The animals sacred to Aphrodite included the sparrow, the dove, the swan, the swallow, and the wryneck.[[477]] She presided over the month of April, and the myrtle, rose, poppy, and apple were sacred to her.
Some writers connect Semiramis, in her character as a dove goddess, with Media and the old Persian mother goddess Anaitis, and regard as arbitrary her identification with the fish goddess Derceto or Atargatis. The dove was certainly not a popular bird in the religious art of Babylonia and Assyria, but in one of the hymns translated by Professor Pinches Ishtar says, "Like a lonely dove I rest". In another the worshipper tries to touch Ishtar's heart by crying, "Like the dove I moan". A Sumerian psalmist makes a goddess (Gula, who presided over Larak, a part of Isin) lament over the city after it was captured by the enemy:
My temple E-aste, temple of Larak,
Larak the city which Bel Enlil gave,
Beneath are turned to strangeness, above are turned to strangeness,
With wailings on the lyre my dwelling-place is surrendered to the stranger,
The dove cots they wickedly seized, the doves they entrapped....
The ravens he (Enlil) caused to fly.[[478]]
Apparently there were temple and household doves in Babylonia. The Egyptians had their household dovecots in ancient as in modern times. Lane makes reference to the large pigeon houses in many villages. They are of archaic pattern, "with the walls slightly inclining inwards (like many of the ancient Egyptian buildings)", and are "constructed upon the roofs of the huts with crude brick, pottery, and mud.... Each pair of pigeons occupies a separate (earthen) pot."[[479]] It may be that the dove bulked more prominently in domestic than in official religion, and had a special seasonal significance. Ishtar appears to have had a dove form. In the Gilgamesh epic she is said to have loved the "brilliant Allalu bird" (the "bright-coloured wood pigeon", according to Sayce), and to have afterwards wounded it by breaking its wings.[[480]] She also loved the lion and the horse, and must therefore have assumed the forms of these animals. The goddess Bau, "she whose city is destroyed", laments in a Sumerian psalm:
Like a dove to its dwelling-place, how long to my dwelling-place will they pursue me,
To my sanctuary ... the sacred place they pursue me....
My resting place, the brick walls of my city Isin, thou art destroyed;
My sanctuary, shrine of my temple Galmah, thou art destroyed.
Langdon's translation.
Here the goddess appears to be identified with the doves which rest on the walls and make their nests in the shrine. The Sumerian poets did not adorn their poems with meaningless picturesque imagery; their images were stern facts; they had a magical or religious significance like the imagery of magical incantations; the worshipper invoked the deity by naming his or her various attributes, forms, &c.
Of special interest are the references in Sumerian psalms to the ravens as well as the doves of goddesses. Throughout Asia and Europe ravens are birds of ill omen. In Scotland there still linger curious folk beliefs regarding the appearance of ravens and doves after death. Michael Scott, the great magician, when on his deathbed told his friends to place his body on a hillock. "Three ravens and three doves would be seen flying towards it. If the ravens were first the body was to be burned, but if the doves were first it was to receive Christian burial. The ravens were foremost, but in their hurry flew beyond their mark. So the devil, who had long been preparing a bed for Michael, was disappointed."[[481]]
In Indian mythology Purusha, the chaos giant, first divided himself. "Hence were husband and wife produced." This couple then assumed various animal forms and thus "created every living pair whatsoever down to the ants".[[482]] Goddesses and fairies in the folk tales of many countries sometimes assume bird forms. The "Fates" appear to Damayanti in the Nala story as swans which carry love messages.[[483]]
According to Aryo-Indian belief, birds were "blessed with fecundity". The Babylonian Etana eagle and the Egyptian vulture, as has been indicated, were deities of fertility. Throughout Europe birds, which were "Fates", mated, according to popular belief, on St. Valentine's Day in February, when lots were drawn for wives by rural folks. Another form of the old custom is referred to by the poet Gay:--
Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind
Their paramours with mutual chirpings find,
I early rose....
Thee first I spied, and the first swain we see,
In spite of fortune, shall our true love be.