Astarte (; ) is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern goddess ʿAṯtart. ʿAṯtart was the Northwest Semitic equivalent of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar.

Astarte was worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity, and her name is particularly associated with her worship in the ancient Levant among the Canaanites and Phoenicians, though she was originally associated with Amorite cities like Ugarit and Emar, as well as Mari and Ebla. She was also celebrated in Egypt, especially during the reign of the Ramessides, following the importation of foreign cults there. Phoenicians introduced her cult in their colonies on the Iberian Peninsula.

Name

The Proto-Semitic form of this goddess's name was . While earlier scholarship suggested that the name was formed by adding the Afroasiatic feminine suffix to the name of the deity ʿAṯtar|, more recent views accept the names and as being etymologically related while considering the exact relationship between them to be unclear. The meaning of the names and are themselves still unclear.

The Masoretic Text vocalization is in dispute: most scholars consider it as an artificial superimposition of the vowels of the Hebrew word () upon the consonants of the original name; some other suggest it is a result of the Canaanite shift from /ā/ to /ō/ (despite the unexpected occurrence of the shift in this position), or, with an assumption of an early form *, as a conventional occurrence of the shift -ā(r)i- to -ō(r)ē-.

Overview

In various cultures, Astarte was connected with some combination of the following spheres: war, sexuality, royal power, beauty, healing and — especially in Ugarit and Emar — hunting; however, known sources do not indicate she was a fertility goddess, contrary to opinions in early scholarship. Her symbol was the lion and she was also often associated with the horse and by extension chariots. The dove might be a symbol of her as well, as evidenced by some Bronze Age cylinder seals. The only images identified with absolute certainty as Astarte are these depicting her as a combatant on horseback or in a chariot. While many authors in the past asserted that she has been known as the deified morning and evening star, it has been questioned if she had an astral character at all, at least in Ugarit and Emar. God lists known from Ugarit and other prominent Bronze Age Syrian cities regarded her as the counterpart of Assyro-Babylonian goddess Ištar, and of the Hurrian Ishtar-like goddesses Ishara (presumably in her aspect of "lady of love") and Shaushka; in some cities, the western forms of the name and the eastern form "Ishtar" were fully interchangeable.

In later times Astarte was worshipped in Syria and Canaan. Her worship spread to Cyprus, where she may have been merged with an ancient Cypriot goddess. This merged Cypriot goddess may have been adopted into the Greek pantheon in Mycenaean and Dark Age times to form Aphrodite. An outdated argument, however, postulates that Astarte's character was less erotic and more warlike than Ishtar originally was, perhaps because she was influenced by the Canaanite goddess Anat, and that therefore Ishtar, not Astarte, was the direct forerunner of the Cypriot goddess. However, evidence from Iron Age Phoenicia show that Astarte became a more erotic goddess as opposed to her early Bronze Age worship in Ugarit and Syria, and that early attestations of Aphrodite, were more war-like.

Greeks in classical, Hellenistic, and Roman times occasionally equated Aphrodite with Astarte and many other Near Eastern goddesses, in keeping with their frequent practice of syncretizing other deities with their own. In addition, certain aspects of other Greek gods, such as Artemis Astrateia are hypothesized to be heavily influenced by Astarte.

Major centers of Astarte's worship in the Iron Age were the Phoenician city-states of Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos. Coins from Sidon portray a chariot in which a globe appears, presumably a stone representing Astarte. "She was often depicted on Sidonian coins as standing on the prow of a galley, leaning forward with right hand outstretched, being thus the original of all figureheads for sailing ships." In Sidon, she shared a temple with Eshmun. Coins from Beirut show Poseidon, Astarte, and Eshmun worshipped together.

Other significant locations where she was introduced by Phoenician sailors and colonists were Cythera, Malta, and Eryx in Sicily from which she became known to the Romans as Venus Erycina. Three inscriptions from the Pyrgi Tablets dating to about 500 BC found near Caere in Etruria mentions the construction of a shrine to Astarte in the temple of the local goddess Uni-Astre (). At Carthage Astarte was worshipped alongside the goddess Tanit, and frequently appeared as a theophoric element in personal names.

