In the oldest archaeological finds, the Goddess was represented by birds and wavy symbols that indicated water and/or energy. These same wavy lines are retained as the symbol of the Astrological sign of Aquarius which may be the oldest extant symbol of the Great Mother Goddess.
But suddenly, at a certain point, around 5000 years ago, serpents became associated with the goddess, and the wavy lines of water/energy were transmogrified to snakes. What happened to bring about this association? By 4000 BC, Goddess figures appeared at Ur and Uruk, both on the southern end of the Euphrates river, not far from the Persian Gulf. At about this same period, the Neolithic Badarian and Amaratian cultures of Egypt first appeared. It is at these sites that agriculture first emerged in Egypt.
From that point on, with the invention of writing, history as we know it, emerged in both Sumer and Egypt - about 3000 BC. (5000 years ago!) In every area of the Near and Middle East, the Goddess was known in historic times. It seems clear that many changes must have taken place in both the forms and modes of worship, but, in various ways, the worship of the Goddess survived into classical Greece and Rome. It was not totally suppressed until the time of the Christian emperors of Rome and Byzantium, who closed the last Goddess Temples about 500 AD.
It appears that the Goddess ruled alone in the beginning, though she was “married” to the king via a human female representative. Thus, the son or brother who was also her lover and consort was part of the goddess religion in much earlier times. This individual was also truly “Semitic” in the sense of being half human and half divine.
Later, as the corruption crept in - seemingly after some dramatic, cataclysmic event - it was this youth - known in various languages as Damuzi, Tammuz, Attis, Adonis, Osiris or Baal - who died in his youth causing an annual period of grief and lamentation among those who paid homage to the Goddess. For a very long time, this myth was annually enacted representing the fact that time was cyclical the same way the seasons were. It was the passing down of the knowledge of cyclical catastrophes connected to cyclical time. The world might end, but if it did, it was only because it had “run down” and needed to be “wound up” again.
But something changed all that. Somehow, the perception of the End of the World became a terrible punishment that might be prevented by savage sacrifices. And the sub-text of this idea was that time was linear and would end, finally and completely. This idea was brought with the invaders from the South, the murderers of the Goddess, the rapers of the Maidens of the Wells: the dominator religion that drove the sword into the stone.