The mother worshippers recognized male as well as female deities, but regarded the great goddess as the First Cause.  Although the primeval spirits were grouped in four pairs in Egypt, and apparently in Babylonia also, the female in the first pair was more strongly individualized than the male.  The Egyptian Nu is vaguer than his consort Nut, and the Babylonian Apsu than his consort Tiamat.  Indeed, in the narrative of the Creation Tablets of Babylon, which will receive full treatment in a later chapter, Tiamat, the great mother, is the controlling spirit.  She is more powerful and ferocious than Apsu, and lives longer.  After Apsu’s death she elevates one of her brood, named Kingu, to be her consort, a fact which suggests that in the Ishtar-Tammuz myth survives the influence of exceedingly ancient modes of thought.  Like Tiamat, Ishtar is also a great battle heroine, and in this capacity she was addressed as “the lady of majestic rank exalted over all gods”.  This was no idle flattery on the part of worshippers, but a memory of her ancient supremacy.

Reference has been made to the introduction of Tammuz worship into Jerusalem.  Ishtar, as Queen of Heaven, was also adored by the backsliding Israelites as a deity of battle and harvest.  When Jeremiah censured the people for burning incense and serving gods “whom they knew not”, he said, “neither they, ye, nor your fathers”, they made answer:  “Since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and the famine”.  The women took a leading part in these practices, but refused to accept all the blame, saying, “When we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make our cakes and pour out drink offerings unto her without our men?"[140] That the husbands, and the children even, assisted at the ceremony is made evident in another reference to goddess worship:  “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven".[141]

Jastrow suggests that the women of Israel wept for Tammuz, offered cakes to the mother goddess, &c., because “in all religious bodies ... women represent the conservative element; among them religious customs continue in practice after they have been abandoned by men".[142] The evidence of Jeremiah, however, shows that the men certainly co-operated at the archaic ceremonials.  In lighting the fires with the “vital spark”, they apparently acted in imitation of the god of fertility.  The women, on the other hand, represented the reproductive harvest goddess in providing the food supply.  In recognition of her gift, they rewarded the goddess by offering her the cakes prepared from the newly ground wheat and barley—­the “first fruits of the harvest”.  As the corn god came as a child, the children began the ceremony by gathering the wood for the sacred