Often rendered in English as Ištar, she was the wife of Anu (of Marduk in the later versions) and mother of Enlil. She was the goddess of war and love, which equates her with Minerva and Venus, and also with the Persian Astarte, who was probably a late form of Inanna, or else the two were Akkadian and Sumerian variations of the same goddess.
However - as you will see by clicking any of those above links - each of those is also equated with another goddess of the common cultural source, so that Diana and Aphrodite and Athena (notice Athena's owls among the symbols in the adjacent illustration of Ishtar as Delilah or Lilit, the Queen of the Night and the Underworld), and Io/Yah, and Asherah, and many more goddesses all turn out to be variations of the same idealisation of the female principle in the cosmos, on Earth and beyond.
So, to the Greeks and Lebanese, she was Ashtoreth, and to the Egyptians Eshet (Isis). The Yehudit name Ester (Esther in most English renditions) is derived from her name, just as her "uncle" Mordechai is a variant of Marduk.
These are the variations of Ishtar herself; within her story there are just as many variations: was she the daughter of An or Anu, or his wife, or sister, or the daughter of Nanna, or even of En-Lil? Was Utu, or Dumuzi, or Tammuz, or the one called Amaushumgalana her husband, or brother, or merely her lover?
Utu, Dumuzi and Tammuz turn out to be dialect variations of the same god (people never believe me when I say that, but it is precisely the same with God and Dieu and Deo in English and French and Spanish Christianity); Amaushumgalana turns out to be a mere epithet, for Utu et al, and describes those vast clusters of dates that fill the summit of the palm tree; while Ishtar (see my page on Inanna) turns out to be a variant of Tamar, the goddess of that palm tree: so his are the testicles (dates) and penis (trunk), while she is the invisible essence of fertility within the tree.
So, in all these myths, do the male and female parts meld, merge and synchronise, and even if the earliest societies had their own versions, all were so similar that eventually they too melded, merged and synchronised, equated to the point that none could be told apart. So, to read the rest of Ishtar's story, simply click the links above to Inanna or Astarte or Anat or Isis; or here for the British Museum's account of the earliest Mesopotamian version of Ishtar, and which you should read in parallel with my commentary on Genesis 1.
The Babylonian version of the Sumerian goddess Inanna, but even more sexualized. In "The Epic of Gilgamesh" she tries to seduce King Gilgamesh, is repulsed by him as he lists her many faults as a fair-weather lover, and calls down the Bull of Heaven to punish the king.
In Sumerian poetry, she is sometimes portrayed as a coy young girl under patriarchal authority, but at other times as an ambitious goddess seeking to expand her influence, e.g., in the partly fragmentary myth "Inanna and Enki", ETCSL 1.3.1 and in the myth "Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld", ETCSL 1.4.1). Her marriage to Dumuzi is arranged without her knowledge, either by her parents or by her brother Utu. Even when given independent agency, she is mindful of boundaries: rather than lying to her mother and sleeping with Dumuzi, she convinces him to propose to her in the proper fashion. These actions are in stark contrast with the portrayal of Inanna/Ištar as a femme fatale in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Taken by the handsome Gilgamesh, Inanna/Ishtar invites him to be her lover. Her advances, however, are rejected by the hero, who accusingly recounts a string of past lovers she has cast aside and destroyed.
The young Inanna of Sumerian poetry demonstrates her sexual liberty in the very language with which she approaches would-be lovers: "Plough my vulva, man of my heart" on one occasion (Gilgamesh); "Let us enjoy your strength, so put out your hand and touch our vulva!" on another (Dalley 2000: 79). Hardly surprising that she was the recipient of prayers regarding impotence and unrequited love, nor that she became the patron goddess of prostitutes.
Her attitude to war is just as uninhibited: "Battle is a feast to her", we are told, and she is identified with both royal power and military might, from the earliest liturgical poems of the Old Akkadian period, when Naram-Sin frequently invokes the "warlike Ishtar" (aštar annunītum) in his inscriptions. Even more so in the Neo-Assyrian where two separate incarnations, Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbela, were linked to the person of the king. Something decidedly androgynous though in this two-sidedness: the warrior aspect emphasizing her masculine, her sexuality strongly feminine.
Perhaps more significant to our Bible-studies is the so-called "sacred marriage" ceremony, prevalent in the very earliest early records of Sumerian history, long before the Beney Yisra-El set up their "Tent of Sarah" as a primitive chupah; the marriage of Inanna (surrogated by her high priestess or another chosen and trained female) and Dumuzi (represented by the ruler or another chosen and trained man) took place during the New Year's festival in the spring, and was intended to ensure prosperity and abundance. Practiced in the late third and early second millennium BCE, the sacred marriage rite will enter the Bible as "whoring" in the "sacred groves of Asherah" (who is of course Sarah just as much as she is Ishtar and Inanna), and European culture as the May Queen and the May Queen at what would be Christianised with yet another name variation, as the Feast of Easter (Oester or Oestre in its mediaeval spellings)
The young Inanna of Sumerian poetry demonstrates her sexual liberty in the very language with which she approaches would-be lovers: "Plough my vulva, man of my heart" on one occasion (Gilgamesh); "Let us enjoy your strength, so put out your hand and touch our vulva!" on another (Dalley 2000: 79). Hardly surprising that she was the recipient of prayers regarding impotence and unrequited love, nor that she became the patron goddess of prostitutes.
