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" ().
As warrior goddess Attestations of ʿAṯtartu as a warrior goddess at Ugarit are minimal, with the principal one being her role in the text
KTU 1.2 I 40, where she and Anat together restrain Baal by holding, respectively, his left and right hands. This text also linked ʿAṯtartu and Anat through poetic parallelism in the lines "His right hand Anat seized, His left hand ʿAṯtartu seized" (). The Ugaritic text
KTU 1.86, the Book of Dreams (), mentions the horses of ʿAṯtartu, which might possibly be another allusion to her role as a warrior. Possibly due to her role as a goddess of warfare, ʿAṯtartu was sometimes mentioned alongside the god
Resheph in Ugaritic texts, such as in administrative documents, with jars of wine for the temples of ʿAṯtartu and of Resheph- being respectively mentioned immediately after each other in the text
KTU 4.219, and in the text
KTU 1.91 mentioning that the (). Moreover, the attribute animal of Resheph was the lion, which was analogous to the lioness being the symbol of the warrior goddess ʿAṯtartu.
As healer goddess In the text
KTU 1.114, ʿAṯtartu and Anat also went to hunt for ingredients to cure the drunkenness of El, to whose household they belonged, and they are later mentioned in the narrative as applying the components of the cure to cause the healing, thus connecting the two goddesses with healing. Among the Ugaritic incantations mentioning ʿAṯtartu are two where she is invoked to protect against snakebites: in the first incantation, from the text
KTU 1.100, which is part of a sequence addressed to the sun-goddess
Shapash to be delivered to a succession of deities, she is mentioned immediately after Anat, and the two goddesses' names are combined in the form "Anat and ʿAṯtartu at ʾInbubu" (), and the incantation itself is intended to be delivered to Anat's home at ʾInbubu, thus putting ʿAṯtartu on a secondary level compared to Anat. ʿAṯtartu was also mentioned on the side of the tablet on which the inscription was written. In this incantation, the first instance of ʿAṯtartu was that of ʿAṯtartu of Ugarit, while the second one was ʿAṯtartu of Mari. In a second incantation against snakebites, from the text
KTU 1.107, ʿAṯtartu was mentioned after Anat in a pairing of the two goddesses as part of a list also including pairings of Baal and
Dagon, and
Resheph and
Yarikh. A third incantation, from the text
KTU 92.2016, either against fever or for good childbirth, mentioned "Baal and the holy ones in the river" (), followed by "the torrent of ʿAṯtartu, in the
Raḥbānu" (), itself in turn followed by "in the sea" (), suggesting that this incantation alluded to three distinct water bodies.
As leonine goddess ʿAṯtartu's emblem was the lion, and she was explicitly called a lioness and a panther in the hymn
RIH 98/02, which reads: The hymn especially emphasizes ʿAṯtartu and her name, with its mention of the goddess as "name" possibly being connected to her role as the Name-of-Baal, and the second line calls her a "lioness" while the fourth and fifth lines liken her to a panther. This association of ʿAṯtartu with the lion corroborates with significant comparative evidence from ancient West Asia and North Africa: • ʿAṯtartu's East Semitic equivalent, (), also had a lion as her attribute animal; • one of ʿAṯtartu's Egyptian hypostases, the goddess
Qetesh, is depicted standing on a lion on a plaque where she is given the triple name of Qetesh-ʿAstart-ʿAnat (); • ʿAṯtartu herself was identified with multiple lion-goddesses in Egypt; • the Phoenician goddess
Tanit, whose name was linked to that of ʿAṯtartu's later Phoenician iteration, ʿAštart, was represented with a lion's head; • the masculine counterpart of ʿAṯtartu, ʿAṯtaru, was also called "Lion" (). ʿAṯtartu in her form as a lioness might have been invoked as a theophoric element in the personal names (), and (), the latter of which holds the same meaning as the personal names () and (), both meaning "Servant of ʿAṯtartu."
