove had been carried to the distant West at an early period. Among the objects found by Dr. Schliemann in the prehistoric tombs of Mykenæ were figures in gold-leaf, two of which represented a naked goddess with the hands upon the breasts and doves above her, while the third has the form of a temple, on the two pinnacles of which are seated two doves. Considering how intimately the prehistoric art of