deities were represented by Tammuz and Ishtar. Ishtar, like Isis,
absorbed many other local goddesses.

According to the beliefs of the ancient agriculturists the goddess was
eternal and undecaying. She was the Great Mother of the Universe and
the source of the food supply. Her son, the corn god, became, as the
Egyptians put it, "Husband of his Mother". Each year he was born anew
and rapidly attained to manhood; then he was slain by a fierce rival
who symbolized the season of pestilence-bringing and parching sun
heat, or the rainy season, or wild beasts of prey. Or it might be that
he was slain by his son, as Cronos was by Zeus and Dyaus by Indra. The
new year slew the old year.

The social customs of the people, which had a religious basis, were
formed in accordance with the doings of the deities; they sorrowed or
made glad in sympathy with the spirits of nature. Worshippers also
suggested by their ceremonies how the deities should act at various
seasons, and thus exercised, as they believed, a magical control over
them.

In Babylonia the agricultural myth regarding the Mother goddess and
the young god had many variations. In one form Tammuz, like Adonis,
was loved by two goddesses--the twin phases of nature--the Queen of
Heaven and the Queen of Hades. It was decreed that Tammuz should spend
part of the year with one goddess and part of the year with the other.
Tammuz was also a Patriarch, who reigned for a long period over the
land and had human offspring. After death his spirit appeared at
certain times and seasons as a planet, star, or constellation. He was
the ghost of the elder god, and he was also the younger god who was
born each year.