Iconography

Iconographic portrayal of Astarte, very similar to that of Tanit, often depicts her naked and in presence of lions, identified respectively with symbols of sexuality and war. She is also depicted as winged, carrying the solar disk and the crescent moon as a headdress, and with her lions either lying prostrate to her feet or directly under those. Aside from the lion, Astarte is associated with the dove and the bee. She has also been associated with botanic wildlife like the palm tree and the lotus flower.

A particular artistic motif assimilates Astarte to Europa, portraying her as riding a bull that would represent a partner deity. Similarly, after the popularization of her worship in Egypt, it was frequent to associate her with the war chariot of Ra or Horus, as well as a kind of weapon, the crescent axe. Within Iberian culture, it has been proposed that native sculptures like those of Baza, Elche or Cerro de los Santos might represent an Iberized image of Astarte or Tanit.

thumb|alt=An ancient mask. The individual has brown skin, and black hair. There are holes at the eyes. Lines go down the face that are interpreted as a beard. |A mask from 4th century BC Carthage of an androgynous, bearded individual, has been argued to be Astarte

Some androgynous figurines from Luristan having both female breasts and a beard have been argued to be portrayals of Astarte. Multiple Judean pillar figures feature a feminine form with breasts and a beard, holding a solar disk, and are thought to be Astarte.]]

The association between ʿAštart and Melqart at Tyre continued until the Roman period, and an inscription from the Severan dynasty mentions the goddess ʿAštart, under the name of the Greek goddess Leucothea, along with Melqart, under the name of Heracles.

Astronoē

ʿAštart was sometimes worshipped at Tyre under the name of (), which was a form of her name where the feminine suffix had been replaced by the adjectival suffix ().

According to the 6th century AD Neoplatonist scholarch Damascius, ʿAštārōniy was the "mother of the gods", and had fallen in love with a young hunter, Eshmun of Berytus, who castrated himself to escape her, but whom the goddess resurrected.

The name of ʿAštārōniy was given to a Tyrian port, and she was mentioned in a Tyrian inscription from the 1st century AD after "Hercules", that is Melqart. The name ʿAštārōniy is also recorded from Rhodes in the eastern Mediterranean, and from Carthage in the western Mediterranean.

In Egypt

Due to the influence of the Egyptian Osiris myth, the Phoenicians who lived in Egypt during the Hellenistic period continued the identification of ʿAštart with Isis, in which capacity they worshipped this latter goddess.

In Cyprus

thumb|Figurine of Astarte from Cyprus, [[Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.]]

The worship of ʿAštart is widely attested in ancient Cyprus, where she had been assimilated to the Greek goddess Aphrodite from early times, due to which many early shrines of Aphrodite in Cyprus showed partial Phoenician influence.

thumb|The "woman at the window" on an ivory plaque from [[Arslan Tash]]

The Cypriot ʿAštart was already depicted in Phoenician ivory sculptures and in the Book of Proverbs (7) of the Bible, and was likely referred by the Greeks as "the Peeper" () and by the Romans as the Venus prōspiciēns of Salamis.

At Kition

A shrine of ʿAštart stood at the Bamboula site in ancient Kition, which has yielded a 4th-century BC alabaster tablet on which were recorded the expenses of the shrine over the course of a whole month as well as a mention of ʿAštart by her common title of "Holy Queen" ().

The inhabitants of the Kition identified ʿAštart with the Greek goddess Aphrodite Urania.

Under the rule of the kingdom of Kition, a big Phoenician archive was installed in Idalion; most of the archive is economic, but some of it is religious, and one of the ostraca records ʿAštart and Melqart in a .

At Paphos

In Cyprus, ʿAštart was identified during the 3rd century BC with the Greek goddess Aphrodite Paphia (), who was worshipped at Paphos, as recorded by a dedicatory inscription to (, ).

At Amathous

thumb|One of [[Kition Tariffs, which deals with the expenses of the temple of Astarte in Kition by month]]

The goddess ʿAštart was the main deity of the city of Amathous, where stood one of the most famous temples of hers at the top of the acropolis of the city. The temple of ʿAštart of Amathous was erected in the 8th century BC, when the city was under Tyrian influence, with the presence of two Phoenician graffiti and Phoenician-type anthropoid sarcophagi at Amathous and Kition attesting of the existence of a Phoenician community living in these cities. The shrine of Amathous, like most Cypriot shrines of ʿAštart, thus exhibited partial Phoenician influences, such as worship halls, courtyards, and altars within a temenos|, and it was only in the 1st century AD that it was replaced by a Greek-style temple. During the 6th and 5th centuries BC, local hand-made votive figurines were associated to Phoenician-type small moulded plates depicting ʿAštart as a naked standing goddess holding her breasts, as well as to small Greek-type Kore (sculpture)|.

