ISHTAR
Supreme goddess of the Babylonian pantheon, Ishtar played a major role in ancient Babylon. Although Ishtar's permanent residence on earth was in the city of Uruk, her temples rose up throughout the Babylonian Empire. During the neo-Babylonian period her cult was at its height in the city of Babylon. Commencing the annual New Year Festival, the king announced in his speech that, "Ishtar goes forth, aromatic herbs burn with fragrance. By the side of Ishtar of Babylon, while her servants play the flute, goes all Babylon exultant."
The Temple of Ishtar In Babylon, Ishtar's temple was uncovered by archaeologists adjacent to the processional way used in the annual New Year Festival. Situated in the north east quarter of the city, the temple precinct was the resting place for flocks of white doves, the personal birds of the goddess. The doves were fed by worshippers who purchased sacred cakes from the temple confectioner then crumbled and left them for the birds. In temples of the late period, dovecotes were built on the tops of her temples.
Ishtar's sacred prostitutes welcomed men who came to worship the goddess by engaging in sexual intercourse with the women. Cultic prostitutes also played a part in fertility ceremonies.
One Babylonian custom required that once in her life a woman sit in the shrine of Ishtar to offer her body to a stranger in the temple of the goddess of love. A stranger walked among the women, made his choice and then threw money into the lap of the woman he selected. It was against the law for her to refuse him as the money was considered sacred. Afterward, her duty to the goddess discharged, she was free to go home. Tall, pretty women were able to leave soon but ugly women might have to wait a long time as they could not leave until they had fulfilled the law.
The temple was designed like a royal palace with a kitchen, reception suite for receiving visitors, a courtyard, bedrooms and additional suites for the family and servants of the goddess. One special bedroom was reserved for the high priestess and her part in the Sacred Marriage Rite performed during the New Year Festival. The renewal of nature in spring was portrayed through the Divine Union in which the king became the divine bridegroom and the high priestess his divine consort, the goddess incarnate.
Ishtar's sacred prostitutes welcomed men who came to worship the goddess by engaging in sexual intercourse with the women. Cultic prostitutes also played a part in fertility ceremonies.
One Babylonian custom required that once in her life a woman sit in the shrine of Ishtar to offer her body to a stranger in the temple of the goddess of love. A stranger walked among the women, made his choice and then threw money into the lap of the woman he selected. It was against the law for her to refuse him as the money was considered sacred. Afterward, her duty to the goddess discharged, she was free to go home. Tall, pretty women were able to leave soon but ugly women might have to wait a long time as they could not leave until they had fulfilled the law.
The temple was designed like a royal palace with a kitchen, reception suite for receiving visitors, a courtyard, bedrooms and additional suites for the family and servants of the goddess. One special bedroom was reserved for the high priestess and her part in the Sacred Marriage Rite performed during the New Year Festival. The renewal of nature in spring was portrayed through the Divine Union in which the king became the divine bridegroom and the high priestess his divine consort, the goddess incarnate.
Cult Aspects of Ishtar
CULT ASPECTS OF ISHTAR by Johanna Stuckey
Spirit possession was a part of the religious life of ancient Mesopotamia. For instance, during the “Sacred Marriage” ritual of Akitu, the Assyrian goddess Ishtar possessed her high priestess and acted through her body. In ancient Mesopotamia, attested examples of possession normally involved oracles or prophesies by religious functionaries — many of them women, many devotees of Ishtar.
Study the image above. Ishtar-of-the-Stars. Probably a cult statue being worshipped by a human priest or king. Her warrior aspect is indicated by her striding left leg protruding from an overskirt and revealing a warrior's kilt. Impression of a Neo-Assyrian seal, dated 883-612 BCE. Drawing © 2008 S. Beaulieu, after Black And Green 2003: 108.
The Mesopotamian Semitic word for prophet, raggimu (masc.)/raggintu (fem.) meant “shouter,” and it is likely that this kind of oracle giver proclaimed the message in a temple. Another kind of prophet was called mahhû (masc.)/muhhutu(m) (fem.) meaning “ecstatic” and derived from mahu “to go into a frenzy” (Nissinen 2003: 6-7). Both kinds were normally attached to the temple of the deity for whom they spoke. When they spoke, they would very likely have been possessed by the temple’s god(dess).
