The worship of the Great Mother was the popular religion of the indigenous peoples of western Asia, including parts of Asia Minor, Egypt, and southern and western Europe.  It appears to have been closely associated with agricultural rites practised among representative communities of the Mediterranean race.  In Babylonia and Assyria the peoples of the goddess cult fused with the peoples of the god cult, but the prominence maintained by Ishtar, who absorbed many of the old mother deities, testifies to the persistence of immemorial habits of thought and antique religious ceremonials among the descendants of the earliest settlers in the Tigro-Euphrates valley.  Merodach’s spouse Zerpanitu^m was not a shadowy deity but a goddess who exercised as much influence as her divine husband.  As Aruru she took part with him in the creation of mankind.  In Asia Minor the mother goddess was overshadowed by the father god during the period of Hatti predominance, but her worship was revived after the early people along the coast and in the agricultural valleys were freed from the yoke of the father-god worshippers.

It must be recognized, in this connection, that an official religion was not always a full reflection of popular beliefs.  In all the great civilizations of antiquity it was invariably a compromise between the beliefs of the military aristocracy and the masses of mingled peoples over whom they held sway.  Temple worship had therefore a political aspect; it was intended, among other things, to strengthen the position of the ruling classes.  But ancient deities could still be worshipped, and were worshipped, in homes and fields, in groves and on mountain tops, as the case might be.  Jeremiah has testified to the persistence of the folk practices in connection with the worship of the mother goddess among the inhabitants of Palestine.  Sacrificial fires were lit and cakes were baked and offered to the “Queen of Heaven” in the streets of Jerusalem and other cities.  In Babylonia and Egypt domestic religious practices were never completely supplanted by temple ceremonies in which rulers took a prominent part.  It was always possible, therefore, for usurpers to make popular appeal by reviving ancient and persistent forms of worship.  As we have seen, Jehu of Israel, after stamping out Phoenician Baal worship, secured a strong following by giving official recognition to the cult of the golden calf.

It is not possible to set forth in detail, or with intimate knowledge, the various innovations which Sammu-rammat introduced, or with which she was credited, during the reigns of Adad-nirari IV (810-782 B.C.) and his father.  No discovery has been made of documents like the Tell-el-Amarna “letters”, which would shed light on the social and political life of this interesting period.  But evidence is not awanting that Assyria was being suffused with Babylonian culture.  Royal inscriptions record the triumphs of the army, but suppress the details of barbarities such as those which sully the annals of Ashur-natsir-pal, who had boys and girls burned on pyres and the heroes of small nations flayed alive.  An ethical tendency becomes apparent in the exaltation of the Babylonian Shamash as an abstract deity who loved law and order, inspired the king with wisdom and ordained the destinies of mankind.  He is invoked on equal terms with Ashur.