Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/13



SHTAR. The chief goddess in the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians. She was originally a local deity, who in the course of time absorbed the role of other important goddesses, and, dissociated to a large extent from local limitations, became in the systematized pantheon the representative of fertility, both of the soil and of animal and human life. She is thus viewed as the 'great mother,' a title at times applied to her as the mother of mankind, and again as 'mother earth.' The evidence, while not conclusive, points to the ancient city Erech—represented by the mound Warka—in Southern Babylonia as the original home of the Ishtar cult, where she was also known as yanti, i.e., the lady par excellence. The etymology- of the name is unknown, though it is now generally agreed that the name is Semitic. It became a generic name for goddess in general. Nana of Erech was a goddess of a violent type, who encouraged her subjects in the fray, and punished those who disobeyed her with fatal diseases. This warlike side of her nature is emphasized b.v kings like Hammurabi (c.2300 B.C.), who appeared prominently in the role of conquerors, and naturally, when Ishtar came to be incorporated into the Assyrian pantheon, the warlike Ishtar came to occupy a more prominent position in the inscriptions of Assyrian kings dealing so largely with their military exploits than her other phase as the gi-eat mother. As the one great goddess by the side of numerous gods, Ishtar came to be worshiped almost everywhere; and not only were Babylon and Nineveh distinguished by the Ishtar cult, but there were various other places both in the north and in the south in which temples were erected in her honor, with a more or less elaborate priesthood attached. As the life-giving goddess. Ishtar was viewed also as the goddess of sexual love, and it would appear that priestesses were connected with the Ishtar cult who symbolized their devotion to her service by rites of an obscene character. Those rites form the basis of the account given by Herodotus (I. 199) of the sacred prostitutes of Babylon, though it is now recognized that Herodotus's remarks convey an erroneous impression of the character of this Ishtar cult, earlier through willful exaggeration or through misunderstanding and ignorance. In the astrological system of the Babylonians. resting upon the identification of the chief gods of the pantheon with the planets, Ishtar is identified with the planet Venus and occupies a place immediately after the sun and the moon. As Venus she is also the morning and evening star. By virtue of this preeminent position in the heavenly host, she is known as the 'queen' or 'mistress' of heaven. Besides being identified with the planet Venus, Ishtar at times appears as the goddess representing the star Sirius. In the representations of the goddess both sides of her nature, as the goddess of war and the life-giving principle, are found. Among the Assyrians she is pictured generally as clad in flames, with a quiver hanging to both sides, a bow in one hand and a sharp sword in the other; while in Babylonia the type that early became popular was that of the naked goddess, with prominent breasts and the organs of generation sharply emphasized, or the mother with the child at her breast. Under the form Ashtarte or Astarte (q.v.), corrupted into Ashtoreth in the Old Testament, we find the Ishtar cult among the Canaanites; and there seems little reason to question a direct influence exerted by the Babylonian religion in thus leading to the prominence of the .shtarte cult in the West, even though the name ma.v represent a possession that various branches of the Semites had in common. In Southern Arabia we likewise find a deity Athtar. and in .byssinia Astar. both identical in form with Ishtar and -shtarte: but Athtar and Astar are male deities, which speaks in favor of the supposition that the name Ishtar is not a possession peculiar to the Babylonians, but belongs to a common Semitic stock. The endeavor has also been made to trace the name of the Greek goddess Aphrodite to Ashtarte, and therefore indirectly also to Ishtar: while this identification is still doubtful, there is no question of the presence of Semitic influence in the conceptions formed of the goddess of love among the Greeks and Romans. Consult : Barton, "The Semitic Ishtar Cult." in Hehraica (vols, ix.-x); id.. A Sketch of Semitic Origins (New York. 1901), chapters iv. and v.. whose views, however, of the origin of the Ishtar cult still remain to be tested; Jeremias, article "Ishtar,"