Astarte
Middle Eastern goddess, worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity
Astarte (; Ancient Greek: Ἀστάρτη, romanized: Astártē) is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern goddess ʿAṯtart. ʿAṯtart was the Northwest Semitic equivalent of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar.
Astarte was worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity, and her name is particularly associated with her worship in the ancient Levant among the Canaanites and Phoenicians, though she was originally associated with Amorite cities like Ugarit and Emar, as well as Mari and Ebla. She was also celebrated in Egypt, especially during the reign of the Ramessides, following the importation of foreign cults there. Phoenicians introduced her cult in their colonies on the Iberian Peninsula.
Name
The Proto-Semitic form of this goddess's name was ʿAṯtart. While earlier scholarship suggested that the name ʿAṯtart was formed by adding the Afroasiatic feminine suffix -t to the name of the deity ʿAṯtar, more recent views accept the names ʿAṯtar and ʿAṯtart as being etymologically related while considering the exact relationship between them to be unclear. The meaning of the names ʿAṯtar and ʿAṯtart are themselves still unclear.
The Masoretic Text vocalization ʿAštōret is in dispute: most scholars consider it as an artificial superimposition of the vowels of the Hebrew word bōšet (בֹּ֫שֶׁת, 'shame') upon the consonants of the original name; some other suggest it is a result of the Canaanite shift from /ā/ to /ō/ (despite the unexpected occurrence of the shift in this position), or, with an assumption of an early form *ʿAštārit, as a conventional occurrence of the shift -ā(r)i- to -ō(r)ē-.
Overview
In various cultures, Astarte was connected with some combination of the following spheres: war, sexuality, royal power, beauty, healing and — especially in Ugarit and Emar — hunting; however, known sources do not indicate she was a fertility goddess, contrary to opinions in early scholarship.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Astarte” as middle Eastern goddess, worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130274. VIAF identifies the subject as 805767. The Library of Congress control number is n2016036345. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Astarte” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.