Those who live in or near Elephantine, so far from considering these beasts as sacred, make them an article of food....  The hippopotamus is esteemed sacred in the district of Papremis, but in no other part of Egypt....  They roast and boil ... birds and fishes ... excepting those which are preserved for sacred purposes."[492] Totemic animals controlled the destinies of tribes and families.  “Grose tells us”, says Brand, “that, besides general notices of death, many families have particular warnings or notices:  some by the appearance of a bird, and others by the figure of a tall woman, dressed all in white....  Pennant says that many of the great families in Scotland had their demon or genius, who gave them monitions of future events."[493] Members of tribes which venerated the pigeon therefore invoked it like the Egyptian love poet and drew omens from its notes, or saw one appearing as the soul of the dead like the lover in the ballad of “The Bloody Gardener”.  They refrained also from killing the pigeon except sacrificially, and suffered agonies on a deathbed which contained pigeon feathers, the “taboo” having been broken.

Some such explanation is necessary to account for the specialization of certain goddesses as fish, snake, cat, or bird deities.  Aphrodite, who like Ishtar absorbed the attributes of several goddesses of fertility and fate, had attached to her the various animal symbols which were prominent in districts or among tribes brought into close contact, while the poppy, rose, myrtle, &c., which were used as love charms, or for making love potions, were also consecrated to her.  Anthropomorphic deities were decorated with the symbols and flowers of folk religion.

From the comparative evidence accumulated here, it will be seen that the theory of the mythical Semiramis’s Median or Persian origin is somewhat narrow.  It is possible that the dove was venerated in Cyprus, as it certainly was in Crete, long centuries before Assyrian and Babylonian influence filtered westward through Phoenician and Hittite channels.  In another connection Sir Arthur Evans shows that the resemblance between Cretan and early Semitic beliefs “points rather to some remote common element, the nature of which is at present obscure, than to any definite borrowing by one side or another".[494]

From the evidence afforded by the Semiramis legends and the inscriptions of the latter half of the Assyrian Middle Empire period, it may be inferred that a renascence of “mother worship” was favoured by the social and political changes which were taking place.  In the first place the influence of Babylon must have been strongly felt in this connection.  The fact that Adadnirari found it necessary to win the support of the Babylonians by proclaiming his descent from one of their ancient royal families, suggests that he was not only concerned about the attitude assumed by the scholars of the southern kingdom, but also that of the masses of old Sumerian and Akkadian stocks