Ishtar

“ Ishtar is the evening star which precedes the appearance of the moon, and the morning star which heralds the approach of the sun: the brilliance of its light justifies the choice which made it an associate of the greater heavenly bodies. “In the days of the past.... Ea charged Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar with the ruling of the firmament of heaven; he distributed among them, with Anu, the command of the army of heaven, and among these three gods, his children, he apportioned the day and the night, and compelled them to work ceaselessly.” ”

“ And out upon Shumir-Accadian plains,
Beneath the orient night, the shepherd boy
Blows from his oaten pipe the sweet refrains
That tell of Ishtar's one-time joy;
Ana, lord of the starry realms of space,
Roams near to earth seeking the warm god's face.
Yet full-zoned Ishtar will not weep for aye,
Nor will the land forever saddened be;
For Thammuz is not dead, some spring-time day
He will appear in greater majesty:
Chaldean lovers will take heart again,
The Queen of Love will kiss the sons of men. ”

“ COLUMN V THE CURSE OF ISHTAR, AND REJOICING OF ERECH OVER THE VICTORY The monarch and his seer have cleft the head
From Anu's bull prone lying on the mead.
They now command to bring it from the plain
Within the city where they view the slain.
The heart they brought to Samas' holy shrine,
Before him laid the offering divine.
Without the temple's doors the monster lays,
And Ishtar o'er the towers the bulk surveys;
She spurns the carcass, cursing thus, she cries:
"Woe! woe to Izdubar, who me defies!
My power has overthrown, my champion slain;
Accursèd Sar! most impious of men!" ”

“ TO ISHTAR
I pray unto thee, lady of ladies, goddess of goddesses,
O Ishtar, queen of all men, directress of mankind.
O Irnini [2] , O exalted one, mistress of the Igigi,
Thou art mighty, thou hast sovereign power, exalted is thy name!
Thou art the light of heaven and earth, O valiant daughter of Sin.
Bearing arms, establishing battle!
Framing all decrees, wearing the crown of dominion!
O lady, majestic is thy rank, exalted above all the gods!
Star of lamentation, who makest hostility among brethren who are at peace,
Making them abandon friendship,
For a friend. ”

“ May Ishtar, the lady of conflict and battle, who prospered my arms, my gracious protector, who loved my reign, in her heart of rage, her boundless fury, curse his sovereignty; turn all his mercies to curses, shatter his weapon in conflict and battle, appoint him trouble and sedition, strike down his heroes, and make the earth drink of their blood, scatter the plain with heaps of the carcasses of his troops, grant them no burial; deliver himself into the hands of his enemy, cause him to be carried in chains to the enemy's land. ”

“ She has abolished the worship of Ishtar, and turned the temple into a shrine of idolatry. She has destroyed the ivory image of the goddess which these eastern Hyborians worship (and which, inferior as it is to the true religion of Mitra which we Western nations recognize, is still superior to the devil-worship of the Shemites) and filled the temple of Ishtar with obscene images of every imaginable sort—gods and goddesses of the night, portrayed in all the salacious and perverse poses and with all the revolting characteristics that a degenerate brain could conceive. ”

“ Ishtar is the Truth, she has no image. She is invisible to us veiled in matter. She hides herself behind seven veils, or rather our eyes are so wrapped about that we cannot see her who is visible only in spirit. Thou knowest that in the Temple floor is a rent, and through that rent the breath of the gods ascends. I will place Helena over that rent, and she will fall into a trance, and if I say certain prayers and use certain invocations, then the veils will fall away, and in pure spiritual essence she will look into the face of Ishtar and read therein the Truth, past, present, and future. ”

“ Even across immemorial generations it is impossible to read without emotion the legend of the Descent of Ishtar into Hades.1 Through seven gates the goddess of Love passes in search of her beloved, and at each some of her ornaments and clothing are removed by the dread guardian. Ishtar enters naked into the presence of the Queen of Death. But gods, men, and herds languish in her absence, and the wonder-working Hea, the Saviour, so charms the Infernal Queen, that she bids the Judge of her realm, Annunak, absolve Ishtar from his golden throne. ”