As gender non-conforming goddess Although divine roles were often modelled on human ones, such as masculine gods in relation to patriarchy and kingship being represented like human men, and feminine goddesses in relation to marriage and domestic chores being represented like human women, the exceptional roles of ʿAṯtartu and ʿAnatu as hunter and warrior goddesses signalled them as being at odds with the social norms of the societies where human women were not supposed to hunt of which they were deities. This characterisation is made explicit in the myth of Aqhat, where Aqhat exclaims to Anat, (), meaning either "now do womenfolk hunt?" as a question, or "now womenfolk hunt!" sarcastically, to contrast her with human women, who were not supposed to hunt. Thus, while Baal and Resheph were both hunter gods whose roles as such made them conform to masculine gender roles, the roles of ʿAṯtartu and Anat as hunter and warrior goddesses constituted an inversion with respect to the gender roles of human women. This made them role models and mentors, as Anat does in the story of Aqhat, in which she addresses him with the intimate term "my brother" and tells him that she will instruct him in hunting, thus being able to bond with the addressee and be present and active in him development into an accomplished hunter. The episode of ʿAṯtartu performing filial duties by "shutting down the jaws" of the enemies of El was another case of gender inversion where the goddess successfully performed actions which among mortals were reserved for men only.
Manifestations One of the manifestations of ʿAṯtartu attested in the Late Bronze Age was (), whose name has been variously interpreted as ʿAṯtartu of the Hurrians, ʿAṯtartu of the Grotto or Cavern, ʿAṯtartu of the Tomb(s), or ʿAṯtartu of the Window, and was also recorded at Ugarit in Akkadian as (), and as (). Some Ugaritic texts identified ʿAṯtartu with the Hurrian goddesses
ʾIšḫara and
Šauška and supporters of the interpretation of the name ʿAṯtartu Ḫurri as "ʿAṯtartu of the Hurrians" suggest that this manifestation of ʿAṯtartu was the one identified with the Hurrian goddess Šauška. Other possible manifestations of ʿAṯtartu at Ugarit might have included () and (), of still uncertain meaning, with the latter being affixed with the title ().
As member of the household of El In in the hymn
RIH 98/02, ʿAṯtartu is called on to shut the jaw of El's attackers in the line "May she shut the jaw of El's attackers" (), which finds a literary parallel in the
myth of Aqhat, where the titular hero Aqhat is instructed to "shut the jaw of his (father's) detractors" (), thus signaling ʿAṯtartu as performing filial duties by protecting El, the patriarch of whose household she was a member of.
As consort of Baal Although there is little to no evidence of ʿAṯtartu being explicitly considered the consort of Baal at Ugarit, the text
KTU 1.114 did refer to Baal as sexually desiring ʿAṯtartu, with possible mention of a bed in line 32 of the text perhaps alluding to these two deities engaging in sexual intercourse. Although the once widespread view that Anat was also a consort of Baal has recently fallen out of favour due to lack of evidence from Ugarit, indirect evidence, such as Egyptian adaptations of West Semitic myths in which both ʿAṯtartu and Anat were the consorts of Baal might constitute indirect evidence that this might also have been the case at Ugarit. Sacrifice to ʿAṯtartu might have been included in the list of sacrifices for the family of Baal in the Ugaritic text
KTU 1.148.16 possibly because ʿAṯtartu might have been regarded as the consort of Baal at Ugarit. Contemporary sources, including Egyptian adaptations of West Semitic myths which feature ʿAṯtartu and Anat as the brides of Baal, and later sources, such as the role of the Phoenician ʿAštart as the consort of Baal, also suggest that ʿAṯtartu was a consort of Baal, although this evidence is still very uncertain and this pairing appears to have been distinctly Levantine.
As the "Name of Baal" Another connection between ʿAṯtartu and Baal was through her name (). This name defined the identity of the goddess as being in relation to Baal. ʿAṯtartu's role as the Name-of-Baal might also have been connected to the use of Baal's name as a magical weapon, such as in the text
KTU 1.2 IV 28, where one line reads "By Name, ʿAṯtartu hexed (Yammu)" (), in reference to ʿAṯtartu invoking the power of Baal's name and his titles, such as "Mighty Baal" () and "Rider of the Clouds" (), to hex the god Yammu.
