Article 246 of rec.arts.comics.misc:
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From: [lf 7 z] at [ellis.uchicago.edu] (Glenn again)
Subject: Re: Sandman #45: The Good, The Mad and the Spoilers
Message-ID: <[1992 Dec 7 100441 13050] at [midway.uchicago.edu]>
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Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1992 10:04:41 GMT
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In article <[l s mith 722996487] at [mega]> [l s mith] at [mega.cs.umn.edu] (Lance "Squiddie" Smith) writes:

>Some background on Ishtar. 

OK, I was hoping to avoid this, but I am an Assyriologist, so here goes.

First off, the temple prostitute bit comes from Herodatus (book 1, I
think around line 180), not the Babylonian sources.  Though he's known
as the "father of history", his history is more historical fiction,
and not too picky about sources or details, and he loved conflicting
gossip.  He's mostly a good spinner of tales, a bit like our beloved
Neil.  Most scholars agree that he fibbed about going to Babylon,
there are just too many geographical and historical inaccuracies.  For
the record, he did visit the Egyptian Delta, and that portion is
fairly reliable, except when the priests were putting him on, which
was apparently a good bit of the time (he must have been a good object
for this :^).  But when he heads south (particularly Nubia, the topic
of my dissertation :( ), well, he tells a good tale.

My Mesopotamian archaeology prof. who has the concession at Nippur, the
religious capital of Mesopotamia, froths at the mouth when Bible types
bring up the dreaded "temple prostitute" parallel in Babylonia :^)
He's convinced it's a fundamentalist plot to keep this alive in the
literature.  Before we could read Akkadian and had dug up their
temples and tombs (i.e. prior to the late 19th century) Herodatus was
an important historical source for the Ancient Near East, but he
sounds pretty silly today.  To be fair, there are a few OT passages
from the divided kingdom period that certainly seem to be talking
about temple prostitution, and it was common in Greek Asia Minor
(Herodatus was from Halicarnassus :^).  There was a symbolic union of
the Babylonian king and the high priestess during the New Year's
festival called the 'heiros gamos' (holy marriage), and this is the
rite that Lance was referring to.  His information about the Dimuzi
myth and the general character of Inanna is also good stuff.  Except
that it should be obvious how dangerous it is to equate Adonis and
Tammuz/Dimuzi, there are some similarities of theme, and perhaps even
Mesopotamian influence, but they are not the same story.  However
there's no Babylonian evidence of temple prostitution, the Byblos
reference must be from classical times.  The coin story was certainly
an invention of Herodatus, however it's good tale, eh?

The name of the deity is Inanna in Sumerian and Ishtar in Akkadian
(Assyria and Babylonia).  Because of the Amorite interaction, the
Canaanite deity Astarte became identified with Ishtar as a West
Semitic equivalent, they may in origin be the same, as their roles in
the pantheon are functionally equivalent --- except Astarte has a
warlike aspect that Ishtar does not --- and the names share the same
triliteral root.  That would be the Phoenicians, Ugarites, Byblites,
Amorites, Canaanites, and all the other -ites down in Israel.  Bel-ili
is a very common Babylonian name that means 'the lord is my god', and
is also a common epithet of all semitic deities after the Aramaeans
came into Mesopotamia late in the 2nd mill. BC and Marduk was
supplanted by Bel.  Belat means 'goddess' or 'Lady', the feminine of
Bel, and Beltis is a Greek mispelling of the latter.

Pharamond will have to be explained by someone else, he has nothing to
do with the ANE, as far as I know :^)  It looks european, doesn't it?

>Temples to Ishtar at Uruk, Akkad, Nineveh, Arbela and Sippar may also

These temples did not exist at the same time; Uruk, Akkad, and Sippar
date from Sumerian times, Ninevah and Arbela from Assyrian times.  Her
temple at Uruk is also her oldest and it predates the advent of
writing.  In Babylonia, the Tammuz ritual was celebrated only at the
capital.  In Sumerian times this was the religious center at Nippur,
then at Akkad during the Akkadian period, then variously at Ashur,
Ninevah or Babylon under the Assyrians and Babylonians.  But the
ritual was a blood and grain sacrifice in Mesopotamia, I don't know
what was involved in the Greek Adonis ritual.

>The dance she does I'm not really sure about. One rite associated with 
>Ishtar was the choice of a husband or king for the goddess. His reign 
>would last a year. At the end he would be sacrificed and a new husband
>picked. The man chosen was allowed sex with Ishtar/Astarte, or her earthly
>form which was that of the temple's high priestess. The sex and the sacrifice
>were to insure good crops and productive livestock. This is all tied in
>with Ishtar's descent into the underworld to rescue her husband/brother
>and the changing of the seasons. 

This sounds like a reference to the 'heiros gamos' ritual I mentioned
above, except that no one got killed or laid :^), and it was the king
involved.  There was a purely practical reason the king didn't sleep
with the high priestess, in the earliest days they were generally
siblings, and it was those disgusting Egyptians that practiced incest
:^) The only human sacrifice we know about ocurred briefly at Ur,
where the kings were buried with a retinue, and we think this was due
to Egyptian influence, who also did this early on.  And on that cheery
note, good night and

Pax ex machina,
Glenn
......................................................................
"Real as anyplace you've been. Get a life!  From the dreamer's dream."
  --- Peter Gabriel
[g carnagey] at [uchicago.edu], if you must know