Two dedications offered by Androcles, the last king of Amathous, some time between 330 and 310 BC, respectively to the goddesses Kupris () and Kupria Aphrodite (), as well as two monumental limestone vases have been found at the site of the shrine of Amathous.

Although Graeco-Roman authors had claimed that it was forbidden to spill blood in the temple of Amathous, remains of Hellenistic sacrifices provided evidence that goats and sheep were the main animals offered in sacrifice at the shrine ʿAštart.

According to the Roman authors Ovid, Pausanias, and Tacitus, the inhabitants of Cyprus considered the shrine of Venus, that is, ʿAštart, at Amathous as one of the three most reverend sites on Cyprus, along with Paphos and Salamis.

In the Aegean Sea and Greece

The name of the goddess ʿAštart was used as a theophoric element in several personal names, attested at Athens, Aphrodisias, Delos, and Rhodes, in their Hellenised forms and including the element (, from ).

In Rhodes

At Rhodes (in KAI 44, one of the Rhodes Phoenician-Greek bilingual inscriptions), the full title of one of the temple attendants who participated of the cult of Melqart, the , bore the title of (), possibly meaning "ʿAštartean husband".

At Delos

A Sidonian woman is recorded as having honoured ʿAštart, assimilated to the Egyptian Isis, in the official Serapeum of Delos.

At Kos

At Kos, a Phoenician thiasote took ʿAštart and Zeus Soter (that is, Baal Mahalāk, ) as his patron deities, and a son of the Sidonian king Abdalonymus dedicated a piece of maritime art to the goddess ʿAštart-Aphrodite for the life of the sailors (KAI 292).

In Malta

thumb|The remains of a megalithic temple in Tas-Silġ, which later became a temple of Astarte

In the late 8th century BC, Phoenicians repurposed an old Copper Age megalithic structure at Tas-Silġ on the island of Malta into a temple of ʿAštart where offerings were given to her by readjusting its walls, placing their altar on an older altar stone, building several shrines, and placing there large numbers of votive gifts, especially Hellenistic-style statues.

The sanctuary of ʿAštart at Tas-Silg was of large dimensions, being 100 metres wide, and was renowned in antiquity for its great wealth. The Tas-Silġ temple has yielded many Punic inscriptions dating from the 5th to 1st centuries BC containing short dedications to ʿAštart, who was there identified with the Greek supreme goddess Hera and later with the Italic Juno, due to which Cicero later referred to it as the , "the temple of Juno".

A temple of ʿAštart also existed on the island of Gozo.

In Sicily

thumb|The remains of the castle which was built on /Venus Erycina temple

ʿAštart worshipped in Sicily at the Mount Eryx, where stood a temple a goddess, on a rocky outcrop which domonates from its north-east the city of Eryx, which itself was a town which had once belonged to the Elymians and was an ally of the Phoenicians settled at Ṣiṣ and Moṭwē before becoming a Punic fort during the 4th to 3rd century BC. The temple of Mount Eryx was initially dedicated to an indigenous goddess named in Oscan inscriptions as (), who was later identified with ʿAštart, and later to the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus Erycina.

The Romans themselves called the temple of Mount Eryx the (), and according to a Roman coin from the 1st century BC, it had four columns, the mountain itself was surrounded by a wall, so that the shrine could only reached by passing through a monumental gate. Claudius Aelianus recounted a legend, according to which the Veneris fānum possessed an open-air altar from which all the sacrifices offered to the goddess during the day would disappear during the night and would be replaced with dew and fresh herbs, which was similar to some characteristics of the cult of the Cypriot ʿAštart.

Older coins depicted the goddess of Eryx with a dove, which was an attribute of the Levantine ʿAštart, as well as with the Greek Erōs, the son of Aphrodite, and a dog, which was commonly found within Phoenician religion and thus showed the presence of West Asian influences on her. Later coins represent her wearing a laurel wreath and a diadem.

