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It was probably at this comparatively late period that certain foreign customs of a sadly lowering character were adopted by this plastic and impressible people, who learnt the vice of paederasty from the Greeks, and adopted from the Assyrians the worship of Beltis, with its accompaniment of religious prostitution.
Still we are perhaps not entitled to conclude, from this comparative purity, that the Assyrian religion was really exempt from that worst feature of idolatrous systems a licensed religious sensualism. According to Herodotus the Babylonian worship of Beltis was disgraced by a practice which even he, heathen as he was, regarded as "most shameful."
It appears to have given rise to some of the Greek traditions with respect to Semiramis, who was made to contract an incestuous marriage with her own son Ninyas, although no explanation can at present be given of the application to Beltis of that name. HEA, or HOA. The third god of the first Triad was Hea, or Hoa, probably the Aus of Damascus.
The Deity invoked in all the earlier inscriptions is a triad, and we are assured that in Babylonia, where Beltis is associated with Belus, "no god appears without a goddess." The supreme Deity of Assyria was Asshur, who was worshipped sometimes as female, sometimes as male. This God doubtless represents the dual or triple creative principle observed in all the earlier forms of worship.
It is not so with Chaldæa. Only a few have been identified beyond all doubt, those namely of which we have Hebrew or Greek transcriptions, preserving for us the real Chaldæan original; Ilou, Bel, Nisroch, Beltis, Istar, are examples of this.
In the temples of one deity excesses of this description, instead of being confined to rare occasions, seem to have been of every-day occurrence. Each woman was required once in her life to visit a shrine of Beltis, and there remain till some stranger cast money in her lap and took her away with him. Herodotus, who seems to have visited the disgraceful scene, describes it as follows.
The other principal Phoenician deities were El, Melkarth, Dagon, Hadad, Adonis, Sydyk, Eshmun, the Cabeiri, Onca, Tanith, Tanata, or Anaitis, and Baalith, Baaltis, or Beltis. El, or Il, originally a name of the Supreme God, became in the later Phoenician mythology a separate and subordinate divinity, whom the Greeks compared to their Kronos and the Romans to their Saturn.
Not only was this city designated by the very same name as the god, and specially dedicated to him and to his wife Beltis, but Bel-Nimrod is called "Lord of Nipra," and his wife "Lady of Nipra," in evident allusion to this city or the tract wherein it was placed. Various traditions, as will be hereafter shown, connect Nimrod with Niffer, which may fairly be regarded as his principal capital.
The two peculiar customs on which Herodotus descants at length the public auction of the marriageable virgins in all the towns of the empire, and the religious prostitution authorized in the worship of Beltis were wholly incompatible with the restraints to which the sex has commonly submitted in the Eastern world.
"The palace of Assur-nazir-pal, servant of Assur, servant of the god Beltis, the god Ninit, the shining one of Anu and Dagon, servant of the Great Gods, Mighty King, king of hosts, king of the land of Assyria; son of Bin-nirari, a strong warrior, who in the service of Assur his Lord marched vigorously among the princes of the four regions, who had no equal, a mighty leader who had no rival, a king subduing all disobedient to him; who rules multitudes of men; crushing all his foes, even the masses of the rebels.... The city of Calah, which my predecessor, Shalmanezer, King of Assyria had built had fallen into decay: His city I rebuilt; a palace of cedar, box, cypress, for the seat of my royalty, for the fullness of my princedom, to endure for generations, I placed upon it.
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