But in taking a Semitic form, the Sumerian divinities did not lose their old attributes.

Bel of Nippur remained the lord of the ghost-world, Bel-Merodach the god who "raises the dead to life" and "does good to man." Moreover, in one important point the Semite borrowed from the Sumerian.

The goddess Istar retained her independent position among the crowd of colourless female deities.

Originally the "spirit" of the evening-star, she had become a goddess, and in the Sumerian world the goddess was the equal of the god.

It is a proof of the influence of the Sumerian element in the Babylonian population, that this conception of the goddess was never forgotten in Babylonia; it was only when Babylonian culture was handed on to the Semitic nations of the west that Istar became either the male Atthar of southern Arabia and Moab, or the emasculated Ashtoreth of Canaan.
The official religion of Babylonia was thus the Baal-worship of the Semites engrafted on the animism of the Sumerians.