Astarte
ASTARTE was a Syro–Palestinian goddess widely attested throughout the Mediterranean Levant. References to her first appear in texts from Syria in the third millennium BCE (at Ebla and perhaps Early Dynastic Mari), and increase in the second millennium BCE (at Emar and Ugarit). Her cult was imported to Egypt in the latter half of the second millennium. From the first millennium BCE on, worship of Astarte spread via the Phoenicians from their coastal cities (e.g., Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos) to Cyprus, Carthage and North Africa, Italy, Malta, Spain, and Greece. She appears in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament mostly in the role of a generic Canaanite goddess.
Astartē is the Greek form of the deity's name, but the earliest form in the third millennium, Ashtart (from Aštarta), ultimately reflects the feminine of Semitic Ashtar/Athtar, a Venus deity. The name of the goddess Ishtar also derives from Ashtar, but hers kept the masculine form without a -t ending, and she became the popular goddess of love, war, and the planet Venus in Mesopotamia, whereas Astarte became a leading deity in western Syria. One may thus infer that Astarte was, as Ashtar and Ishtar, astralized. However, her nature and features varied in the different regions and periods in which her cult prospered, and they seem to have also included associations with love and fertility, war, maritime activities, royal patronage, and more.
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