Another typically Levantine aspect of the cult of the ʿAštart of Eryx was the practise of sacred prostitution, which was carried out by the "servants" of the goddess. Sacred prostitution at the was well known enough in antiquity that Plautus recorded an old man's advice to a pimp in which he mentioned that courtesans at the shrine would earn large amounts of money.

The worship of this goddess later spread to the Graeco-Roman world, where her worship is attested at Rome, Herculaneum, Dikaiarkhia, Potentia, and Greece. In the Punic world, she was worshipped at Karalis, in Sardinia, at Carthage, where two inscriptions refer to the ʿAštart of Eryx, as well as at Thibilis, Cirta, Madaure, and Sicca Veneria, which was well known in ancient times for its practise of sacred prostitution, which was performed there by the ().

In Carthage

In Carthage and in Phoenico-Punic Africa in general, the goddess Tanit appears to have displaced ʿAštart and taken over her roles, due to which she became called "Tanit-Face-of-Baal" (), who was often paired with the supreme Carthaginian god Baal Hammon.

Although the goddess ʿAštart held lesser importance in North Africa, she was worshipped at Carthage, where her cult was imported directly from Phoenicia, especially from Tyre and Ṣidōn, as well as from Eryx.

A 7th century BC golden medallion from Carthage mentioned the goddess ʿAštart alongside an individual named Pygmalion to whom the medallion belonged.

During the Punic period, ʿAštart was connected to the worship of Eshmun, as she was in the Sidonian temple at Bustān aš-Šayḫ, and she was herself worshipped under the name of "Mighty ʿAštart" (). ʿAštart, like Tanit, possessed a temple of her own in the city of Carthage, which was located in the city's centre. It was likely the warrior form of the goddess who was worshipped in this temple, since her weapons and chariot were kept there.

The Punic general Hannibal invoked ʿAštart, referring to her in Greek as Hera, as one of the many deities he took as witness in the treaty he concluded with the king Philip V of Macedon.

During the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC, a temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis, identified to ʿAštart, existed at Carthage.

Following the destruction of Carthage and its annexation by the Roman Republic at the end of the Punic Wars, the Romans continued the worship of ʿAštart under the name of the "Celestial Juno" (), and when they rebuilt Carthage in 123 BC, they initially named it Junonia after Iūnō Caelestis, that is, after ʿAštart. The Romans also rebuilt the temple of ʿAštart and dedicated it to Juno Caelestis, who was thus a Roman continuation of the initial Punic cult of ʿAštart, and a distinct goddess from the native Roman Juno Regina. During the Roman period, ʿAštart was still worshipped under her Phoenician name at Thuburbo Maius, where she was identified with Juno Caelestis.

The identification of ʿAštart with the Egyptian Isis continued in the formerly Punic territories of North Africa after the Roman conquest, and several Temple of Isis (disambiguation)| existed in the region under Roman rule.

Roman writers mentioned that Africans worshipped the "Carthaginian Juno" (), who arrived from the East and whose favourite place to stay was Carthage; Tertullian in the 2nd century AD noted the parallels between the African Caelestis and the Levantine ʿAštart; Herodian in the 2nd to 3rd century AD mentioned a goddess Ourania (), who was worshipped by the Carthaginians and the Libyans, and whose name he recorded as "Queen of the Stars" (), which was both a deformation and reinterpretation of the name of ʿAštart; and Augustine of Hippo recorded that Punic people called Juno "Astarte", that is ʿAštart.

The worship of ʿAštart-Caelestis held an exceptional importance at Mididi, where she was called by her Phoenician-Punic name, and was called the "wife of Baal", as recorded in a neo-Punic inscription reading "Sanctuary for ʿAštart consort of Baal: the citizens of Mididi built (it)" (). Attesting of her primacy at Mididi was a stela discovered there, with the goddess being depicted on its pediment, while on its lower level was the African Saturn (that is, Baal Hammon), to whose right was the goddess Kubeleya seated on her lion, who was herself identified at Mididi with ʿAštart, and not with Tanit.

The Roman temple of Juno Caelestis, according to the 5th century AD Bishop of Carthage, Quodvultdeus, was of large proportions, and was surrounded by shrines to various deities associated to the goddess, and the 5th century AD Bishop of Byzacena, Victor Vitensis, described it as being located near the Baths of Antoninus; the temple had already been desecrated under the reign of the Roman emperor Theodosius I, and it was finally destroyed in 421 AD following unrest by the pagan population of the city.

