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Key Facts |
| Other names |
Inaana |
| Year of origin |
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| Location |
Assyria, Babylon |
| Parent(s) |
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| Partner(s) |
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| Children |
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| Aspect(s) |
Warm Fertility, Sex, Prostitution |
| Major Centre(s) |
Erech, Mesopotamia |
| Period of worship |
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Background |
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The Assyrian and Babylonian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate northwest Semitic goddess Astarte. Anunit, Atarsamain and Esther are alternative names for Ishtar. |
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Ishtar is a goddess of fertility, love, and war. In the Babylonian pantheon, she "was the divine personification of the planet Venus". |
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Ishtar was above all associated with sexuality: her cult involved sacred prostitution; her holy city Erech was called the "town of the sacred courtesans"; and she herself was the "courtesan of the gods". |
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Ishtar was the daughter of Sin or Anu.She was particularly worshiped at Nineveh and Arbela (Erbil). |
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Mythology |
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According to the Inanna myth, Inanna can only return from the underworld if she sends someone back in her place. Demons go with her to make sure she sends someone back. However, each time Inanna runs into someone, she finds him to be a friend and lets him go free. |
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When she finally reaches her home, she finds her husband Dumuzi (Babylonian Tammuz) seated on his throne, not mourning her at all. In anger, Inanna has the demons take Dumuzi back to the underworld as her replacement. Dumuzi's sister Geshtinanna is grief-stricken and volunteers to spend half the year in the underworld, during which time Dumuzi can go free. |
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Like Ishtar, the Greek Aphrodite and Northwestern Semitic Astarte were love goddesses who were "as cruel as they were wayward". |
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