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While Heracles remains prostrate, Phur performs the ceremony of the cult of Astarte. First there are serious rites, slow dances, then, little by little, an immense furious joy seizes the priests and priestesses, courtesans and guards and it is a mystical and frenetic orgy of passion and possession.
Astarte (/ ə ˈ s t ɑːr t iː /; Ἀστάρτη, Astartē) is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern goddess ʿAṯtart. ʿAṯtart was the Northwest Semitic equivalent of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar .
The cult of Inanna/Ishtar also heavily influenced the cult of the Phoenician goddess Astarte. [349] The Phoenicians introduced Astarte to the Greek islands of Cyprus and Cythera , [ 340 ] [ 350 ] where she either gave rise to or at least heavily influenced the Greek goddess Aphrodite .
Another center of cult to Astarte was Cyprus, whose main temples were located in Paphos, Amathus and Kition. [28] The epigraphy of the Kition temple describes personal economic activity on the temple, as sacred prostitution would have been taxed as any other occupation, and names possible practitioners as grm (male) and lmt (female). [31] [34]
Edvard Westermarck claimed that Aicha Kandicha's name is "distinctly of Eastern origin," co-identifying her with Qetesh in ancient Canaanite religion, who he identified as "the temple harlot" and tying her to the cult of the goddess Astarte, incorrectly characterised as a "fertility" goddess.
Articles relating to the goddess Astarte and her depictions. She is often identified with Ishtar. She was worshipped by the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Egyptians, and the Phoenicians. Her cult is thought to have influenced the Greek cult of Aphrodite.
The reference to "Astarte", the consort of Baal in Semitic mythology, ties Shub-Niggurath to the related fertility goddess Cybele, the Magna Mater mentioned in Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls", and implies that the "great mother worshipped by the hereditary cult of Exham Priory" in that story "had to be none other than Shub-Niggurath". [10]
Logographic spellings also predominate in literary texts, but Song of Hašarri is an exception and seemingly consistently employs the syllabic spelling d Ša-wu u-us-ga. [6] Early Hurrian king of Urkesh and Nawar, Atal-shen, used the logogram d INANNA to write Šauška's name, [ 7 ] while later on in Nuzi one logographic spelling was d U. [ 8 ...