as resembling a path over which the ripened ears of corn are scattered.
The Egyptians represented Isis as holding three ears of corn in her hand. In the zodiacs of Denderah and Thebes the Virgin appears without wings, and holds in her hand an object said to be a distaff, marked by the stars in Coma Berenices.
In India Virgo was known as "the Maiden," and in the Cingalese zodiac she is represented as a woman in a ship with a stalk of wheat in her hand.
In the valley of the Euphrates the Virgin represented the goddess Istar, the daughter of Heaven, the Queen of the Stars. Istar was subsequently identified with Venus. The sign of the sixth month in the Akkadian calendar signified "the errand of Istar." According to Brown this errand was to seek her lost bridegroom in the under world.
In China the Virgin was called "the Frigid Maiden," and the Chinese made the star group led by Spica the group of Spring.
The Arabs, who objected strongly to any drawing of the human figure, called Virgo "the Ears," because of the wheat ear that she held in hand, and Allen tells us that the early Arabs made from some members of the constellation the enormous Lion of the sky, and of others the Kennel Corner with Dogs barking at a Lion. Later Arabian astronomers referred to this constellation as "the Innocent Maiden."
Brown, in his Stellar Theology informs us that Virgo was identified as the goddess Rhea and adored under that name. This goddess was figured, according to Bryant, as a beautiful female adorned with a chaplet in which were seen rays composed of ears of corn (i. e., wheat), her right hand resting on a stone pillar, and in her left hand appeared spikes of corn. By corn the ancients intended wheat The spikes of "wheat" in the chaplet and left hand of the goddess Rhea are like those held in the left hand of
