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To: alt.fan.kali.astarte.inanna,alt.pagan,alt.religion.wicca,alt.mythology,talk.religion.misc,alt.religion.all-worlds From: cbsiren@hopper.unh.edu (Christopher B Siren) Subject: Re: Astarte Date: 2 May 1996 15:45:37 GMT In article <4m76j8$7q2@newsbf02.news.aol.com> typhonblue@aol.com (TyphonBlue) writes: >Do you have any information on Astarte? All I know is that she's a warrior >goddess of Canaan and Syria and became the wife of the Egyptian God Set. It is rather difficult to find direct textual information about Astarte, most of the mythological information we have about the Canaanite pantheon comes from the Ugaritic texts, yet in Ugarit Astarte appears to have been less popular that she was in other Canaanite city states, so we have to rely more on archaeological evidence: temple inscriptions, bits and pieces of prayers, god-lists, statues of goddesses who may or may not have been Astarte, and the like. Linguisticly, she is related to the Akkadian Ishtar, and the Egyptian Isis (Ast), and appears to have shared some of their characteristics. This is what I found about her when researching the Canaanite/Ugaritic Mythology FAQ: Athtart (Athtart-name-of-Baal, Astarte, Ashtoreth) - consort of Baal, and lesser goddess of war and the chase. Outside of Ugarit, many nude goddess statues have been tenuously identified with her as a goddess of fertility and sex. In Sidon she merited royal priests and priestesses. There she served as a goddess of fertility, love, war and sexual vitality and to that end had sacred prostitutes. She was the Phoenecian great goddess and was identified with Aphrodite by the Greeks. She restrains Baal when he intends to attack Yam's messengers. She rerebukes Baal for holding Yam captive and calls on him to 'scatter' Yam, which he does. Apparently she, along with Anat, is willing to become Baal's cupbearer once he achieves a proper palace. In addition, my understanding is that she became more popular in the first millenium B.C. and absorbed some of the qualities attributed by the Ugarits to Asherah and Anat. Source material for the Canaanite Mythology FAQ: Aubet, Maria E. _The_Phoenicians_and_the_West_, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1987, 1993. Bonnefoy, Yves (compiler) _Mythologies_Volume_One_, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991. John C.L. Gibson _Canaanite_Myths_and_Legends_, T & T Clark Ltd., Edinburgh, 1977. S.H.Hooke _Middle_Eastern_Mythology_ , Penguin Books, New York,1963. Moscati, Sabatino, _The_World_of_the_Phoenicians_, Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, New York, 1968. _Ancient_Near_Eastern_Texts_Relating_to_the_Old_Testament_, ed. James Prichard, Princeton University Press, Princetion, 1955. Sykes, Edgerton _Who's_Who_in_Non-Classical_Mythology_, Oxford University Press, New York 1993. My intention is to repost the Canaanite FAQ every other month to alt.mythology and alt.magick.tyagi. Since May is an off month, if you are interested in additional on-line information on Canaanite mythology, try http://pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren/canaanite-faq.html Chris Siren cbsiren@hopper.unh.edu http://pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren http://pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren/myth.html
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