“ Over hill and dale strode the throne-bearers,
Adar sent ceaseless streams, floods the Anunnaki brought.
Their power shakes the earth,
Raman's billows up to heaven mount,
All light to darkness is turned.
Brother looks not after brother, no man for another cares.
The gods in heaven are frightened, refuge they seek,
Upward they mount to the heaven of Anu.
Like a dog in his lair,
So cower the gods together at the bars of heaven.
Ishtar cries out in pain, loud cries the exalted goddess:--
All is turned to mire. ”

“ By love distracted, though the queen of love, Pale Ishtar downward flashed toward death's domain, And swift approached these gates of Urugal, Then paused impatient at its portals grim; [Pg 368] For love, whose strength no earthly bars restrain, Gives not the key to open Darkness' Doors. By service from all living men made proud, Ishtar brooked not resistance from the dead. She called the jailer, then to anger changed The love that sped her on her breathless way, And from her parted lips incontinent Swept speech that made the unyielding warder quail. ”

“ He concluded by saying:
"'I am a strong warrior, beloved of Asshur and Ishtar, the child of royalty. The gods have been gracious to me. The wheat has grown to five cubits, and its ears of corn are always one cubit long; during my reign, abundance has overflowed; during all the years of my reign, the divine blessing has been poured out upon me like a heavy dew. The gods have raised me higher than any king ever ascended before me. Whilst Asshur and Ishtar support me, who can prevail against me? My power is everlastingly founded by their hands, the duration of my race is established ”

“ You have been so wantonly blind, Shelmerdene. You have idealised to-morrow and forgotten to-day—and now, perhaps, you are on your knees in a ruined temple in the East, begging favours of Ishtar. Not she to grant you a favour! Trouble has always come to the world from such as she, a malignant goddess. It has been said that Semiramis conquered the world, and Ishtar set it on fire.... ”

“ Ancient legends related how the shepherd Dumuzi, son of Ea and Damkina, having excited the love of Ishtar while he was pasturing his flocks under the mysterious tree of Eridu, which covers the earth with its shade, was chosen by the goddess from among all others to be the spouse of her youth, and how, being mortally wounded by a wild boar, he was cast into the kingdom of Allat. One means remained by which he might be restored to the light of day: his wounds must be washed in the waters of the wonderful spring, and Ishtar resolved to go in quest of this marvellous liquid. ”

“ The goddess of the dead commanded her servant to 'sprinkle the Lady Ishtar with the water of life'" (op. cit., p. 44) .
In Chapter III. of Mr. Mackenzie's book, from which I have just [Pg 64] quoted, there is an interesting collection of quotations clearly showing that the conception of the vitalizing properties of the body moisture of gods is not restricted to Egypt, but is found also in Babylonia and India, in Western Asia and Greece, and also in Western Europe.
It has been suggested that the name Ishtar has been derived from Semitic roots implying "she who waters," "she who makes fruitful". ”

“ We now come to a curious part of the story, the romance of Izdubar and Ishtar. One of the strange and dark features of the Babylonian religion was the Ishtar or Venus worship, which was an adoration of the reproductive power of nature, accompanied by ceremonies which were a reproach to the country. The city of Erech, originally a seat of the worship of Anu, was now one of the foremost cities in this Ishtar worship. Certainly Ishtar is represented in the legends as living at the time, and as being the widow of Dumuzi, the ruler of Erech, and it is ”

“ Ishtar will never consent to reappear in the world, if she cannot bring back her husband with her. Ea, the supreme god, the infallible executor of the divine will—he who alone can modify the laws imposed upon creation—at length decides to accord to her what she desires. “Ea, in the wisdom of his heart, formed a male being,—formed Uddushunâmir, the servant of the gods:—‘Go then, Uddushunâmir, turn thy face towards the gate of the land without return; —the seven gates of the land without return—may they become open at thy presence—may Allât behold thee, and rejoice in thy presence! ”

“ Mortals enter naked into the world, and naked must they leave it: and since Ishtar has decided to accept their lot, she too must be prepared to divest herself of her garments.’” The guardian went, he opened his mouth: ‘Enter, my lady, and may Kutha rejoice—may the palace and the land without return exult in thy presence! ”