In Italy

thumb|A view in the sanctuary in Pyrgi, which included a temple to Astarte (as mentioned in the [[Pyrgi Tablets)]]

The Etruscans identified ʿAštart with their own goddess Uni, as attested by the gold tablets discovered in 1964 at the site of renowned sanctuary built in the 6th century BC to the goddess Uni in the town of Pyrgi, the port of the Etruscan city-state of Cisra. Uni was associated to the god Tinia, who was the Etruscan equivalent of the Greek Zeus and was assimilated to Melqart, with the divine couple of Uni and Tinia being thus assimilated to the Phoenician-Punic divine couple of ʿAštart and Melqart.

The gold tablets from the Pyrgi renowned were engraved with Etruscan and Phoenician-Punic inscriptions recording the dedication of a cult centre to ʿAštart by the king Tiberius Velianas of Cisra, who ruled around , on "the day of the burial of the god (Melqart)." The practise of this cult to the Phoenician-Punic by an Etruscan king might have been the result of a possible treaty with Carthage, and the rites practised at the shrine of Pyrgi included sacred prostitution, performed by the "", the prostitutes of Pyrgi.

The shrine of Pyrgi was a wealthy one, as evidenced by the 1500 talents which Dionysius I of Syracuse looted from it in 384 BC.

In Hispania

As attested by the Seville/El Carambolo Statuette, imported from the Levant to Hispania, the Phoenician activities in the Mediterranean had spread the cult of ʿAštart till Hispania.

The worship of ʿAštart also continued in Hispania after it was conquered by the Romans, with the goddess being there also called Juno, and the existence of a temple and an altar to "Juno," that is to ʿAštart, is mentioned by Artemidorus and Pomponius Mela. One Latin inscription from the Roman imperial period refers to a priest named Herculis whose father was named Junonis, reflecting the Punic association of "Hercules" (Melqart) and "Juno" (ʿAštart).

The "Islands of Hera," or "Islands of Juno," located in the Strait of Gibraltar, as well as the island of Junonia in the Atlantic Ocean and the "Cape of Hera" or "Cape of Juna" (presently Cape Trafalgar), also owed their names to ʿAštart.

In Britannia

Under the Roman Empire, the cult of ʿAštart had spread till the foot of Hadrian's Wall in Britannia, where she was invoked using her Phoenician name and associated to the "Tyrian Hercules," that is to Melqart, thus being a continuation of the close connection between Melqart and ʿAštart, and attesting of the Phoenician origin of this cult.

Rituals

A typically Levantine aspect of the cult of ʿAštart was the practise of sacred prostitution, which was performed by specific categories of her temples' clergy who were exercised this function on a permanent basis. The different categories of sacred prostitutes were the:

  • "nubile girls" (), who were sometimes simply called "servants of ʿAštart" ();
  • "dogs" (), who were male sacred prostitutes who engaged in homosexual intercourse;
  • "young men" or "whelps" (), who were later called "servants of the Temple of ʿAštart" ().

The practise of sacred prostitution is attested at the temple of ʿAštart in Byblos, and sacred prostitutes and "whelps" are recorded at the temples of ʿAštart at Afqa and Baalbek until the 4th century AD. The practise is also recorded in Cyprus, especially at Paphos, Amathous, and Kition, and in Sicily, at Eryx, from where two sacred prostitutes of Carthaginian origin are known by name: ʾArišut-Baʿl (, ) and her daughter ʾAmot-Milqart (, ).

Sacred prostitution in the honour of ʿAštart was also practised at Carthage, as well as at Sicca Veneria, which was renowned for its sacred prostitution rituals, and sacred prostitution might have also been performed at some brothels.

The Phoenician imagery of "the woman at the window", as well as the "Peeper" of Cyprus, the Venus prōspiciēns of Salamis, as well as the El Carambolo statuette depicting a naked ʿAštart and some specific feminine images were semantically connected to sacred prostitution performed in the honour of ʿAštart.

Legacy

Other ancient Mediterranean peoples considered ʿAštart to be the supreme goddess of the Phoenicians, due to which several of them identified her with their own supreme goddess, with the Greeks identifying her with Hera, the Etruscans with Uni, and the Romans with (Juno.

