Astarte

Mythology of Astarte

Picture: Ostracon with the image of an unidentified goddess in theform of a female winged sphinx and with a complex crown may well depict Astarte in one of her Near Eastern forms.New Kingdom, from Deir el-Medina.

Astarte was the West Semitic counterpart of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar (the Sumerian Inanna) worshipped in Mesopotamia. Like Ishtar, she had both a benevolent and a terrifying aspect - she was a goddess of love and fertility, but also of war. This latter aspect was dominent in the goddess's Syro-Canaanite manifestation - she appears as a war goddess in Hebrew Bible (I Samuel 31) and entered Egypt in this guise during the New Kingdom where she was particularly linked to the military use of chariots and horses. She is mentioned on the Sphinx Stela set by Amenophis II (perhaps her first appearance in Egyptian texts) as being delighted with the young prince's equestrian skill and, like the Syrian goddess Anat, was believed to protect the pharaoh's chariot in battle. She was adopted into the Egyptian pantheon as a daughter of Ra (or sometimes Ptah) and wife of the god Seth with whose fearsome and bellicose nature she could easily be equated. According to the fragmentary 19th-dynasty story of Astarte and the Sea, the goddess seems to have been involved in thwarting the demands of the tyrannical sea god Yam, though the details of this myth are lost to us. While the sexual aspect of Astarte does not seem to have been as pronounced in Egyptian religion as in her Canaanite homeland, it was probably not entirely absent in her Egyptian mythology.

Iconography of Astarte

In ancient Egypt, Astarte was usually portrayed as a naked woman on horseback brandishing weapons and wearing an Atef Crown or a headdress with bull's horns. According to the Classical writer Philo, Astarte wore the horns of a bull as a symbol of domination; but Mesopotamian and Syrian gods and goddesses commonly wore horns as a sign of their divinity, so this attribute may not have had any special significance with Astarte. A number of depictions of an otherwise unidentified goddess wearing a horned helmet - as on ostraca found at the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina - may well represent this goddess.

Worship of Astarte

A formal temple of Astarte existed in the Ramessid capital of Pi-Ramesse in the Delta, and there were doubtless a number of temples where the goddess was incorporated into the existing cult, such as that found at San el-Hagar, the ancient Tanis, where Astarte is known to have been worshipped along with the Egyptian god Mut and Khonsu. While there is not a great deal of evidence from Egypt of the popular veneration of Astarte - as opposed to expressions of her tutelary role as military deity - votive stelae showing worship of the goddess are known, and the appearance of her image or name on scarabs and ostraca may also indicate a level of popular acceptance.