“ But there is no real contradiction; for in Babylonian religious and liturgical literature the lower view of Ishtar is never presented at all. She is always worshipped as pure and holy; the licentiousness of folklore, if there was any such in vogue, was not allowed to intrude into the temple-service. Therefore Ishtar is no real exception to the rule that purity, even in our sense, is a prevailing characteristic of Babylonian divinity, as it was of the Hebraic.
But now another phenomenon claims our interest: while being a virgin-goddess, she is sometimes addressed as a mother. ”

“ According to one, and, as it would seem, the favorite, tradition, the goddess is represented as herself destroying the solar deity, Tammuz, whom she had chosen as a consort. Repentant and weeping, Ishtar passes to the lower world in search of her youthful husband,—the symbol of the sun on its approach to the summer solstice. ”

“ But Ishtar announces that she comes in sorrow, not enmity:—
"I wish to weep over the heroes who have left their wives. I wish to weep over the wives who have been taken from their husbands' arms. I wish to weep over the Only Son— (a name of Dumuzi) —who has been taken away before his time."
Then Allat commands the keeper to open the gates and take Ishtar through the sevenfold enclosure, dealing by her as by all who come to those gates, that is, stripping her of her garments according to ancient custom. ”

“ Ultimately the cult of Ishtar appears to have become absolutely secret and hidden and shrouded in mystery and darkness. Its priestesses became the most famous oracle-givers of Assyria who imparted “divine knowledge concealed from men.” In the eighth century B.C., Arbela became the centre of the cult of Ishtar and “developed [pg 350] a special school of theology marked by the attempt to accord a superior position to the goddess. In a series of eight oracles addressed to Esarhaddon six are given forth by women” (Jastrow, p. 342) . ”

“ The loss of the tablet containing the story of Ishtar, told by the horse to the ox, is unfortunate. It is evident that Ishtar was a very celebrated goddess, and her adventures formed the subject of many narratives. Some of the words and forms in these fables are exactly the same as those used in the Izdubar and Creation legends, and in all these stories the
deity Shamas figures more prominently than is usual in the mythology. The last fable is a mere fragment similar to the others, containing a story in which the calf speaks. ”

“ Now Ishtar never appears in this capacity in the Babylonian [Pg 206] inscriptions. If there is one goddess with whom she has nothing in common, it is Belit of Nippur. To account for this curious statement on the part of the Assyrian scribes, it is only necessary to bear in mind that the name Belit signifies 'lady,' and Ishtar is constantly spoken of as the Belit or lady of battle. Much the same train of thought that led to regarding Bel in the sense of 'lord,' merely as a title of Marduk, gave rise to the use of 'Belit,' as the title of the great 'lady' of the Assyrian pantheon. ”

“ It is more in accord with what, as we have seen, has been the general character of the Babylonian pantheon, to account for the identification of Ninni, Nanâ, and Anunit with Ishtar on the supposition that the different names belonged originally to different localities. Ishtar was appropriately denominated the brilliant goddess. She is addressed as the mother of gods, which signals her supreme position among the female deities. ”

“ ISHTAR OF ARBELA was the goddess of war, the “Lady of Battles.” She was the daughter of Anū, whose messengers were the seven evil spirits, and the favorite goddess of King Assur-bani-pal, who claims that he received his bow from her, though he declares in his inscriptions that he worshipped also Bel or Baal, and Nebo; he frequently implores the protection of Ishtar.
“Oh, thou, goddess of goddesses, terrible in battle, goddess in war, queen of the gods! Teūman, king of Elam, he gathered his army and prepared for war; he urges his fighting men to go to Assyria. ”

“ But Ishtar is specifically a goddess of the class of Persephone or Isis, and her identification with battle must be regarded as purely accidental. In later times in Assyria she was conceived as the consort of Asshur, head of the Assyrian pantheon, in days when a god or goddess who did not breathe war was of little use to a people like the Assyrians, who were constantly employed in hostilities, and this circumstance naturally heightened her reputation as a warlike divinity. ”