ASTARTE
|
Astarte: In the texts of the period (fourteenth century B.C.), references to deities from Canaan - for example, Ball, Reshef, Astarte and Anat - were not unusual. The popularity of these gods is shown by a certain number of votive images or steles, where they appear looking characteristically exotic. Reshef, 'master of vigour', for instance, is depicted with a headdress resembling the crown of Egypt, but decorated with the head of a gazelle; in his capacity of god of war he holds the mace in one hand and the shield in the other. Astarte was worshipped in the district near Memphis where a Phoenician colony had settled. As a goddess of battle she was often portrayed armed and on horseback. This did not prevent her being at the same time the goddess of love, so that she was sometimes confused with Hathor and even with Isis.
In the fifth century B.C. in Sidon the national god bears the name of Eshum (the Greek Asclepius) and the goddess is called Astarte. A few miles south of Sidon the people of Tyre had as the head of their pantheon the god Melquart, literally 'king of the city' (Heracles in Greek), while in Carthage, a North African colony belonging to Tyre, thousands of dedications bear witness to the favours of a divine couple, Baal Hammon and the mysterious Tanit, whose name, if nothing else, seems of African origin. Larouse WORLD MYTHOLOGY |
