Deity · Mesopotamian · c. 2500 BCE
Ishtar
Also called Inanna, Irnini · also recorded as Ištar, Istar (per Wikidata)
Goddess of love, war and the planet Venus, whose descent into the underworld is among the oldest recorded narratives.
Deep source base
Ishtar holds together two things later traditions keep apart: sexual love and open war, both belonging to the same goddess and to the planet Venus as morning and evening star. Her descent is among the oldest narratives recorded anywhere — through seven gates, surrendering a garment at each until she arrives with nothing, to be hung on a hook by her sister Ereshkigal — and while she is below, nothing on earth breeds. The Hebrew Bible knows her as the Queen of Heaven, in Jeremiah's complaint about the cakes baked for her, which is a specific enough detail to be evidence of a practice rather than a polemical invention.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Uruk, at the Eanna; and Arbela and Nineveh in the north, where the Assyrian kings treated her as a war goddess and their own patron.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- Rank
- Queen of Heaven
- Pantheon
- Mesopotamian
- Order
- Babylonian pantheon
- Base of operations
- Uruk, at the Eanna; and Arbela and Nineveh in the north, where the Assyrian kings treated her as a war goddess and their own patron.
- Era
- c. 2500 BCE
- Traditions
- Mesopotamian
- Placed in
- The Assembly of the Gods
Traits
- Domain
- Love, war, Venus, the descent
- Metal of its planet (Agrippa, 1533)
- Silver and brass — “Amongst Metals, Silver, and Brass, both yellow, and red.” (I.28)
- Planet
- Venus
- Sacred animal
- Lion
Stats
Known connections
Chain of command
Opposed by
Identified with
2 sites
Where was it worshipped?
Attested cult sites, located against the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world where it reaches and against Wikidata everywhere else. An absence here is not evidence that no cult existed: a good number of figures never had one, and the entry above says so where that is the case.
now Warka
The Eanna, Inanna's house, and one of the oldest monumental precincts anywhere.
31.323, 45.639 · Pleiades 912986
now Erbil
Ishtar of Arbela, the Assyrian kings' own oracular patron. Not the Arbela in Jordan.
Ishtar of Arbela, oracular patron of the Assyrian kings.
36.191, 44.009 · Pleiades 874341
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Ishtar, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- social1
- martial1
- transformation1
1 mark
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
3 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 3 texts that names Ishtar, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
3 texts spanning roughly 800 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Ishtar, Queen of Heaven
Propositions Gilgamesh, is refused at length and with a list of what became of her previous lovers, and answers by demanding the Bull of Heaven from her father with a threat to break the doors of the netherworld and raise the dead. The threat is the same jurisdiction her descent runs into.
Passes the seven gates of the netherworld, surrendering a garment at each, and is hung on a hook by Ereshkigal. Nothing on earth breeds while she is below.
Jeremiah condemns the offering of cakes to her.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Identified with Astarte
Cognate West Semitic and East Semitic forms of the same Venus goddess.
Identified with Persephone
Goddesses who descend and return, tied to the agricultural year.
Identified with Isis
Equated widely in the Hellenistic Mediterranean.
Identified with Freyja
Goddesses of love and of battle who claim a share of the slain.
Opposed by Gilgamesh
He refuses her proposal and recites what became of her previous lovers; she answers by demanding the Bull of Heaven from Anu.
Identified with The Queen of Heaven
The most commonly proposed referent, on the strength of her own title.
Served by Tammuz
Her consort, and her substitute in the underworld.
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Ishtar?
Is Ishtar the same as Astarte?
What rank is Ishtar?
How else is Ishtar spelled?
What is Ishtar said to do?
How old is Ishtar?
Nearest in the corpus
If Ishtar is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Ereshkigal
Queen of the Great Below · Mesopotamian
Sovereign of the underworld who strips Ishtar of a garment at each of the seven gates and hangs her on a hook.
Marduk
King of the Gods · Mesopotamian
Splits Tiamat and builds the world from her body, and is voted fifty names and supreme authority for doing it.
Nergal
God of the Underworld · Mesopotamian
God of plague, war and the underworld, consort of Ereshkigal — and one of the few Mesopotamian gods the Bible names directly.
Anzu
Storm Bird · Mesopotamian
The lion-headed eagle who steals the Tablet of Destinies and is shot down for it — a rebellion against divine order predating any biblical account by a millennium.
Enki
Lord of the Sweet Waters · Mesopotamian
God of the abzu and of cunning, who repeatedly saves humanity by finding the loophole in another god's decree.
Enlil
Lord of the Air · Mesopotamian
Holder of the Tablet of Destinies, and the god who decrees the flood. He was supreme until Marduk's Babylonian promotion displaced him.
The books behind Ishtar
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Standard Babylonian version, attributed to Sin-leqi-unninni · c. 1200 BCE, from older Sumerian material · Akkadian
Read The Epic of Gilgamesh in full ↗The Descent of Ishtar to the Netherworld
Anonymous Akkadian; earlier Sumerian recension of Inanna · c. 1000 BCE, from older Sumerian material · Akkadian
Read The Descent of Ishtar to the Netherworld in full ↗Cover: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Gennadii Saus i Segura · Wikimedia file page
Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon
Various · c. 900–100 BCE · Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek
Read Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon in full ↗Cover: Public domain · see en:Aleppo Codex; scanned by · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.