* The two-horned Astarte gave her name to a city beyond the Jordan, of which she was, probably, the eponymous goddess: (Gen xiv. 5) she would seem to be represented on the curious monument called by the Arabs “the stone of Job,” which was discovered by M. Schumacher in the centre of the Hauran. It was an analogous goddess whom the Egyptians sometimes identified with their Hathor, and whom they represented as crowned with a crescent.
** Gad, the goddess of fortune, is mainly known to us in connection with the Aramaeans; we find mention made of her by the Hebrew writers, and geographical names, such as Baal-Gad and Migdol-Gad, prove that she must have been worshipped at a very early date in the Canaanite countries.
*** Anat, or Anaiti, or Aniti, has been found in a Phoenician inscription, which enables us to reconstruct the history of the goddess. Her worship was largely practised among the Canaanites, as is proved by the existence in the Hebrew epoch of several towns, such as Beth-Anath, Beth- Anoth, Anathoth; at least one of which, Bit-Aniti, is mentioned in the Egyptian geographical lists. The appearance of Anat-Aniti is known to us, as she is represented in Egyptian dress on several stelae of the XIXth and XXth dynasties. Her name, like that of Astarte, had become a generic term, in the plural form Anathoth, for a whole group of goddesses.
**** Asiti is represented at Radesieh, on a stele of the time of Seti I.; she enters into the composition of a compound name, Asitiiakhuru (perhaps “the goddess of Asiti is enflamed with anger “), which we find on a monument in the Vienna Museum. W. Max Mueller makes her out to have been a divinity of the desert, and the place in which the picture representing her was found would seem to justify this hypothesis; the Egyptians connected her, as well as the other Astartes, with Sit-Typhon, owing to her cruel and warlike character.
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The statues sometimes represent her as a sphinx with a woman’s head, but more often as a woman standing on a lion passant, either nude, or encircled round the hips by merely a girdle, her hands filled with flowers or with serpents, her features framed in a mass of heavy tresses—a faithful type of the priestesses who devoted themselves to her service, the Qedeshot. She was the goddess of love in its animal, or rather in its purely physical, aspect, and in this capacity was styled Qaddishat the Holy, like the hetairae of her family; Qodshu, the Amorite capital, was consecrated to her service, and she was there associated with Rashuf, the thunder-god.*