Cult The Ugaritic deity-lists gave minimal importance to ʿAṯtartu in the realm of rituals, and she was the last mentioned in several of these, although she was nevertheless important politically for the ruling dynasty of Ugarit and the administration of that city-state, being thus associated with the institution of the monarchy. In one letter to the king of Ugarit concerning maritime commercial activities with Cyprus, the lines 6 to 9 read "I do indeed speak to Baal Ṣapānu, to the Eternal Sun, to ʿAṯtartu, to Anat, to all the gods of Cyprus" (), placing Baal and ʿAṯtartu in the initial position and naming ʿAṯtartu first, before the other Ugaritic goddesses, indicating the political importance of ʿAṯtartu at Ugarit. The temple of ʿAṯtartu was likely located within the city of Ugarit, perhaps within the complex of the city's royal palace itself, with administrative records mentioning the existence of cultic personnel devoted to the goddess at this temple, the Ugaritic Akkadian text
RS 20.235 referring to a servant of the goddess and the text
KTU 4.163 mentioning singers of ʿAṯtartu, while the text
KTU 4.219 contains the record of a payment of silver for the temple of the goddess immediately before that of a payment for the temple of the god Resheph. Ugaritic administrative texts also mentioned the use of wine in the royal rituals pertaining to ʿAṯtartu, with the ritual text
KTU 1.112 mentioning the offering of a jar of wine to the goddess's manifestation of
ʿAṯtartu Ḫurri. The texts
KTU 4.242 I 1 and
11 mention clothing for the statue of (, ), who was identified with the North Syrian goddess (, ), with ʿAṯtartu Šadî herself being referred to as Ištar Ṣēri in Akkadian texts from Ugarit. Ištar Ṣēri was invoked as a divine witness in an oath between the kings of Ugarit and
Carchemish, further attesting of her importance for the royalty of Ugarit, and she appears to have been popular enough in northern Syria and the Hittite Empire that she was worshipped in Hatti, where her name was written as (). Although ʿAṯtartu had none of the erotic traits of her later Canaanite variant, ʿAṯtartu Šadî/Ištar Ṣēri was nevertheless present in
hierogamy royal entry rituals whereby a statue or a woman representing the goddess was inserted in the alcove of Ugarit's royal palace. Due to these aspects of the goddess,
Akkadian texts from Ugarit and Emar identified ʿAṯtartu with her Mesopotamian counterpart Ištar, with the Akkadian milieu within which the Ugaritic texts were composed not distinguishing ʿAṯtartu from Ištar, and the Akkadian text
RS. 17.22 + 17.87 from Ugarit referred to a second temple of hers as the "-temple of Ištar."
At Emar ʿAṯtart was imported from the Levant into the Amorite city-state of
Emar during the Late Bronze Age, where she received a major cult and possessed a temple at the highest point of the city of Emar itself, with a treasure of existing there of (, ). Like at Ugarit, she did not exhibit any astral traits and was not associated to her masculine counterpart, ʿAṯtar. ʿAṯtart was worshipped at Emar, where, like at Mari, the name of the goddess was written in cuneiform using ideograms and without the feminine suffix , in the forms () and (), while also appearing in ritual texts and onomastica there. ʿAṯtart at Emar was worshipped under various manifestations, such as: • , variously interpreted as "ʿAṯtart of the Sea," ʿAṯtart as patron-goddess of the abû shrines and of the month Abî, or "ʿAṯtart of the fathers"; • (, ); • ().
As warrior goddess ʿAṯtart's role as a warrior goddess is more attested at Emar due to the widespread reference of the manifestation of ʿAṯtart as ʿAṯtart of Battle (), who was also the main basis of the cult of this goddess at Emar. The warrior role of ʿAṯtart at Emar is also attested in the use of her name as a theophoric element in personal names such as () and (). The cult of ʿAṯtartu of Battle was performed by a priestess called the (), and the participants of her night festival were called the (, ).
