That the name Jshtar—conveying in all proba- bility the force of ‘leading,’ ‘overseeing,’ from a stem asdruw—also originated in the city of Babylon, cannot be definitely stated, but seems likely. The phonetic writing appears for the first time in the inscriptions of Hammurabi,| and it would be natural for the priests of Babylon to use the name of a goddess who was worshipped in the capital by the side of Marduk as the designation of the general life-producing power. That, at all events, they were anxious to regard the associate of Marduk as identical with Ishtar, follows from the etymology they pore’ for the name of this consort, whose real name Sarpanitwm (or Sa "panit), tsGey eweripek the ‘shining one,’ they converted into Zér-bdnitum, ‘the seed-producing’ goddess.
Whatever the origin of Ishtar may have been, and wherever the cult of this goddess may origin- ally have been centred, she gradually absorbs the roles and the names of the other goddesses who as consorts of gods in important religious centres had acquired a certain, though restricted, importance. Thus at Erech, in the extreme south, there flour- ished the cult of a goddess known as Nand, who appears to have been conceived as a deity of a violent character, punishing severely those who disobey her—a war-goddess rather than a mother of life, but who in later texts is identified with Ishtar. Again, at another ancient centre, Shir- purla, we find the cult of a goddess Nind, who is regarded as the sister of the chief god of the place, Nin-girsu, and whose special function appears to have been the interpretation of dreams. She is called the great divining queen of the gods, and it is to her that Gudea, one of the most famous rulers of the place (c. 3000 B.C.), goes to ascertain the meaning of a dream which disturbs him. Ishtar absorbs the réle of both Nan& and Nina, and hence, side by side with her character as the mother of all life, she is portrayed already in the inscriptions of Hammurabi as the great war- goddess who stands by the king’s side in the midst of the fray, and to whose aid every victory is in a measure due. This phase of the character of the goddess is naturally emphasized even more promi- nently among a people like the Assyrians, whose thoughts and activities were so largely occupied with military pursuits, and among whom all gods take on a warlike and fierce character. While the conception of Ishtar as the great mother of mankind is also found among the Assyrians, the kings of the north more frequently speak of her as the companion of the chief god Ashur, and as co- operating with the latter to lead the Assyrian armies to victory. She is pictured as armed with bow and arrow, and it is likewise she who, like Nin4, furnishes oracles and appears in dreams to encourage her favourites—the kings—by reassuring messages. Again, a goddess Anunit, who, as. the name indicates, stood in some relationship to Anu, the god of heaven, becomes a form of Ishtar; and in the same way Ishtar absorbs the réle of other of the chief goddesses of the religious and political centres of the ancient Babylonian cities, such as Bau, originally the consort of Nin-girsu, the chief
* The temple erected in Babylon in honour of this goddess has recently been excavated by the German expedition. See Mittheilungen der Deutschen Orient. Geselischaft, Nos. 4 and 5; and also Delitzsch, lin Lande des einstigen Paradieses, pp. ae oa King, Inscriptions of Hammurabi, i., No. 34, 6. 9. 15. and 23, ish-ta-ra-a-tim already used in the general sense of ‘ goddesses.’ :
+ See Thureau-Dangin’s article, ‘Le Songe de Goudéa’ (Comptes rendus de V Académie d’ Inscriptions, 1901, pp- 112-128).
deity of Shirpurla, who at one time acquired an independent position of great prominence.
_The extent to which this process of concentra- tion was carried is illustrated by the common use of the term ishtar, particularly in religious texts, in the sense of ‘goddess’; and from it a plural ishtardte is formed, with the signification ‘goddesses.’ While, therefore, the other goddesses who are merely the consorts of male deities—their pale reflexions—continue to preserve their identity, they are in reality merely so many Ishtars, with this distinction, however, that the name Ishtar as that of a specific deity is contined to the associate of the chief god—Marduk in the south and Ashur in the north.
A certain vagueness in the use of the name Ishtar, to be observed especially in Assyrian his- torical texts, followed from the attempt to con- centrate the attributes of all the important goddesses—important by virtue of the part once played by the centres in which as consorts of male deities they were worshipped—in a single person- age. Ishtar is not really the wife of Ashur, who indeed is essentially a god standing by himself without wife or offspring ; but as the chief goddess she takes her place by the side of Ashur, just as she does by the side of Marduk, and hence she is addressed occasionally in terms which might be taken as representing the relationship of a wife to her husband. In the south, again, owing to Marduk’s absorption of the rdle of the old Bel of Nippur, Ishtar naturally becomes the Bélit of Babylonia, though Belit was originally the consort of the Nippurian Bel; and, in so far as she takes on the traits of the older Belit, she is associated with Marduk in the relationship of consort to the chief male deity. Yet the amalgamation is not complete until a relatively late period, and Marduk continues to have as a special consort Sarpanit, who is generally distinguished, albeit not sharply, from Ishtar. Confusing as this double character of Ishtar, as the one great mother-goddess, the source of life, and as the consort of the head of the pantheon, may appear to us, it probably occasioned no difficulty to the Babylonian theo- logians, to whom Ishtar was essentially the goddess of life and vegetation ; nor to the Assyrian priests, among whom she took on the réle of the great war-goddess, who in company with Ashur led the armies of the kings to victory.