The Graeco-Romans Hellenised the name of ʿAštart as (), which they in turn Latinized as "", and identified her with their own goddesses Aphrodite and Venus, due to her erotic aspect.

In the writings of the 1st century AD Roman poet Virgil, the goddess Venus mentioned the Cypriot shrine of ʿAštart at Amathous among her most famous temples.

The name ʿAštart's variant of ʿAštārōniy was Hellenised as () under the influence of the Greek term (, .

In the Levant

The goddess ʿAštart () appears to have disappeared from most of inland Palestine during the Iron Age due to the ruling classes of the states in the region no longer identifying with the practise of hunting, so that her cult became restricted to the coastal areas such as in Philistia, where it enjoyed high prestige until the Graeco-Roman period. An Ascalonian named Philostratos, son of Philostratos, dedicated an altar on the Greek Island of Delos to "Astarte the Palestinian Aphrodite", his city and family.

One ceramic box from the 9th century discovered at the site of Tel Rehov was topped with a leonine figure, suggesting it was the emblematic animal of ʿAṯtart/ʿAštart, with an open mouth and dangling tongue lying in a prone position with its front limbs outstretched and of its paws placed, claws extended, each over a human head. Below the animal is a large opening which either was modelled on the entrance of a shrine or was intended to be a receptacle for a divine image: the leonine animal, who was depicted as imposing its power against the human figures, might have guarded the shrine against human intrusion, and might thus have represented the passage recorded earlier in Ugaritic texts as "May she (ʿAṯtart) shut the jaw of El's attackers" ().

In Israel and Judah

Following the trend of the disappearance of the worship of ʿAštart in inland Palestine, the state-level cult of this goddess was absent from Israelite and Judahite records from an early date, and she seems to have become one of many former gods demoted to the status of entities and powers of blessing under the control of the Israelite national god Yahweh. As such the plural form of ʿAštart's name, (), became used as a term for goddesses and for fertility, while her role as a deity of warfare was absorbed by Yahweh.

The worship of ʿAštart might nevertheless have survived as a minor and popular, but not royal, cult among the Israelite population, with the practice of hunting for undomesticated animals (to be sacrificed) being restricted to the family and local shrines; but not at the state level. The influence of the Neo-Assyrian Ishtar later increased the influence of this cult within the Israelite religion, so that the Ishtar-influenced Israelite ʿAštart might have been the same goddess referred to as the Queen of Heaven (, ) by the Judahite prophet Jeremiah.

The Bible claims that the Israelite king Solomon introduced the worship of the Phoenician ʿAštart in his kingdom, although it is uncertain whether this claim rests on any historical basis or whether it was made retroactively as a reaction against Phoenician religious imports. The cult of the Phoenician ʿAštart appears to have nevertheless enjoyed some level of royal support during the later periods of the Israelite kingdom.

In Transjordan

Although an Ammonite seal dedicated to ʿAštart in Sidon () was found in Sidon, she appears to have been absent from Ammon itself.

Like in Israel and Ammon, there is no evidence of any cult of ʿAštart in Moab or Edom.

In Philistia

The Hebrew Bible records that the Philistines displayed the armour of the dead Israelite king Saul in their temple of "Ashteroth", due to her role as a goddess of war and as the consort of Baal.

The inhabitants of the Philistine city-state of Ascalon worshipped ʿAštart and identified her with the Greek goddess Aphrodite Urania.

Later interpretations of biblical Astaroth

In some kabbalistic texts and in medieval and renaissance occultism (ex. The Book of Abramelin), the name was assigned to a male demon bearing little resemblance to the figure known from antiquity. For the use of the Hebrew plural form in this sense, see Astaroth.

Myths

At Ugarit

In the Baʿal Epic of Ugarit, ʿAṯtartu is one of the allies of the eponymous hero. With the help of Anat she stops him from attacking the messengers who deliver the demands of Yam and later assists him in the battle against the sea god, possibly "exhorting him to complete the task" during it. It's a matter of academic debate if they were also viewed as consorts. Their close relation is highlighted by the epithet "face of Baal" or "of the name of Baal."

A different narrative, so-called "Myth of Astarte the huntress" casts ʿAṯtartu herself as the protagonist, and seemingly deals both with her role as a goddess of the hunt stalking game in the steppe, and with her possible relationship with Baal.