Mesopotamian oracular reports have come down to us primarily in two groups, the Mari letters and the Nineveh collection, dated about 1,000 years apart. The Mari letters (2nd millennium BCE) were written to the king of Mari by members of his family and courtiers. Prominent among the senders of Mari letters containing accounts of prophecies were Shibtu, the queen of Zimri-Lim (c. 1775-1761), the king’s sister priestess Inib-shina, and other royal ladies such as Addu-duri Nissinen 2003: 15, 28). The prophets themselves included slightly more women than men (Huffmon in Nissinen 2000: 51). They were connected to a number of deities, one of whom was Annunitu(m), a form of Ishtar.
The Nineveh collection, on which I will concentrate here, consists of reports preserved at Nineveh in the great library of the Assyrian king, Assurbanipal, and written down in the 7th century BCE (deJong Ellis 1989: 133, 141). The sex differential changes quite dramatically from the Mari letters to the Nineveh collection. In the latter, female prophets outnumbered males by two to one. Furthermore, the majority of the Assyrian prophets came from Arbela, a city in the northern part of Mesopotamia (Parpolo 1997: XLVIII). Not surprisingly, as we shall see, Arbela’s protector deity was the goddess Ishtar. The Assyrian king Esarhaddon (681-669 BCE) and his son Assurbanipal (668-627 BCE), both warrior kings (Pongratz-Leisten 2006: 26), had close relationships with Ishtar of Arbela as “Lady of Battle.” The prophecies in the Nineveh collection concerned these two kings.
Plate 522 description
Assyrian warrior goddess Ishtar of Arbela, identified from an inscription on the stone. Fully armed, she stands on her growling lion, which she controls with a rope. Her cylindrical horned crown is topped with a star-rosette. Stone stele from Tel-Barsip in north-east Syria. Dated to the eighth century BCE. Drawing © 2008 S. Beaulieu, after Pritchard 1969: 177, plate 522.
Although the Assyrian oracles were certainly recorded by scribes and probably were to some extent fashioned by them to fit an accepted literary tradition, nonetheless they are still presented as the words of a deity.
For instance, an oracle given by “the mouth of the woman Sinqisha-amur of Arbela” reads: “King of Assyria, have no fear! I will deliver up the enemy of the king of Assyria for slaughter….”
The possessor of the medium then identifies herself: “I am the Gr[eat Lady. I am Ishtar o]f Arbela ...” (Parpola 1997: 4).
In another prophecy spoken through Sinqisha-amur, the possessing deity assures the king: “I am your father and mother. I raised you between my wings” (Parpola 1997: 18).
Stone stele with Ishtar standing on her growling lion.
Mothering and nursing language occurs several times in the Nineveh collection. An unknown prophet speaks as Ishtar of Arbela: “I am your great midwife; I am your excellent wet nurse” (Parpola 1997: 7). The following excerpt comes from a long prophecy made for the crown prince Assurbanipal through the “prophetess Mullissu-kabtat” (meaning “Mullissu is honored”): “You whose mother is Mulissu,[1] have no fear! You whose nurse is the Lady of Arbela, have no fear!” (Parpola 1997: 39).
“If ever there was a possession cult in Mesopotamia, it was connected with Ishtar” ~ Toorn.
Fig. 17 description
Ewe suckling her lamb while browsing on a bush. She is a goddess as the star above her tells us — it is the cuneiform sign for "deity." She represents Ishtar as nursing mother, as sometimes described in the Assyrian oracles. Impression of a cylinder seal from the Assyrian capital city Ashur. Dated to the middle Assyrian period (ca. 1500-1000 BCE). Drawing © 2008 S. Beaulieu, after Parpola 1997: XXXVIII Fig. 17.
In some of the oracles the deity refers to the king as a calf. One oracle says that Ishtar of Arbela has gone into the steppe, but she has sent a message of “well-being to her calf” (Parpola 1997: 10). Another comforts the king: “[Have no fear], my calf” (Parpola 1997: 18). This motherly reference reminds us of wonderful ivory carvings of a cow suckling a calf, some of which were found at Nimrud in Mesopotamia (Mallowan 1978). This image was “a ubiquitous motif” of the period (Parpola 1997: XXXVIII). Further, it was closely “connected in the historical traditions with the goddess” (Keel and Uelinger1998: 215).