Her attitude to war is just as uninhibited: "Battle is a feast to her", we are told, and she is identified with both royal power and military might, from the earliest liturgical poems of the Old Akkadian period, when Naram-Sin frequently invokes the "warlike Ishtar" (aštar annunītum) in his inscriptions. Even more so in the Neo-Assyrian where two separate incarnations, Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbela, were linked to the person of the king. Something decidedly androgynous though in this two-sidedness: the warrior aspect emphasizing her masculine, her sexuality strongly feminine.
Perhaps more significant to our Bible-studies is the so-called "sacred marriage" ceremony, prevalent in the very earliest early records of Sumerian history, long before the Beney Yisra-El set up their "Tent of Sarah" as a primitive chupah; the marriage of Inanna (surrogated by her high priestess or another chosen and trained female) and Dumuzi (represented by the ruler or another chosen and trained man) took place during the New Year's festival in the spring, and was intended to ensure prosperity and abundance. Practiced in the late third and early second millennium BCE, the sacred marriage rite will enter the Bible as "whoring" in the "sacred groves of Asherah" (who is of course Sarah just as much as she is Ishtar and Inanna), and European culture as the May Queen and the May Queen at what would be Christianised with yet another name variation, as the Feast of Easter (Oester or Oestre in its mediaeval spellings)
Several of the mythological narratives dwell on her astral aspect, reckoning her to be Venus rather than the moon. In the tale of "Inanna and Šu-kale-tuda" for example (ETCSL 1.3.3), the clumsy gardener boy Šu-kale-tuda has intercourse with the goddess while she is asleep under a tree. Enraged at what has happened, she hunts him down where he is hiding, a search which parallels the journey of Venus across the heavens - see my notes on the mythological tales in the Book of Judges for the Biblical paralells. Similarly in the tale of "Inanna and Enki", (ETCSL 1.3.1), in which the goddess travels first to Enki's city Eridu from Uruk, and then back again, likewise charting the epic of Venus as first the dawn, then the evening star. We can assume that worshippers of the goddess would have made the same journey as their annual act of pilgrimage, like Christians to Canterbury or Moslems to Mecca later on.
Because the cycle of the seasons moves between fertility and infertility, Inanna-Ishtar also spend her required period in the underworld. There, she sits on her sister Ereshkigal's throne, rouses the anger of the Anunnaki, and is turned to a corpse. Only through the agency of her minister Nin-Shubur, who secures the help of Enki/Ea, is she able to come alive again and return to the world above.
The main temple of Inanna-Ishtar was at Uruk, but she had shrines across the Middle East, at Adab, Akkade, Babylon, Badtibira, Girsu, Isin, Kazallu, Kiš, Larsa, Nippur, Sippar, Šuruppak, Umma, and significantly Ur, where Av-Ram and Sarai began their epic journey.
Inanna is listed in third place after An and En-Lil in the Early Dynastic Fara god-lists (Litke 1998). Inanna-Ishtar remains in the upper crust of the Mesopotamian pantheon through the third, second and the first millennia. She is especially significant as a national Assyrian deity, particularly in the first millennium. She is variously represented: holding a reed bundle, beside a gatepost (in the Uruk Vase), or simply as a female nude. In the Syrian iconography, she often reveals herself by holding open a cape, and always wears the horned cap which denotes her goddess status. In her warrior aspect she Ištar is shown dressed in a flounced robe with weapons coming out of her shoulder, often with at least one other weapon in her hand, and sometimes with a beard, to emphasize her masculine side. Her attribute animal as the goddess of war is the lion, on the back of which she often has one foot or fully stands. In praise of her warlike qualities, she is compared to a roaring, fearsome lion - which merits comparison with both the Jacob and Moses tribal oracles. In her astral aspect, she is symbolized by the eight-pointed star. Followers of mediaeval Christian art will be inttested to note that, as long ago as 4,000 BCE, her colours were the red and carnelian associated with Mary Magdalene, and the cooler blue and lapis lazuli associated with the Virgin Mary.
In Sumerian nin.an.a literally means "Our Lady of the Heavens", though some scholars translate it as "Our Lady of the Date Clusters", which would associate her with the Biblical Tamar.
The Semitic name Ishtar, which becomes Esther in the Jewish Purim tale, and Ashtoreth elsewhere in the Tanach, is the source of the Greek oestrus, whence oestrogen, the vast egg of the ostrich, and, as noted above, the mediaeval spelling of what is now Easter.
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