ʿAṯtartu and Anat

Fragmentary narratives describe ʿAṯtartu and Anat hunting together. They were frequently treated as a pair in cult. For example, an incantation against snakebite invokes them together in a list of gods who asked for help. Texts from Emar, which are mostly of ritual nature unlike narrative ones known from Ugarit, indicate that ʿAṯtartu was a prominent deity in that city as well, and unlike in Ugarit, she additionally played a much bigger role in cult followings than Anat.

Misconceptions in scholarship

While the association between ʿAṯtartu and Anat is well attested, primary sources from Ugarit and elsewhere provide no evidence in support of the misconception that Athirat (Asherah) and ʿAṯtartu were ever conflated, let alone that Athirat was ever viewed as Baal's consort like ʿAṯtartu possibly was. Scholar of Ugaritic mythology and the Bible Steve A. Wiggins in his monograph A Reassessment of Asherah: With Further Considerations of the Goddess notes that such arguments rest on scarce biblical evidence (which indicates at best a confusion between obscure terms in the Book of Judges rather than between unrelated deities in Canaanite or Bronze Age Ugaritic religion) sums up the issue with such claims: "(...) Athtart begins with an ayin, and Athirat with an aleph. (...) Athtart appears in parallel with Anat in texts (...), but Athirat and Athtart do not occur in parallel." God lists from Ugarit indicate that ʿAṯtartu was viewed as analogous to Mesopotamian Ishtar and Hurrian Išḫara, but not Athirat.

Other associations

Hittitologist Gary Beckman pointed out the similarity between Astarte's role as a goddess associated with horses and chariots to that played in Hittite religion by another "Ishtar type" goddess, Pinikir, introduced to Anatolia from Elam by Hurrians.

Allat and Astarte may have been conflated in Palmyra. On one of the tesserae used by the Bel Yedi'ebel for a religious banquet at the temple of Bel, the deity Allat was given the name Astarte ('štrt). The assimilation of Allat to Astarte is not surprising in a milieu as much exposed to Aramaean and Phoenician influences as the one in which the Palmyrene theologians lived.

Plutarch, in his On Isis and Osiris, indicates that the King and Queen of Byblos, who, unknowingly, have the body of Osiris in a pillar in their hall, are Melcarthus (i.e. Melqart) and Astarte (though he notes some instead call the Queen Saosis or Nemanūs, which Plutarch interprets as corresponding to the Greek name Athenais).

Lucian of Samosata asserted that, in the territory of Ṣidōn, the temple of Astarte was sacred to Europa. In Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess whom Zeus, having transformed himself into a white bull, abducted, and carried to Crete.

Byron used the name Astarte in his poem Manfred.

  • In Zadig; or, The Book of Fate (; 1747), a novella and work of philosophical fiction by the Enlightenment writer Voltaire, Astarté is a woman, a queen of Babylon reduced to slavery, who finds her first and only love: Zadig.
  • The name Astarte was given to a massive post-starburst galaxy during the cosmic noon (the peak of the star formation rate density).
  • German author Jason Dark featured Astarte in his long-running novel series John Sinclair, in which she is said to be identical with Asherah and Anat. She is depicted as a villain and the historical consort of Baal.
  • Astarte appears as a playable Avenger-class Servant in Fate/Grand Order (2015), with her name stylized as "Ashtart". However, she first introduces herself as "Space Ishtar", and only reveals her true name after her third Ascension.
  • There is an Idol House of Astarte in the Agatha Christie story "The Idol House of Astarte".
  • In the Warhammer 40,000 setting, the High Gothic (stand-in used in place of Latin) name of the Imperial Space Marines is the Adeptus Astartes, named for one of their creators, Amar Astarte, an immortal human.
  • In Persona 5, Astarte is a Persona used by playable character Haru Okumura.
  • In the light novel series That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Astarte appears as an Ultimate skill wielded by Demon Lord Dino.
  • Astarte was an all-female black metal band from Athens, Greece, named after the goddess.

See also

  • Anat
  • Attar (god)
  • Esther
  • Ishtar
  • Išḫara
  • Lilith
  • Nanaya
  • Nana (Kushan goddess)
  • Star of Ishtar
  • Tanit
  • Asherah
  • Atargatis
  • Venus

References

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Britannica Online Encyclopedia - Astarte (ancient deity)
  • Jewish Encyclopedia - Astarte worship among the Hebrews