You are currently browsing the tag archive for the
‘Mesopotamian’ tag. The most prominent female deity in ancient
Mesopotamia was Inanna (also known as Ištar). Monotheistic
religions have a way of leaving out women (or making them
ancillary characters like Mary). Polytheistic religions often
divide their goddesses into fertility goddesses (like Aphrodite)
versus power goddesses like Athena or Artemis. Inanna reflects
no such omission or dichotomy: as Queen of Heaven, she was both
the goddess of sex and the goddess of war. In fact, saying that
she was the most prominent female deity of the
Babylonian/Akkadian/Sumerian pantheon might be unfair: arguably
she was the most prominent god of any sort in that pantheon.
Worship of Inanna seems to have begun in the city state Uruk
around 6000 years ago. Her sacred symbols were the eight pointed
star and the lioness. She is especially affiliated with the
planet Venus (which, obviously, was known instead as “Inanna” to
the Mesopotamians), the third brightest object in th