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Before he carried into effect these great plans, he found leisure for very tedious and very lucrative collateral transactions. The temples of Derceto at Hierapolis Bambyce and of Jehovah at Jerusalem and other rich shrines of the Syrian province, were by order of Crassus despoiled of their treasures; and contingents or, still better, sums of money instead were levied from all the subjects.
These priceless relics were all lent by Thessaly, as were an imperfect statuette in wood, fossilised with age and probably of Moabite origin, representing Ashtaroth, daughter of Sin, and a wonderfully preserved ivory figure, half woman and half fish, of Derceto of Ascalon.
Mycenaean vases and gold death masks stood upon the same shelf as Venetian goblets, and the mummy of an Egyptian priestess of the thirteenth dynasty occupied a sarcophagus upon the top of which rested a basrelief found in one of the shrines of the Syrian fish goddess Derceto, at Ascalon.
For not only have we the complete totemistic form, as among the Dyaks and the tribes of the Gold Coast; but we find the superstition fading through the goddess Derceto into modern sagas of the supernatural mother of a family, who to her sometimes owe extraordinary powers, and over whose fate she continually watches. Here, then, our study of this beautiful myth must close.
Accordingly we shall find that, on the one hand, Venus is immediately connected with the symbolical egg; and, on the other hand, that she is identical with Derceto and Isis, and is declared to be that general receptacle out of which all the hero-gods were produced.
"Ah, ah! now many of your female cousins are enticing enough " "I knew it! Oh, but you need not think you deluded me !" "My darling, pray consider! be reasonable about it! Your feminine guests at present are Sekhmet in the form of a lioness, Io incarnated as a cow, Hekt as a frog, Derceto as a sturgeon, and ah, yes! Thoueris as a hippopotamus.
Tanith!" and her voice was lengthened in a plaintive fashion as if calling to some one. "Anaitis! Astarte! Derceto! Astoreth! Mylitta! Athara! Elissa! Tiratha! By the hidden symbols, by the resounding sistra, by the furrows of the earth, by the eternal silence and by the eternal fruitfulness, mistress of the gloomy sea and of the azure shores, O Queen of the watery world, all hail!"
Then came all the inferior forms of the Divinity: Baal-Samin, god of celestial space; Baal-Peor, god of the sacred mountains; Baal-Zeboub, god of corruption, with those of the neighbouring countries and congenerous races: the Iarbal of Libya, the Adramelech of Chaldaea, the Kijun of the Syrians; Derceto, with her virgin's face, crept on her fins, and the corpse of Tammouz was drawn along in the midst of a catafalque among torches and heads of hair.
If the mermaid form be of genuine antiquity, about which I confess to a lurking suspicion, it is another bond with the Scottish stories, with Melusina and with Derceto. We have now considered the principal points of the myth. The feather-robe, or skin, we found absent from all its more archaic examples.
Derceto! goddesses afar from men goddesses whom, not seeing, we worship faintly with sacrifice and ceremony. But thou thou shalt dwell forever in the temple upon the Square of Melkarth. Come!" Again, and in spite of every resolve, Marcia felt the overmastering sense of woman's loathing that stood so obstinately between herself and the rôle she had marked out. It was too much.
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