As hunter goddess ʿAṯtart's connection to hunting at Emar in ritual settings is recorded in a text mentioning "on the 16th day is the hunt of ʿAṯtart" (), that is the hunt of ʿAṯtart which was performed on the 16th of the month of Abi. This ritual hunt was performed on the same day as the procession to her manifestation of the Poplar ʿAṯtart () from "the storehouse", which ascribes to ʿAṯtart agricultural traits otherwise unknown of her elsewhere during the Bronze Age. The line also parallels the
Sabaic hallowed phrase "the day when he performed the hunt for ʿAṯtar" (), used to refer to the ritual hunts performed for the South Arabian god
ʿAṯtar, who was himself a masculine counterpart of ʿAṯtart. Another Emarite text records that the hunt of ʿAṯtart was performed on the 16th of the month of Marzaḫāni, with the hunt of Baal being on the 17th of this same month, and both hunts being mentioned together in the texts from Emar, suggesting that the hunt of the goddess involved game or provisions, and that ʿAṯtart and Baal appeared together at Emar, likely under the influence of their pairing in the Levant; Baal himself appears as a hunter at Ugarit, but never alongside ʿAṯtart as he does at Emar.
As consort of Baal Although it was the pairing of the Hurro-Syrian goddess
Ḫebat and
Baal which was the principal divine couple at Emar, and despite there being no evidence yet that ʿAṯtart was explicitly paired with Baal at Emar as she was among the Canaanites, ʿAṯtart and Baal nevertheless had temples dedicated in common to both of them, and a common cult to this pair is suggested from the appearance of their names as theophoric elements in the popular personal names () and (). There is nonetheless little beyond this curcumstantial evidence at Emar for any pairing of ʿAṯtart with Baal, which appears to have been a Levantine occurrence.
Legacy The worship of ʿAṯtart in the Middle Euphrates region, including at Emar, lasted until the Late
Bronze Age. By the Iron Age, the name of ʿAṯtart appears to have become used to mean "goddess" in general, so that an Akkadian inscription from the city of
Ḫanat referred to the goddess ʿAnat as "the strongest of the s (goddesses)" ().
In Egypt ʿAṯtart was eventually imported into
New Kingdom Egypt, where she was renowned as a West Semitic war-goddess and often appeared alongside ʿAnat, with the West Semitic association of the two goddesses having also been borrowed by the Egyptians. Her cult is attested in Egypt from as early as the reign of
Amenhotep II in the 15th century BC, and the goddess herself was attested under various manifestations, such as () and (), that is the same form of the goddess whose name in Ugaritic was . , a dedication to Astarte by the daughter of Peṭ-ʾIsi (, ) The cult of ʿAṯtart would remain well-established in Late Period Egypt, during the 1st millennium BC, at
Memphis, where a significant community of Semitic origin had been living since the New Kingdom, and where a temple of the goddess was part of the city's temple of the god
Ptah. From at least as early as the 6th century BC, ʿAṯtart was identified with the Egyptian goddess
Isis, and a 7th-century BC
ivory box discovered at Ur and which had been dedicated to ʿAṯtart by the daughter of one an individual whose name, Peṭ-ʾIsi, () meant "Given by Isis", might have originated in Egypt.
