Astarte
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 bōšet upon the consonants of the original name; some other suggest it is a result of the Canaanite shift from /ā/ to /ō/, or, with an assumption of an early form *, as a conventional occurrence of the shift -āi- to -ōē-.
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 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.
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.
Attestations
At Ebla
The earliest record of ʿAṯtart is from Ebla in the 3rd millennium BC, where her name is attested in the forms and .In early Mari
The main cult centre of ʿAṯtart was Mari, where early texts from her temple pre-dating the city's destruction by the Akkadian Empire record her name as , who appears to have been distinguished from ʿAṯtart's East Semitic equivalent, the Mesopotamian goddess Ištar, at Mari.One text from Mari records that offerings were made to both ʿAṯtarat and the river-god Nārum together.
Among [Amorites]
In Amorite Mari
The main cult centre of ʿAṯtart was still the city of Mari during the Amorite period, when her name is attested as a theophoric element in personal names such as . However, her name was otherwise written in cuneiform using ideograms and without the feminine suffix, in the forms and .A contemporary incantation against snakebites from Ugarit recorded the existence of a manifestation of ʿAṯtart who resided in Mari.
At Ugarit
At Ugarit, the local variant of ʿAṯtart, , was devoid of any astral aspects or associations with ʿAṯtar, and she played a minor role in mythological texts, but was often mentioned in Ugaritic ritual and administrative texts, thus suggesting that she was important for the institution of the royalty.ʿAṯtartu at Ugarit was associated with the goddess Anat, with Anat usually preceding ʿAṯtartu, and the two goddesses were often connected to each other through poetic parallelism. Both goddesses shared common traits such as perfect beauty, which characterised young goddesses, with the human Ḥuraya being compared to them in the text KTU 1.13 III using the terms , in which Anat and ʿAṯtartu were connected through poetic parallels.
Another trait which both Anat and ʿAṯtartu shared was their love of war, and their pairing appears to have been due to their common roles as beautiful hunters and warrior goddesses. The Ugaritic ʿAṯtartu nevertheless did not yet possess the erotic traits of the later Canaanite ʿAštart.
As hunter goddess
In the text KTU 1.92, ʿAṯtartu is called ʿAṯtartu the Huntress in the lines 2-3, with the next line mentioning her as "going to the desert". The following lines recorded that the goddess saw something whose name is lost due to damage to the text, and line 5 mentions that the deeps surge with water, which might either refer to a celestial sign or to a possible damp terrain where ʿAṯtartu was hunting. The lines 6-13 described ʿAṯtartu taking cover in the low ground and holding her weapons while hunting, and she finally slew an animal whose name is lost in line 14. Following this, ʿAṯtartu fed the animal she had slain to the gods El and Yarikh.Thus, present in the Northwest Semitic goddess was present a trait which was also characteristic of the South Arabian masculine hypostasis of ʿAṯtar, in whose honour sacred hunts were performed as fertility rite. This hunter aspect of ʿAṯtartu later faded away by the 1st millennium BC.
In the later portion of the text KTU 1.92, ʿAṯtartu was given clothing, after which she is described as , meaning either raising a shadow like the stars, implying that ʿAṯtartu herself was brilliant and removed a shadow like the stars do, or as herself shining like the stars. This passage leads to another one in which Baal desires ʿAṯtartu for her beauty, and approaches her.
ʿAṯtartu also appears as a huntress in the text KTU 1.114, where she and her sister Anat are consistently described as hunting together and bringing back game whose meat they distributed to the gods. In this text, ʿAṯtartu is mentioned before Anat, unlike most Ugaritic texts where this order is inverted, although the two goddesses are again connected through poetic parallels in the lines 10 to 11, reading "ʿAṯtartu and Anat he approached; ʿAṯtartu had prepared a steak for him, and Anat a tenderloin".