Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ASHTORETH

(Heb. ʿaštōreṯ;
Phoen. ʿštrt; Ugar. ʿṯtrt)

A form of the name of the Canaanite goddess Ashtart in the OT (NRSV “Astarte”). It is a deliberate parody of the name, employing the vowels of Heb. bōšeṯ, “shame.” Ashtart is the West Semitic counterpart to Akkadian Ishtar and Sumerian Inanna in her aspect as a goddess of war and (probably) of sexuality. That Canaanite Ashtart was, like Ishtar and Inanna, a Venus deity, as the Greek tradition reflects, is likely; as the evening star she would have shared that role with the god Ashtar, who appears as the morning star and from whose name the feminine form Ashtart is derived.

Though playing a subdued role in Ugaritic myth, Ashtart’s bellicose character is reflected in a formulaic curse which summons her to smash an enemy’s skull (KTU 1.2 I 7-8; 1.16 VI 54-57). While discussion of Ashtart’s identity as a love-goddess has sometimes overstepped the evidence, in the Keret Epic she (along with Anath) is mentioned as a standard for feminine beauty (KTU 1.14 III 41-44). Ashtart’s special relationship to Baal, perhaps as consort, is reflected in her epithet used in the above-mentioned curse formula (and in the Phoenician inscription of Eshmunazar), “name-of-Baal” (šm bʿl, alternatively understood as “heavens-of-Baal”), an epithet which denotes her role as the hypostatized presence of Baal (cf. “the name” of Yahweh in the OT; e.g., Exod. 20:24; Deut. 12:5; 2 Sam. 7:13).

The connection between Ashtart and Baal is reflected in texts from Egypt, where worship of the Semitic goddess was widespread. In the 12th-century b.c.e. text Horus and Seth, Ashtart and Anath, who are closely associated in Egypt as they are at Ugarit, are given as wives to Seth, the Egyptian god identified with Baal. A 13th-century magical text describing how Seth “opened the wombs” of Anath and Ashtart, “the two great goddesses who were pregnant but did not bear,” may be understood as evidence for Ashtart as a goddess of sexual love but militates against a fertility aspect; the extent to which this theme in the Egyptian text preserves an element of myth original to Semitic Ashtart is uncertain. The same can be said of the fragmentary Astarte papyrus (ANET, 17-18), in which the goddess, as the daughter of Ptah, is given as a bride to the Sea. In Egypt Ashtart is decisively portrayed as a war-goddess, often depicted in art as riding horseback and brandishing weapons.

In Phoenician sources Ashtart is the patron goddess of both Tyre and Sidon and consort to Baal in each city. In the 6th-century inscription of Tabnit of Sidon (KAI 13), the king identifies himself and his father before him as “priest of Ashtart” and invokes her name in a curse. Tabnit’s son Eshmunazar calls his mother “priestess of Ashtart” and claims to have constructed temples for the god Eshmun, for Baal-of-Sidon, and for Ashtart-name-of-Baal (KAI 14). Eshmunazar locates the temple of Ashtart in a sacral area of Sidon called “The Highest Heaven” (1.17).

Exported by the Phoenicians, the worship of Ashtart thrived throughout the Mediterranean, as indicated by the goddess’ name in numerous personal names and in inscriptions from Carthage, Spain (both 8th century), and Italy (6th century, where she is equated with Etruscan Uni-Juno). By the mid-1st millennium Ashtart had assumed the goddess Asherah’s role as maritime deity and had absorbed aspects of Anath, with whom she was later combined as the goddess Atargatis. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods Ashtart is identified with Aphrodite and Venus. In Greece Phoenician Astarte is known as a goddess of love and fertility.

According to 1 Kgs. 11:5, 33 worship of “Ashtoreth deity of the Sidonians” was given official sanction in Israel due to one or more of Solomon’s foreign wives. Josiah is lauded for dismantling and “defiling” the cult places of Astarte and other foreign deities (2 Kgs. 23:13-14). The Philistines’ placement of Saul’s armor in a temple called bêṯ ʿaštārôṯ in 1 Sam. 31:10 possibly implies the deity’s martial character. However, as ʿaštārôm here is not necessarily the name of a specific goddess, it is not certain with which deity the temple, located either in the Philistine plain or in Beth-shan, is to be associated (cf. 1 Chr. 10:10). It is unknown whether Ashtart played a central role in the religion of the Philistines, whose chief god was Dagon. The identity of “the queen of heaven” in Jer. 7:18; 44:17-25 is debated. Though New Kingdom Egyptian sources refer to Ashtart as “Lady of Heaven,” this epithet was also applied to Anath and Asherah. However, evidence from 1st-millennium Phoenician and Punic personal names and the fact that the temple of Ashtart of Sidon was located in an area called “the Highest Heaven” (inscription of Eshmunazar) weigh in favor of Ashtart being the goddess in question. The fertility aspect of Ashtart is reflected indirectly in a term related to the productivity of the flock (Heb. ʿaštĕrōṯ ṣōʾneāk; Deut. 7:13; 28:4, 18, 51). Vestiges of pre-settlement period worship of Ashtart are preserved in the toponyms Ashtaroth (Josh. 12:4; 1 Chr. 6:71[MT 56]), Ashteroth-karnaim (Gen. 14:5), and Beeshterah (Josh. 21:27).

See Ashtaroth.

Bibliography. F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, Mass., 1973); S. M. Olyan, “Some Observations Concerning the Identity of the Queen of Heaven,” UF 19 (1987): 161-74; J. B. Pritchard, Palestinian Figurines in Relation to Certain Goddesses Known Through Literature. AOS 24 (Philadelphia, 1943).

Joel Burnett