As warrior goddess Under the 18th and 19th dynasties, ʿAṯtart was depicted either standing or on horseback and holding a sword and shield, and she was sometimes associated to the god
Resheph just like she was at Ugarit due to her warrior role, as attested through a stela of
Amenhotep II which includes a line mentioning both them together, "Resheph and ʿAṯtart were rejoicing in him doing all that his heart desired" (), and both deities were depicted and mentioned on a private votive stele found at the site of
Tell el-Borg in the Sinai. During this period, some of the Levantine myths regarding ʿAṯtart were translated into
Egyptian, as attested by the fragmented Papyrus so-called of "ʿAṯtart and the Sea," the Egyptian translation of a West Semitic myth in which ʿAṯtart is called a "furious and tempestuous goddess" (). During the 20th dynasty, one of the inscriptions of Ramesses III recording his military victories against the Libyans mentioned ʿAnat and ʿAṯtart in a praise to the king, "
Montu and Set are with him in every battle; ʿAnat and ʿAṯtart are a shield to him" (); and a poem contained the lines "the yoke saddles of your chariot: they are ʿAnat and ʿAṯtart" (), which likened his chariot to the two goddesses. ʿAṯtart was also worshipped at the
Temple of Hibis in the
Kharga Oasis, where she is depicted, under the name (), three times on a 5th-century BC relief, followed by Resheph. During the
Ptolemaic period, ʿAṯtart was depicted on a chariot in a relief from the
Temple of Edfu, where she is called "ʿAṯtart, Mistress of Horses, Lady of the Chariot" ().
As healer goddess In a
medical papyrus from the 14th century BC, which contains a Northwest Semitic inscription written in
Hieratic, the goddess, who is called , appears as a healer, and is mentioned alongside , that is the Northwest Semitic healer-god Eshmun, to whom she would be often found associated later in Iron Age Phoenicia. ʿAṯtart was still remembered as a huntress goddess during the Iron Age, and she was mentioned as such in a 5th-century BC
Aramaic incantation against scorpion stings inscribed in
Demotic from the
Wādī al-Ḥammāmāt, whose text includes the lines "Hand of my father, hand of Baal, hand of ʿAttar my mother!" () and "Face of Baal! Cover, coat his wounds (with spittle)! Face of the Huntress (and) face of Baal!" ().
As hunter goddess ʿAṯtart in the Wādī al-Ḥammāmāt text was referred to both as "ʿAttar my mother" and "the huntress", attesting of the continuation of the healer role of this goddess recorded since the Bronze Age at Ugarit, as well as of her pairing with Baal. The incantation's invocation of ʿAṯtart and Baal against the "enemy", that is the scorpion which has stung an individual, parallels the combat of these deities against cosmic or divine enemies in the Ugaritic texts.
As consort of Set In the 20th dynasty text, "
The Contendings of Horus and Seth", ʿAnat and ʿAṯtart are referred to as divine daughters who are also the future wives of the god
Set, whom the Egyptians identified with Baal. A Late Bronze Age seal from Egyptian-ruled Palestine discovered at the site of
Baytīn represented ʿAṯtart as a warrior, and was inscribed with the name of the goddess, written as (). In the story of "ʿAṯtart and the Sea," which is an Egyptian translation of a Levantine mythological tradition, the
Ennead, which in this story stood for the West Semitic divine council headed by El, initially offers tribute to the sea-god
Yam to be given to him by the goddess
Renenutet, and after this proves to be unsuccessful, they send him more appealing tribute to be delivered to him by ʿAṯtart, who weeps on being informed of this. When she goes to Yam, he sees her singing and laughing and addresses her as a "furious and tempestuous goddess" (), and then instructs her to ask the Ennead to give him their daughter, with ʿAṯtart's tribute being unsuccessful since it is followed by a conflict between Set and Yam following the Levantine tradition of the contest between Baal and Yammu.
As the "Face of Baal" ʿAṯtart was called "Face of Baal" () in the Wādī al-Ḥammāmāt inscription, which defined the goddess as representing the presence of the god Baal, especially in his temple. This usage of the name of a deity to represent their presence is also attested among the Phoenicians, who called the goddess
Tanit as "the Face of
Baal (Hammon)" (), and among Israelites, in the verse of Book of Psalms of the Bible reading "Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due his name" ().
