Astarte, the great goddess of the Phoenicians from the Levant to Pyrgi

Along the coasts of the Levant, in the cities the Greeks called Phoenician, the great goddess of love, fertility and also war bore the name Astarte. Her cult followed the routes of Phoenician merchants throughout the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to Carthage, from Sicily to Spain, and left traces even in an Etruscan sanctuary on the Tyrrhenian coast, a few kilometres from Rome.

Origins in the Levant

The name already appears in the texts of Ugarit, the ancient city on the Syrian coast that flourished in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC, in the form Athtart. Here the goddess appears beside Anat and Baal, with the features of a huntress and warrior. Her name is related to that of the Mesopotamian Ishtar, and many scholars believe the two figures derive from a common Semitic deity linked to the planet Venus.

In the first millennium BC Astarte became one of the principal deities of Sidon and Tyre. The inscriptions of the kings of Sidon, such as the one carved on the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, now in the Louvre, record temples built in her honour, and this king's father, Tabnit, called himself priest of Astarte. At Tyre the goddess was worshipped alongside Melqart, the city's protecting god.

Astarte in the Bible and in Egypt

The Hebrew Bible calls her Ashtoreth, with a vocalisation that according to many scholars deliberately echoes that of the word boshet, shame. The First Book of Kings reproaches Solomon for having followed Astarte, goddess of the Sidonians, and the prophets repeatedly condemn her cult. The plural form ashtaroth sometimes refers generically to foreign female deities.

In Egypt Astarte was welcomed in the New Kingdom, above all as a warrior deity linked to horses and chariots. A fragmentary papyrus known as Astarte and the Sea tells how the goddess was sent to the sea god, who demanded tribute from the gods. Herodotus also mentions at Memphis a sanctuary of a foreign Aphrodite, in the quarter inhabited by Tyrians, which many identify with Astarte.

From Cyprus to Pyrgi

On Cyprus, in the Phoenician city of Kition, present-day Larnaca, a great temple of Astarte was built in the ninth century BC over an older sanctuary. It was on Cyprus that the Phoenician goddess and the Greek Aphrodite came into contact, and many scholars believe this encounter helped shape the very figure of Aphrodite. In Sicily, on Mount Eryx, the local goddess was associated with Astarte and later with the Roman Venus.

The most surprising evidence comes from Italy. In 1964, during excavations at the Etruscan sanctuary of Pyrgi, near Santa Severa, three inscribed gold tablets were found, two in Etruscan and one in Phoenician. They record that Thefarie Velianas, ruler of Caere, dedicated a sacred place to the goddess whom the Etruscan texts call Uni and the Phoenician text Astarte. The tablets, datable to around 500 BC, are kept in the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome.

From ancient Ugarit to the Tyrrhenian shores, Astarte was one of the most mobile deities of the ancient world. Her cult shows that the religions of the Mediterranean did not live in isolation but recognised one another, translating the names of the gods from one language to another and from one sanctuary to another, as merchants did with their goods.