Side by side, from the sources

Isis vs Ishtar

These two are identified with one another in the record, which is not the same as being the same figure. Equated widely in the Hellenistic Mediterranean.

Deity · Egyptian · c. 2600 BCE

Isis

also called Aset, Auset

The great magician who reassembles Osiris and tricks Ra into surrendering his secret name. Her cult eventually reached as far as Roman Britain.

Alignment: Disputed
Rank: Great of Magic
First attested: The Pyramid Texts · c. 2350–2100 BCE
Named there as: Isis
Texts naming it: 3
Powers attributed: 5

85attestedEgyptian Roman

Deity · Mesopotamian · c. 2500 BCE

Ishtar

also called Inanna, Irnini, Ištar, Istar

Goddess of love, war and the planet Venus, whose descent into the underworld is among the oldest recorded narratives.

Alignment: Disputed
Rank: Queen of Heaven
First attested: The Epic of Gilgamesh · c. 1200 BCE, from older Sumerian material
Named there as: Ishtar
Texts naming it: 3
Powers attributed: 3

90attestedMesopotamian

Where do they actually overlap?

Texts naming both

None. The two never appear in the same text in this corpus, which is worth knowing before accepting any confident claim that they are one figure.

Powers credited to both

No shared office is recorded. Where two figures are said to be the same and share no job description at all, the identification is usually doing polemical work rather than descriptive work.

Common questions

Are Isis and Ishtar the same figure?

These two are identified with one another in the record, which is not the same as being the same figure. Equated widely in the Hellenistic Mediterranean. ColossiansOne records the link rather than asserting the identity: where texts disagree about whether two names denote one figure, the disagreement is what gets shown.

Which is older, Isis or Ishtar?

Isis is the older name: first attested around c. 2600 BCE, against c. 2500 BCE for Ishtar. Where the two dates are far apart, that gap is the whole reason the pair is worth comparing.

Do any texts name both Isis and Ishtar?

No text in this corpus names both. That is not proof they were considered the same figure, but it is why the identification has to be traced through the scholarship rather than read off a page.

Open in the compare tool See the full chain