In Canaan Following the end of the Bronze Age, the
Canaanite peoples during the Iron Age continued worshipping ʿAṯtart under the name of (), who was a continuation of her Ugaritic form, ʿAṯtart. During the 11th to 10th centuries BC, the early Canaanites invoked the lioness aspect of their variant of ʿAštart through inscriptions bearing the name (), meaning "Servant of the Lioness (that is, ), on arrowheads along with the name (), meaning "Son of Anat," implying that ʿAštart and ʿAnat were the patron-goddesses of the warriors who used these arrows.
In Phoenicia The Phoenician variant of ʿAštart was the goddess (). By the time that the Canaanite
Phoenician civilisation had emerged in the 1st millennium BC, ʿAštart overshadowed the other Semitic goddesses in the Phoenician pantheon and had become the main personification of a less war-like and more sensual vitality. Like her East Semitic equivalent,
Ishtar, the Phoenician ʿAštart was a complex goddess with multiple aspects: being the feminine principle of the life-giving force, ʿAštart was a fertility goddess who promoted love and sensuality, in which capacity she presided over the reproduction of cattle and family growth; the goddess was also the consort of the masculine principle of this life-giving force, variously personified as
Hadad or
Baal, who himself incarnated plant growth and presided over rain, water, springs, floods, and the sprouting and growth of cereals. This pairing of ʿAštart and Baal was later mentioned in the 1st century AD by
Philōn of Byblos, who wrote about the goddess Astarte and Zeus (that is, Baal), called Adōdos (itself a Hellenisation of Phoenician ) and Dēmarous, ruling over the land with the consent of
Kronos (that is,
ʾEl). As well as the goddess of carnal love and of fertility, ʿAštart was also a warrior goddess, although she no longer exhibited much of the hunter aspect of the Bronze Age ʿAṯtart, which had faded away so that by the 1st millennium BC the hunting scenes on the shrine of the Phoenician ʿAštart at the temple of Bustān aš-Šayḫ depicted her consort in the city-state of Ṣidōn, the god
Eshmun, as a male hunter figure; ʿAštart was also a celestial goddess possessing astral traits and who was identified with the Morning Star, and occasionally to the Moon. The dove was a sacred animal of ʿAštart, as, like with her East Semitic equivalent Ishtar, was the lion. The cult of ʿAštart reached its highest level of prestige among the Phoenicians, in both mainland Phoenicia and thanks to the extensive maritime trade endeavours of the Phoenicians, in the Phoenician, and later Punic, colonies throughout the
Mediterranean world, with her worship being recorded in
Cyprus, as well as in Punic Africa and
Sicily, with the oldest recorded mention of the Phoenician ʿAštart is from an 8th-century inscription from a bronze statuette, often called the
Seville statuette or the
El Carambolo statuette, which had been imported into
Iberia from mainland Phoenicia. During the Hellenistic period, the Phoenicians identified their own goddess ʿAštart with the Egyptian goddess
Isis) due to the influence of the Egyptian
Osiris myth on their own conceptualisations of the afterlife and salvation. Among the Phoenician and Punic personal names containing the name of ʿAštart were (, , already attested in Amorite Mari as , ), and ().
Iconography ʿAštart was often depicted as a naked goddess because of her role as a fertility and sexuality goddess, and many terracotta figures of naked women found in
Israel and
Judea were depictions of ʿAštart, although not every image of a naked woman from this location was a representation of her. ʿAštart was also depicted in the form of "concubines of the dead" statuettes placed in burials, as well as in
sympathetic magic figurines possessing fertile traits intended to ensure that women desiring to have children would become pregnant. Images of an armed goddess might also have been representation of ʿAštart as a goddess of war and hunting, due to which she was often depicted on horseback or on a war chariot, sometimes holding an
epsilon axe. ʿAštart was often depicted with a "Hathoric" hairstyle, which connected her with the Phoenician ivory sculptures of the woman at the window and to amulets representing a goddess who was analogous to Qetesh. ʿAštart was also sometimes depicted surrounded by twin gods in some Phoenician coins.
