As time wore away, and the facts of Semiramis' history became obscured, her son's birth was boldly declared to be miraculous: and therefore she was called "Alma Mater," * "the Virgin Mother."
* The term Alma is the precise term used by Isaiah in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, when announcing, 700 years before the event, that Christ should be born of a Virgin. If the question should be asked, how this Hebrew term Alma (not in a Roman, but a Hebrew sense) could find its way to Rome, the answer is, Through Etruria, which had an intimate connection with Assyria. The word "mater" itself, from which comes our own "mother," is originally Hebrew. It comes from Heb. Msh, "to draw forth," in Egyptian Ms, "to bring forth" (BUNSEN), which in the Chaldee form becomes Mt, whence the Egyptian Maut, "mother." Erh or Er, as in English (and a similar form is found in Sanscrit), is, "The doer." So that Mater or Mother signifies "The bringer forth."
It may be thought an objection to the above account of the epithet Alma, that this term is often applied to Venus, who certainly was no virgin. But this objection is more apparent than real. On the testimony of Augustine, himself an eye-witness, we know that the rites of Vesta, emphatically "the virgin goddess of Rome," under the name of Terra, were exactly the same as those of Venus, the goddess of impurity and licentiousness (AUGUSTINE, De Civitate Dei). Augustine elsewhere says that Vesta, the virgin goddess, "was by some called Venus."
Even in the mythology of our own Scandinavian ancestors, we have a remarkable evidence that Alma Mater, or the Virgin Mother, had been originally known to them. One of their gods called Heimdal, who is described in the most exalted terms, as having such quick perceptions as that he could hear the grass growing on the ground, or the wool on the sheep's back, and whose trumpet, when it blew, could be heard through all the worlds, is called by the paradoxical name, "the son of nine virgins." (MALLET) Now this obviously contains an enigma. Let the language in which the religion of Odin was originally delivered--viz., the Chaldee, be brought to bear upon it, and the enigma is solved at once. In Chaldee "the son of nine virgins" is Ben-Almut-Teshaah. But in pronunciation this is identical with "Ben-Almet-Ishaa," "the son of the virgin of salvation." That son was everywhere known as the "saviour seed." "Zera-hosha" and his virgin mother consequently claimed to be "the virgin of salvation." Even in the very heavens the God of Providence has constrained His enemies to inscribe a testimony to the great Scriptural truth proclaimed by the Hebrew prophet, that a "virgin should bring forth a son, whose name should be called Immanuel." The constellation Virgo, as admitted by the most learned astronomers, was dedicated to Ceres (Dr.