Astarte

At Sidon the sea comes in under the walls, and a queen once stood in that salt wind as priestess to a goddess whose name was also half her own. Her son, King Eshmunazar, had it cut into the lid of his coffin: his mother Amoashtart was priestess of Astarte, and the royal house had built the goddess a temple in Sidon by the sea. It is a short line in a long curse against grave robbers. It is also the voice of a dynasty telling the dead and the living whose city this was.

Astarte is one of the oldest divine names on the Levantine coast, and one of the most travelled. The clay tablets of Ugarit, written in the late second millennium BC, call her ʿAthtartu. Phoenician kings in Sidon and Tyre wrote ʿAshtart. The Hebrew Bible gives Ashtoreth, and the plural Ashtaroth for her images and shrines. Egyptian scribes took the name over intact. The Greeks shortened it to Astarte and decided she was Aphrodite. Each of these peoples saw a slightly different goddess, and the record does not let them be poured into one mould.

At Ugarit she is not a love goddess. She is a fighter and a hunter who stands beside Anat, and the two are paired so often that snake charmers invoked them together in their incantations, after Baal and Dagan. In the Baal cycle she steps into the war between Baal and Yamm, the Sea. When El agrees that Baal should be handed over to Yamm as a captive and Baal resists, the two goddesses take hold of him, Anat by the right hand and Astarte by the left. The tablet is broken at that point and the reading rests on a restoration, but the picture is hard to forget: the storm god, furious, held in place by two women who will not let go.

Later in the same cycle Baal kills the Sea, and Astarte rebukes him by name. The line is damaged and its key verb divides translators. One school hears her shaming Baal for slaying a defeated captive, since Yamm was by then a prisoner of war. Another hears her urging him to scatter the enemy. Either way, she is the only voice in the scene that speaks to the victor as an equal. The Ugaritic poets also put her name inside a curse. At the close of the Kirta epic a king turns on his own son with the words: may Horon break your head, Athtart-name-of-Baal your skull.

Egypt met her in the fifteenth century BC. Her cult appears under Amenhotep II, the horse-loving pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, alongside other Levantine war gods such as Resheph, Baal and Horon, much of the evidence coming from Perunefer in the Memphite region. On the great sphinx stela at Giza, Resheph and Astarte rejoice at the young king’s skill in mastering his horses. Thutmose IV was praised as valiant on the chariot like Astarte. Egypt had no native gods who rode horseback, so the Egyptians borrowed two, and artists showed Astarte mounted and armed. The smell of horse sweat and hot leather hangs over all of it.

Egypt also gave her a story of its own. A papyrus of unusual size from the Eighteenth Dynasty, its pieces now divided between the Amherst papyri and a fragment in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, told how the gods of the Ennead came into conflict with the Sea. Its opening page carries the fifth regnal year of Amenhotep II. What survives is badly broken. Ptah and a group of goddesses, among them the harvest goddess Renenutet, Nut and Astarte, carry the tribute that the Sea demands, and the early episodes read as diplomacy, with messengers going back and forth and perhaps a marriage under negotiation. Later, on the fifteenth page, the tale turns to fighting, and Seth, the Egyptian god identified with Baal, is the champion. The scroll has long been called the Astarte Papyrus, though she is only one character in it.

The Phoenician cities took her much further. In the inscriptions of the Sidonian kings she is a dynastic goddess whose priesthood the royal family held, and the coffin of Eshmunazar names her twice over in the queen mother’s own name, Amoashtart. Philo of Byblos, writing in Greek under the Romans and claiming to translate an old Phoenician author, gives her a myth that no other surviving text tells. In his version she is a daughter of Uranus, sent with her sisters Rhea and Dione to kill Kronos by stealth. Kronos catches the three of them and marries them instead. Astarte bears him seven daughters and two sons, Desire and Love. Later she rules the land with Zeus Demarus and Adodus, king of the gods, by Kronos’s leave. She sets a bull’s head on her own head as a sign of royalty, and travelling the world she finds a star fallen from the sky, takes it up and consecrates it on the holy island of Tyre. The Phoenicians, Philo adds, say that Astarte is Aphrodite.

Lucian of Samosata, writing in the second century AD, described a great temple in Phoenicia that the Sidonians called Astarte’s. Lucian thought she was really the moon goddess. One of the priests told him the temple belonged to Europa, the sister of Cadmus, carried off by Zeus in the form of a bull, and Lucian noted that Sidonian coins showed Europa riding the bull. Three different goddesses for one temple, and nobody in the conversation seemed troubled by it.

The writers of the Hebrew Bible were troubled. To them she was Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and serving the Baals and the Ashtaroth is the standard charge against Israel in the book of Judges. Samuel calls on the people to put the Ashtaroth away. The Philistines hang the armour of the dead Saul in the house of Ashtaroth. Solomon, in old age, follows Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, and builds a high place for her on the hill facing Jerusalem that stands until King Josiah defiles it. The polemic is fierce because the goddess was close: a neighbour’s goddess, worshipped in the next city up the coast.

Her power, across all these sources, belongs to rulers and fighters. She restrains a god, rebukes a god, rides with a pharaoh, and wears a bull’s head as a crown. Her name was strong enough to crack a skull in a curse. Her limits are just as clear. In the Baal cycle she acts in a pair with Anat or at El’s command, and the story is never hers. In Egypt she is a guest among the Ennead, and the decisive blow against the Sea is struck by Seth, not by her. In Israel she is the goddess the prophets kept tearing down. The later demon Astaroth of European grimoires borrows her biblical name, but the warrior of Ugarit and the lady of Sidon had been gone a long time before anyone summoned him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Astarte?

Astarte is a goddess of the ancient Levant, known at Ugarit as ʿAthtartu, in Phoenicia as ʿAshtart and in the Hebrew Bible as Ashtoreth. At Ugarit she was a warrior and hunter paired with Anat, and in the Phoenician cities of Sidon and Tyre she became a royal and dynastic goddess. Her cult also spread to New Kingdom Egypt.

What role does Astarte play in the Baal cycle?

In the Ugaritic Baal cycle, Astarte and Anat hold Baal back by his left and right hands when he resists being handed over to Yamm, the Sea. After Baal defeats Yamm, Astarte rebukes him by name. Translators disagree over whether she shames him for killing a captive or urges him to scatter the enemy.

Why is Astarte connected with horses in Egypt?

Astarte’s cult entered Egypt under Amenhotep II in the fifteenth century BC, a pharaoh famous for his love of horses. On his sphinx stela at Giza, Resheph and Astarte rejoice at the king’s skill with horses, and Thutmose IV was praised as valiant on the chariot like Astarte. Egyptian artists depicted her riding horseback and armed.

Is Astarte the same as Ashtoreth in the Bible?

Yes, Ashtoreth is the Hebrew Bible’s name for Astarte, called the goddess of the Sidonians. The Bible says Solomon built a high place for Ashtoreth near Jerusalem and that King Josiah later defiled it. The plural Ashtaroth is used for her images and shrines, as in the house of Ashtaroth where the Philistines placed Saul’s armour.

What is the story of Astarte and the fallen star?

Philo of Byblos, writing in Greek in the Roman period, records that Astarte placed a bull’s head on her own head as a sign of royalty. While travelling the world she found a star that had fallen from the sky and consecrated it on the holy island of Tyre. Philo adds that the Phoenicians identified Astarte with Aphrodite.

Related Entries

Anat, Baal, Yam (Yamm), El, Asherah, Dagon, Melqart, Tanit, Ptah, Set, Nut, Europa, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Astaroth