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Updated: June 6, 2025
The whole work figures, inscriptions, and outer mouldings is executed with the utmost care. The laborious solicitude with which the smallest details are carried out is to be explained by the destination of this little plaque, namely, the temple in the centre of Sippara in which a triad consisting of Sin, Samas, and Istar was the object of worship.
So Sargon became an agriculturist and gardener like his adopted father, till the goddess Istar beheld and loved him, and eventually gave him his kingdom and crown. Whatever may have been the real history of Sargon's rise to power, certain it is that he showed himself worthy of it.
Centuries had already passed since Sargon of Akkad had made himself master of the Mediterranean coast and his son Naram-Sin had led his forces to the Peninsula of Sinai. Istar of Babylonia had become Ashtoreth of the Canaanites, and Babylonian trade had long moved briskly along the very road that Abraham traversed.
The result of Istar's disappearance under the earth is that all love and courtship cease both among men and the lower animals, and Ea himself is appealed to, to bring to an end so unnatural a state of affairs. A messenger is sent to the lower regions to cause the release of Istar and the reascent of Tammuz.
The great god of the Assyrians was, of course, the god of battles, the director of armies, and in that capacity, the spouse of Istar, who was no less warlike than himself. His name was often used, in the plural, to signify the gods in general, as that of Istar was used for the goddesses.
The poem in which the narrative is preserved gives a description of the "house of darkness, where they behold no light," and then tells how, at the orders of Ninkigal or Allat, queen of Hades, Istar is deprived, successively, in spite of her remonstrances, of all her ornaments, and how the plague-demon Namtar is bidden to strike her with all manner of diseases.
From Tammuz we naturally pass to Istar, one of the few goddesses of old Babylonia, and by far the most famous of them. Istar was originally the goddess of the earth, and both mother and sister of the sun-god, for we are led to believe that she is at first the same as Davkina.
It is a proof of the influence of the Sumerian element in the Babylonian population, that this conception of the goddess was never forgotten in Babylonia; it was only when Babylonian culture was handed on to the Semitic nations of the west that Istar became either the male Atthar of southern Arabia and Moab, or the emasculated Ashtoreth of Canaan.
Among the Assyrians the national purpose was predominantly one of military aggrandizement. Istar communicates to Esar-haddon this promise of support: "Fear not, O Esar-haddon; the breath of inspiration which speaks to thee is spoken by me, and I conceal it not. . . . I am the mighty mistress, Istar of Arbela, who have put thine enemies to flight before thy feet.
It is not so with Chaldæa. Only a few have been identified beyond all doubt, those namely of which we have Hebrew or Greek transcriptions, preserving for us the real Chaldæan original; Ilou, Bel, Nisroch, Beltis, Istar, are examples of this.
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