BEYOND BABYLON

~Astarte

~A priest-poet of ancient Assyria wrote these lines in honor of Ishtar, the great goddess of his people. The deity he addressed as Ishtar was the same as the Mylitta invoked in the Babylonian temple. Herdotus translating into Greek called her Aphrodite. The author of the Biblical Book of kings rages against her as "the abomination Ashtoreth." Her name changed with every change of frontier and tongue, but her nature, seductive, and violent, stayed the same. The name that the Phoenicians carried across the Mediterranean as far west as Carthage was_~ASTARTE.

THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE