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Updated: May 26, 2025
This curious mixture in the story of the astral Ishtar, the creation of the astronomers, and the popular Ishtar, is a trait which shows how the old nature-myth has been elaborated in passing through the hands of the literati. The various steps in the process can still be seen.
Sargon placed under her protection, conjointly with Anu, the western gate of his city; and his son, Sennacherib, seems to have viewed Asshur and Ishtar as the special guardians of his progeny. Asshur-bani-pal, the great hunting king was a devotee of the goddess, whom he regarded as presiding over his special diversion, the chase.
In those old times I have worshipped the sun and the dark. I have worshipped the husked grain as the parent of life. I have worshipped Sar, the Corn Goddess. And I have worshipped sea gods, and river gods, and fish gods. Yes, and I remember Ishtar ere she was stolen from us by the Babylonians, and Ea, too, was ours, supreme in the Under World, who enabled Ishtar to conquer death.
No man beheld his fellow; the gods themselves were afraid, so that they retreated into the highest heaven, where they crouched down, cowering like dogs. Then follows the lamentation of Ishtar, to which reference has already been made, the goddess reproaching herself for the part she had taken in the destruction of her people.
In the earliest form in which Ishtar appears, in the old poetry, she is the deity of fertility; when she goes down to the Underworld all productiveness of plants and men ceases; and her primitive character at this time appears in the account of her marriages with animals, in which there is to be recognized the trace of the old zoölatrous period; but as patron of fertility she becomes in time a great goddess and takes on universal attributes she is the mother of gods and men, universal protector and guide.
They bore first the titles now worn by Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus, and were reverenced as the "queen of heaven." Ishtar, of Babylonia, was the "Mother of the Gods," and the "Queen of the Stars." Isis, of Egypt, was "our Immaculate Lady." She was figured with a crown of stars, and with the crescent moon. Venus was an ark brooded over by a dove, or the moon floating on the water.
The next section of the story affords us a picture of the entrance to Aralû: When Ishtar arrived at the gate of the land without return, She spoke to the watchman of the gate: Ho! watchman open thy gate. Open thy gate that I may enter. If thou dost not open the gate, if thou refusest me admission, I will smash the door, break the bolt. I will smash the threshold, force open the portals.
The gods of the Assyrian pantheon impress one as diminutive Ashurs by the side of the big one, and in proportion as they approach nearer to the character of Ashur himself, is their hold upon the royal favor strengthened. Ishtar. Second in rank to Ashur during the most glorious part of Assyrian history stands the great goddess Ishtar.
Among the astrological texts preserved, Ishtar-Venus figures more prominently than the other planets. The appearance of Ishtar during each month and for various days of the month was noted, and then interpreted, partly on the basis of past experience, but also by other factors that for the most part escape us.
It will be recalled that both in the Ishtar hymn and in the one to Marduk above quoted, great stress is laid upon pacifying the deity addressed. Starting from the primitive conception that misfortunes were a manifestation of divine anger, the Babylonians never abandoned the belief that transgressions could be atoned for only by appeasing the anger of the deity.
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