A Shrine to the Sisterhood’s Patron Goddess

The Goddess Ishtar, "Light Bringer", Babylonian High-Mother-Goddess. Like Innana, she is the goddess of fertility, love and war. Her cult was the most important one in ancient Babylon and Ishtar became, under various names, the most important Goddess of the Near-East and Western Asia. Ishtar was the chief goddess of the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the counterpart of Astarte, a Phoenician goddess.

As a goddess, Ishtar was the Great Mother, the goddess of fertility and the queen of heaven. On the other hand, her character had destructive attributes; she was considered, especially by the Assyrians, a goddess of hunting and war and was depicted with sword, bow, and quiver of arrows. Among the Babylonians, Ishtar was distinctly the mother goddess and was portrayed either naked and with prominent breasts or as a mother with a child at her breast. As goddess of love she brought destruction to many of her lovers, of whom the most notable was her consort Tammuz, the Babylonian counterpart of Adonis.

The origin of this Babylonian-Assyrian goddess was that of a vegetation and moon goddess with lower influence, but when these tribes arrived at the land of the Sumerian kingdom, her cult reached the Sumerian capital Uruk. The Sumerian people identified Ishtar easily with their own goddess Innana. After some time Ishtar became, in the second millennium, the highest and widest worshipped goddess of the Babylonians.

Ishtar’s reign was not dependant on a male consort; she reigned absolute and on her own, united in her all the aspects of femininity. Her position in the Babylonian pantheon was the highest: Ishtar was daughter of the moon goddess Ningal and her consort Nanna (akk. Sin), who were the city gods of Uruk. In other traditions she appears to be the daughter of the sky god Anu and later she became his wife.

She was also the sister of the sun god Utu/Marduk and the underworld goddess Ereschkigal & Mistress of the Great Under. She appeared in person wearing a zodiac belt together with hunting dogs like Diana or riding on a lion, her holy animal.

She was the Queen of Heaven (Scharrat Schame) and the mother, who had born the world and still remained a virgin.