BELIT, signifying the "lady," par excellence in the Babylo nian religion. Accadian translation of Sumerian dingir-Nin-(lil) consort of En-(lil) of Nippur. The earth god and his consort are called Bel and Beltu "Lord and Lady" in the older interlinear texts, but the Accadian translation is not provided with the deter minative for goddess, and there is no evidence that the Baby lonians recognized any goddess under the name Belti, Belti-ia "My Lady," until the Cassite period, where the title stands for Zarbanit, the goddess of Babylon and consort of Marduk, the Bel of that period. There arose, under the transformation of the pantheon by the priests of Marduk, a tendency to identify the great Sumerian deities Enlil and Ninlil with Marduk and Zarbanit, and the "goddess Belit of Babylon" is consequently identified with the Wagon star, which in astrology is the constellation of Ninlil. The Babylonian goddess Belti, "my lady," or Belit-ni, "our lady," invariably means Zarbanit, spouse of Marduk, the Bel of Babylon. It appears to have been given to Zarbanit after she had been identified with the great mother goddess Makh, called belit-zlaeni, "queen of the gods," and more especially was "my lady" em ployed in addressing Ishtar, the mother and sister of Tammuz. In the later period Marduk and Zarbanit were identified with these deities (see TAMMUZ) and consequently "our lady," "my lady," originally addressed to Ishtar, became the title of Zarbanit. In survivals of the Tammuz cult in post-Babylonian times, Ishtar or Zarbanit, mother and sister of the dying god, appears in Aramaic and Arabic as Beltin, "our lady." By Beltis the Greeks refer to Zarbanit of Babylon as well as to Aphrodite, the Semitic Ba`alat of Byblus. Belti is the Latin transcription used by Philo, of Biblus.