Path: shell.portal.com!svc.portal.com!sdd.hp.com!news1.best.com!news.texas.net!news.sprintlink.net!new-news.sprintlink.net!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!dircon!usenet From: Terry Bailey Newsgroups: alt.fan.kali.astarte.inanna,alt.pagan,alt.religion.wicca,alt.mythology,talk.religion.misc,alt.religion.all-worlds Subject: Re: Astarte Date: 1 May 1996 20:08:03 GMT Organization: Direct Connection Lines: 13 Message-ID: <4m8gb3$bfp@newsgate.dircon.co.uk> References: <4m6rlq$4ll@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <4m76j8$7q2@newsbf02.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: gw4-165.pool.dircon.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.1N (Windows; I; 16bit) Xref: shell.portal.com alt.fan.kali.astarte.inanna:665 alt.pagan:157739 alt.religion.wicca:27583 alt.mythology:26801 talk.religion.misc:217076 alt.religion.all-worlds:7340 According to Dent's "Who's Who, Non-Classical Mythology": "She was the fertility goddess of the Semitic races, her cult having spread throughout the whole middle east. In Babylonia, she became Ishtar. By the Greeks she was equated with Aphrodite, who would appear to be the same but in a new setting. As the goddess of the planet Venus, she would appear to be a variant of Athar, the South Semitic Venus god. As Ashtoreth, she was a goddess of war in Egypt from 1800 BCE until the coming of Christianity." Alternate spelling: Ashtart.