ʿAštart Ḥor Although the wooden throne upon which the Seville/El Carambolo Statuette rested had perished, its surviving bronze stool was inscribed with a dedication to (), that is to the Phoenician form of the manifestation already attested in pre-Phoenician times, or maybe associated with Aphrodite of the salt marshes. The cult of ʿAštart Ḥor held a certain importance, especially as part of royal rituals, and her domains were located at
Šuksu, and at Ṣaʾu, a town belonging to the city-state of
Siyannu.
As the "Name of Baal" Another manifestation of ʿAštart was "ʿAštart-Name-of-Baal" (), who was the Phoenician form of "ʿAṯtartu-Name-of-Baal" () already attested in the Bronze Age at Ugarit. This name defined the identity of the goddess as being in relation to Baal.
At Sidon The worship of ʿAštart at the Phoenician city-state of
Sidon dates from the Late Bronze Age, when her name was recorded in Hittite texts, Ugaritic epics, and evocatory formulae. The royal family of Ṣidōn worshipped ʿAštart, with several of its members bearing names in which the name of ʿAštart appears as a theophoric element, such as Amoashtart| (), Bodashtart| (), and (), and her title of (, ) being a theophoric element in the name of the 7th century BC Sidonian king Abdi-Milkutti| (, ). The kings of Ṣidōn from the 5th century BC, such as
Eshmunazar I and his son
Tabnit I, included "priest of ʿAštart" as part of their royal titulatory, and while Tabnit I's son,
Eshmunazar II, who died when he was 14 years old, did not hold the title of "priest of ʿAštart," his mother
Amoashtart was "priestess of ʿAštart." Before his death, Eshmunazar II and Amoashtart had built a sanctuary of ʿAštart at (Sidon-Land-by-the-Sea), another sanctuary in the city's district of šmm ʾdrm (the Lofty Heavens), and a third sanctuary for ʿAštart šim Baʿl, with Eshmunazar II's cousin and successor
Bodashtart having expanded the sanctuary of Ṣidōn ʾArṣ Yam. As attested by three statuettes of children inscribed with dedications reading "to ʿAštart, to his Lord, to Eshmun" (), which mention ʿAštart along with Eshmun, the 6th to 4th century
temple of this god at Bustān aš-Šayḫ where these statuettes were found was in fact a common sanctuary of Eshmun and ʿAštart. A large shrine to ʿAštart was located on the eastern side of the sanctuary, below the platform upon which the temple proper rested, and it contained a paved waterpool and a stone throne flanked with sphinxes dedicated to the Sidonian ʿAštart, which itself rested against the background wall, which was decorated with hunting scenes. of
Julia Maesa, depicting "Car of Astarte", four palm branches protruding from roof During the period of the middle
Roman Empire, a Sidonian coin of the Roman empress
Julia Cornelia Paula was issued bearing the image of ʿAštart resting her right arm on a cross-headed standard and holding a ship's
stern in her left hand while crowned by the Roman goddess of victory,
Victoria.
At Byblos grotto (source of
Adonis River) in the background The temple of ʿAštart at
Afqa, in the territory of the city-state of Byblos, was one of the most renowned sanctuaries in ancient Phoenicia, located at the source of the
Adonis river, where, according to
Melito of Sardis, was the tomb of
Adonis, whose blood turned the river's water red when he died there; according to
Pseudo-Melito, this was the location of the tomb of Tammuz; and this temple was believed in ancient times to have been built by the legendary Cypriot king
Cinyras, and it contained a waterpool, as well as pipelines which were used for lustrations linked to the cultic practises, and sacred prostitution, which was a typical part of the cult of ʿAštart, was also performed there. ʿAštart of Afqa, who possessed erotic traits, was a goddess of the planet Venus as the Evening Star which brought together the sexes. This goddess later identified in Graeco-Roman times with the Greek goddess
Aphrodite Urania (). By the Hellenistic period, the goddess
Baalat Gebal had become explicitly assimilated to ʿAštart, and therefore to the Greek
Aphrodite), with whom ʿAštart was herself equated, at Byblos, as well as at Afqa. According to
Zosimus, a phenomenon would take place at site of the temple of Afqa whereby a bright and fiery star-like object would be shot up from the top of a Lebanese mountain and would fall into the Adonis river. Pilgrims would gather at the temple on days of this occurrence, and would throw precious objects, such as gold- and silverworks or
linen or
sea silk into the waterpool of the temple as offerings: the offerings which sunk into the water were believed to have been accepted by ʿAštart while the ones which floated were considered to have been rejected by the goddess. The Roman emperor Constantine I ordered the destruction of the temple of Afqa, although Zosimus and
Sozomen in the 5th century AD recorded that pilgrims still gathered at the site of the temple to make offerings on the days when the luminous phenomenon would occur. The temple building itself was permanently destroyed in an earthquake during the 6th century AD, although it remained a popular sacred site connected to fertility until recent times.
