Astarte

In Canaanite and Syrian mythology, a goddess of sexual passion (equivalent to the Babylonian and Assyrian goddess Ishtar). As goddess of maternity and fertility, she was associated with Tammuz or Adonis, who represented the passage of the seasons. She was also a warrior goddess.

Her main centre of worship was in Phoenicia, where biblical reference names her as the goddess of the Sidonians, but she was also worshipped throughout Canaan as the consort of the local Baals (chief male gods), and her image in the form of a wooden totem called the Asherah stands in each of the sanctuaries.

Her priests were eunuchs, and temple prostitution was a regular feature of her cult, fiercely denounced by the Old Testament prophets. The fish and the dove were sacred to her.

It has been suggested that Asherah was originally a distinct goddess of the sea. She also appears as a horsewoman in the 13th-century Ras Shamra tablets; these clay fragments, inscribed with Canaanite mythology, were discovered at an excavation of ancient Ugarit between 1929 and 1938.

The form Ashtoreth was produced by inserting the vowels of bosheth ‘shame’ in her original name.