The 7th century Nineveh collection mentions thirteen Assyrian mediums, nine of them female. The remaining four were possibly male, but two of them seem to have been sexually ambivalent.[2] One of the latter’s oracles is identified as “the mouth of the woman Baya, son of Arbela” (Parpola 1997: 6). Female mediums from Arbela included Ahat-abisha “Sister of her father,” Sinqisha-amur “I have seen her distress,” and Dunnasha-amur “I have seen her power” (Parpola 1997: IL, LII). It is not surprising that so many prophets were from Arbela (modern Erbil), for Ishtar was the protector deity of Arbela. They were almost certainly attached to her temple there, “House of the Lady of the Land” (Nissinen 2003: 100; Nissinen in Nissinen 2000: 95).
Not only was Ishtar a warrior goddess, but she was the divine mediator between deities and between deities and humans (Nissinen in Nissinen 2000: 96). Thus, it was usually she who possessed the Assyrian mediums. So the “overwhelming majority” of the prophets are associated in some way with Ishtar’s cult. When on occasion another deity wanted to contact a king through an oracle, s/he “used the channel” of a medium of Ishtar (Toorn in Nissinen 2000: 78-79). Ishtar induced ecstasy in her devotees. “If ever there was a possession cult in Mesopotamia, it was connected with Ishtar” (Toorn in Nissinen 2000: 79).
Cross-dressing was part of her cult, and she had the ability to alter a person’s sex, so that a man became a woman and vice versa. In Mesopotamian treaties, the curse on treaty breakers often included lines like the following, from an Assyrian vassal treaty: “… may Ishtar, the goddess of men, the lady of women, take away their `bow,’ [potency?] cause their steri[lity]…” (Reiner in Pritchard 1969: 533). Like Inanna, Ishtar also confused the lines that separated the sexes, the generations, the classes, and the species, human and animal.
Ishtar was goddess of love and war, as well as of the Venus star. Later, as often in earlier periods, Ishtar’s warlike qualities were definitely emphasized by warrior conquerors like the Assyrians. For their kings, Ishtar was not only “Lady of Battle” but often a personal deity. She fought beside them in battle and led them to victory. Ishtar of Arbela was an especially warlike figure. Hence it is surprising to encounter in the oracles the goddess’s nurturing character. Blood-thirsty goddess she might be, but she shows concern for her “calf” in the most motherly of ways. This adds a further dimension to her complex character.
That Ishtar, gender-bending source of ecstasy that she was, should have been served by many female as well as some transvestite and eunuch mediums is not surprising either. We can only speculate on what great influence these predominantly female prophets must have had in their temple and on the warlike Assyrian kings, when their powerful goddess spoke through them.
Author's Notes
1. Mulissu/Mullissu was the Assyrian name of the great and influential goddess Nin-lil, spouse of the supreme Sumerian god En-lil. She was wife of the Assyrian state god Ashur, En-lil’s Assyrian counterpart. Her sacred animal was the lion. Later she was equated with Ishtar, especially Ishtar of Arbela. In Assyria, in the later period, Ishtar was the spouse of the god Ashur. Herodotus called her Mylitta and identified her as the Assyrian Aphrodite.
2. Several categories of religious functionary dedicated to Ishtar were transvestites, and many may have been castrates. About the article:
Excerpt from Spirit Possession and the Goddess Ishtar in Ancient Mesopotamia by Johanna Stuckey with permission. Bibliography can be found here. All images © Stéphane Beaulieu, used with permission. Originally published in Matrifocus! where you can find more articles by Johanna Stuckey and artwork by Stéphane Beaulieu.
Spirit possession was a part of the religious life of ancient Mesopotamia. For instance, during the “Sacred Marriage” ritual of Akitu, the Assyrian goddess Ishtar possessed her high priestess and acted through her body. In ancient Mesopotamia, attested examples of possession normally involved oracles or prophesies by religious functionaries — many of them women, many devotees of Ishtar.
Study the image above. Ishtar-of-the-Stars. Probably a cult statue being worshipped by a human priest or king. Her warrior aspect is indicated by her striding left leg protruding from an overskirt and revealing a warrior's kilt. Impression of a Neo-Assyrian seal, dated 883-612 BCE. Drawing © 2008 S. Beaulieu, after Black And Green 2003: 108.
