Astoreth
Classification : Goddess
Origin Palestine and Philistine
AKA; Astarte
Known Period of Worship
1200 BCE to 200 BCE
Cult Center Palestine Costal region including Jerusalem
Various art references
Literary Source Vetus Testamentum
She was initially a goddess of both war and love. And is
usually depicted wearing a horned head dress.
Biblical references include Kings 11.5 and II kings 23.13.
Solomon is said to have built a temple in her honor near Jerusalem.
Astarte, also spelled Athtart or Ashtart, great goddess of
the ancient Middle East and chief deity of Tyre, Sidon, and Elat, important
Mediterranean seaports. Ashtaroth, the plural form of the goddess’s name in
Hebrew, became a general term denoting goddesses and paganism.
King Solomon, married to foreign wives, “followed Astarte
the goddess of the Sidonians” (1 Kings 11:5). Later the cult places to
Ashtoreth were destroyed by Josiah. Astarte/Ashtoreth is the Queen of Heaven to
whom the Canaanites burned offerings and poured libations (Jeremiah 44).
Astarte, goddess of war and sexual love, shared so many
qualities with her sister, Anath, that they may originally have been seen as a
single deity. Their names together are the basis for the Aramaic goddess
Atargatis.
Astarte was worshiped in Egypt and Ugarit and among the
Hittites, as well as in Canaan. Her Akkadian counterpart was Ishtar. Later she
became assimilated with the Egyptian deities Isis and Hathor (a goddess of the
sky and of women), and in the Greco-Roman world with Aphrodite, Artemis, and
Juno.
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