Tanit and ʿAštart Although the goddess
Tanit, whose first attestation was from the city of
Sarepta, has been argued to have been a hypostasis of ʿAštart in older scholarship, the two goddesses to have been nevertheless possibly distinguished from each other in inscriptions. However, the evidence for so is still ambiguous and the name might itself have been a title which was attributed to multiple deities, including to ʿAštart. One inscription from Sarepta recording the dedication of a statue to () nevertheless suggests some form of identification between Tanit and ʿAštart.
At Acre ʿAštart held high importance in the religious structure of the city-state of
Acre, where she was identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite in Graeco-Roman times, when she was the patron-goddess of the city's public baths. ʿAštart of Acre was depicted as Aphrodite on coins of the city from the 3rd century AD, where she was represented with a
caduceus to her right, and the Greek god
Eros, the son of Aphrodite, riding a dolphin to her left. The goddess was however most often depicted on the coins of Acre under the traits of the Greek goddess
Tyche in the latter's role as the patron goddess of a municipality, in which capacity she was represented as seated on a rock, wearing a crown made of crenellated towers, and placing one foot on the shoulder of a young swimmer who personnified the river Orontes, although the swimmer in the coins of Acre stood for the river-god Belus, that is the present-day
Nahr al-Naʿāmayn, and he held a reed and leans over an amphora, with a crocodile beneath him. Under the reign of the Roman Emperor
Valerian, ʿAštart was depicted coins similarly to a Syrian goddess, with a calathus hat, and seated between two lions like
Atargatis, with her right hand in a blessing position and her left one holding a flower.
At Tyre The goddess ʿAštart held high prestige in the city-state of
Tyre, where she was a dynastic goddess, as attested by the names of the 10th to 9th century BC Tyrian kings Abdastartus| (), (), and Astarymus| (); the king
Hiram I allegedly built a new temple for ʿAštart and Melqart, and the later king
Ithobaal II held the title of "priest of ʿAštart" before he ascended to the throne of Tyre. At Tyre, ʿAštart was closely associated to the god
Melqart and was his consort, a custom which was carried on by the colonists who set out from Tyre to establish themselves throughout the Mediterranean sea. At the site of Ḫirbat aṭ-Ṭayibā, to the south of Tyre, a stone "
throne of Astarte" with an inscription (
KAI 17) was dedicated to ʿAštart in a sacred site located in the middle of the fields of the one who offered the dedication. In the Tyrian town of
Ḥamon, ʿAštart formed a triad with the god Milk-ʿAštart and the Angel of Milk-ʿAštart, and the city's sanctuary of Milk-ʿAštart contained a dedication to ʿAštart. In the 7th century BC, the warrior goddess role of ʿAštart was invoked in the
treaty between the Assyrian king
Esarhaddon and the Tyrian king
Baal I in a line reading "May ʿAštart break your bow in the thick of battle, and have you crouch at the feet of your enemy" (). This description of ʿAštart paralleled that of the Mesopotamian Ishtar, who was given the title of "Lady of Battle and War" (). , depicting
Tyche (left) and Astarte on a
galley holding a crown in her right hand and a scepter in her left hand (right) 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 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. 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 , 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 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 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 ) 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 ==