The Mesopotamian Semitic word for prophet, raggimu (masc.)/raggintu (fem.) meant “shouter,” and it is likely that this kind of oracle giver proclaimed the message in a temple. Another kind of prophet was called mahhû (masc.)/muhhutu(m) (fem.) meaning “ecstatic” and derived from mahu “to go into a frenzy” (Nissinen 2003: 6-7). Both kinds were normally attached to the temple of the deity for whom they spoke. When they spoke, they would very likely have been possessed by the temple’s god(dess).
Mesopotamian oracular reports have come down to us primarily in two groups, the Mari letters and the Nineveh collection, dated about 1,000 years apart. The Mari letters (2nd millennium BCE) were written to the king of Mari by members of his family and courtiers. Prominent among the senders of Mari letters containing accounts of prophecies were Shibtu, the queen of Zimri-Lim (c. 1775-1761), the king’s sister priestess Inib-shina, and other royal ladies such as Addu-duri Nissinen 2003: 15, 28). The prophets themselves included slightly more women than men (Huffmon in Nissinen 2000: 51). They were connected to a number of deities, one of whom was Annunitu(m), a form of Ishtar.
The Nineveh collection, on which I will concentrate here, consists of reports preserved at Nineveh in the great library of the Assyrian king, Assurbanipal, and written down in the 7th century BCE (deJong Ellis 1989: 133, 141). The sex differential changes quite dramatically from the Mari letters to the Nineveh collection. In the latter, female prophets outnumbered males by two to one. Furthermore, the majority of the Assyrian prophets came from Arbela, a city in the northern part of Mesopotamia (Parpolo 1997: XLVIII). Not surprisingly, as we shall see, Arbela’s protector deity was the goddess Ishtar. The Assyrian king Esarhaddon (681-669 BCE) and his son Assurbanipal (668-627 BCE), both warrior kings (Pongratz-Leisten 2006: 26), had close relationships with Ishtar of Arbela as “Lady of Battle.” The prophecies in the Nineveh collection concerned these two kings.
Plate 522 description
Assyrian warrior goddess Ishtar of Arbela, identified from an inscription on the stone. Fully armed, she stands on her growling lion, which she controls with a rope. Her cylindrical horned crown is topped with a star-rosette. Stone stele from Tel-Barsip in north-east Syria. Dated to the eighth century BCE. Drawing © 2008 S. Beaulieu, after Pritchard 1969: 177, plate 522.
Although the Assyrian oracles were certainly recorded by scribes and probably were to some extent fashioned by them to fit an accepted literary tradition, nonetheless they are still presented as the words of a deity.
For instance, an oracle given by “the mouth of the woman Sinqisha-amur of Arbela” reads: “King of Assyria, have no fear! I will deliver up the enemy of the king of Assyria for slaughter….”
The possessor of the medium then identifies herself: “I am the Gr[eat Lady. I am Ishtar o]f Arbela ...” (Parpola 1997: 4).
In another prophecy spoken through Sinqisha-amur, the possessing deity assures the king: “I am your father and mother. I raised you between my wings” (Parpola 1997: 18).
Stone stele with Ishtar standing on her growling lion.
Mothering and nursing language occurs several times in the Nineveh collection. An unknown prophet speaks as Ishtar of Arbela: “I am your great midwife; I am your excellent wet nurse” (Parpola 1997: 7). The following excerpt comes from a long prophecy made for the crown prince Assurbanipal through the “prophetess Mullissu-kabtat” (meaning “Mullissu is honored”): “You whose mother is Mulissu,[1] have no fear! You whose nurse is the Lady of Arbela, have no fear!” (Parpola 1997: 39).
“If ever there was a possession cult in Mesopotamia, it was connected with Ishtar” ~ Toorn.
Fig. 17 description
Ewe suckling her lamb while browsing on a bush. She is a goddess as the star above her tells us — it is the cuneiform sign for "deity." She represents Ishtar as nursing mother, as sometimes described in the Assyrian oracles. Impression of a cylinder seal from the Assyrian capital city Ashur. Dated to the middle Assyrian period (ca. 1500-1000 BCE). Drawing © 2008 S. Beaulieu, after Parpola 1997: XXXVIII Fig. 17.
