• From Earth Mother to Fertility Goddesses
    The Watchtower—1991 | July 1

    • The Babylonian Prototype

      In the Babylonian pantheon, Ishtar was the principal goddess, identical with the Sumerian fertility goddess Innanna. Paradoxically, she was both goddess of war and goddess of love and voluptuousness. In his book Les Religions de Babylonie et d’Assyrie (The Religions of Babylonia and Assyria), French scholar Édouard Dhorme said of Ishtar: “She was the goddess, the lady, the merciful mother who listens to prayer and intercedes before the angry gods and calms them. . . . She was exalted above all, she became the goddess of goddesses, the queen of all the gods, the sovereign of the gods of heaven and earth.”

      Ishtar’s worshipers addressed her as “the Virgin,” “Holy Virgin,” and “Virgin Mother.” The ancient Sumero-Akkadian “Prayer of Lamentation to Ishtar” states: “I pray to thee, O Lady of ladies, goddess of goddesses. O Ishtar, queen of all peoples. . . . O possessor of all divine power, who wears the crown of dominion. . . . Chapels, holy places, sacred sites, and shrines pay heed to thee. . . . Where are thy likenesses not fashioned? . . . See me O my Lady; accept my prayers.”a

      Mother-Goddess Worship Spreads

      Orientalist Édouard Dhorme speaks of the “expansion of Ishtar worship.” It spread throughout Mesopotamia, and either Ishtar herself or goddesses with different names but similar attributes were worshiped in Egypt, Phoenicia, and Canaan, as well as in Anatolia (Asia Minor), Greece, and Italy.

  • From Earth Mother to Fertility Goddesses
    The Watchtower—1991 | July 1

    • In Phoenicia and Canaan, mother-goddess worship focused on Ashtoreth, or Astarte, said to be the wife of Baal. Like her Babylonian counterpart, Ishtar, she was both a fertility and a war goddess. In Egypt ancient inscriptions have been found in which Astarte is called lady of heaven and queen of the heavens. The Israelites had to put up a constant fight against the degrading influence of the worship of this fertility goddess.

      To the northwest in Anatolia, the equivalent of Ishtar was Cybele, known as the Great Mother of the gods. She was also called the All-Begetter, the All-Nourisher, the Mother of all the Blessed. From Anatolia the cult of Cybele spread first to Greece and then to Rome, where it survived well into the Common Era. The worship of this fertility goddess included frenzied dancing, self-laceration by the priests, self-castration by candidates for the priesthood, and processions in which the statue of the goddess was borne in much splendor.b

      The primitive Greeks worshiped an Earth-Mother goddess called Gaea. But their pantheon came to include Ishtar-type goddesses, such as Aphrodite, the goddess of fertility and love; Athena, the goddess of war; and Demeter, the goddess of agriculture.

      In Rome, Venus was the goddess of love and, as such, corresponded to the Greek Aphrodite and the Babylonian Ishtar. The Romans, however, also worshiped the goddesses Isis, Cybele, and Minerva (Greek Athena), all of whom reflected in one way or another the Babylonian archetype Ishtar.