In some of the oracles the deity refers to the king as a calf. One oracle says that Ishtar of Arbela has gone into the steppe, but she has sent a message of “well-being to her calf” (Parpola 1997: 10). Another comforts the king: “[Have no fear], my calf” (Parpola 1997: 18). This motherly reference reminds us of wonderful ivory carvings of a cow suckling a calf, some of which were found at Nimrud in Mesopotamia (Mallowan 1978). This image was “a ubiquitous motif” of the period (Parpola 1997: XXXVIII). Further, it was closely “connected in the historical traditions with the goddess” (Keel and Uelinger1998: 215).
The 7th century Nineveh collection mentions thirteen Assyrian mediums, nine of them female. The remaining four were possibly male, but two of them seem to have been sexually ambivalent.[2] One of the latter’s oracles is identified as “the mouth of the woman Baya, son of Arbela” (Parpola 1997: 6). Female mediums from Arbela included Ahat-abisha “Sister of her father,” Sinqisha-amur “I have seen her distress,” and Dunnasha-amur “I have seen her power” (Parpola 1997: IL, LII). It is not surprising that so many prophets were from Arbela (modern Erbil), for Ishtar was the protector deity of Arbela. They were almost certainly attached to her temple there, “House of the Lady of the Land” (Nissinen 2003: 100; Nissinen in Nissinen 2000: 95).
Not only was Ishtar a warrior goddess, but she was the divine mediator between deities and between deities and humans (Nissinen in Nissinen 2000: 96). Thus, it was usually she who possessed the Assyrian mediums. So the “overwhelming majority” of the prophets are associated in some way with Ishtar’s cult. When on occasion another deity wanted to contact a king through an oracle, s/he “used the channel” of a medium of Ishtar (Toorn in Nissinen 2000: 78-79). Ishtar induced ecstasy in her devotees. “If ever there was a possession cult in Mesopotamia, it was connected with Ishtar” (Toorn in Nissinen 2000: 79).
Cross-dressing was part of her cult, and she had the ability to alter a person’s sex, so that a man became a woman and vice versa. In Mesopotamian treaties, the curse on treaty breakers often included lines like the following, from an Assyrian vassal treaty: “… may Ishtar, the goddess of men, the lady of women, take away their `bow,’ [potency?] cause their steri[lity]…” (Reiner in Pritchard 1969: 533). Like Inanna, Ishtar also confused the lines that separated the sexes, the generations, the classes, and the species, human and animal.
Ishtar was goddess of love and war, as well as of the Venus star. Later, as often in earlier periods, Ishtar’s warlike qualities were definitely emphasized by warrior conquerors like the Assyrians. For their kings, Ishtar was not only “Lady of Battle” but often a personal deity. She fought beside them in battle and led them to victory. Ishtar of Arbela was an especially warlike figure. Hence it is surprising to encounter in the oracles the goddess’s nurturing character. Blood-thirsty goddess she might be, but she shows concern for her “calf” in the most motherly of ways. This adds a further dimension to her complex character.
That Ishtar, gender-bending source of ecstasy that she was, should have been served by many female as well as some transvestite and eunuch mediums is not surprising either. We can only speculate on what great influence these predominantly female prophets must have had in their temple and on the warlike Assyrian kings, when their powerful goddess spoke through them.
Author's Notes
1. Mulissu/Mullissu was the Assyrian name of the great and influential goddess Nin-lil, spouse of the supreme Sumerian god En-lil. She was wife of the Assyrian state god Ashur, En-lil’s Assyrian counterpart. Her sacred animal was the lion. Later she was equated with Ishtar, especially Ishtar of Arbela. In Assyria, in the later period, Ishtar was the spouse of the god Ashur. Herodotus called her Mylitta and identified her as the Assyrian Aphrodite.
2. Several categories of religious functionary dedicated to Ishtar were transvestites, and many may have been castrates. About the article:
Excerpt from Spirit Possession and the Goddess Ishtar in Ancient Mesopotamia by Johanna Stuckey with permission. Bibliography can be found here. All images © Stéphane Beaulieu, used with permission. Originally published in Matrifocus! where you can find more articles by Johanna Stuckey and artwork by Stéphane Beaulieu.
