Queen of heaven (antiquity) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Queen of Heaven was a title given to a number of ancient goddesses in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, in particular Anat

Anat

Anat, also ‘Anat is a major northwest Semitic goddess.-‘Anat in Ugarit:In the Ugaritic Ba‘al/Hadad cycle ‘Anat is a violent war-goddess, a virgin in Ugarit though the sister and lover of the great Ba‘al known as Hadad elsewhere. Ba‘al is usually called the son of Dagon and sometimes the son of El....

, Isis

Isis

Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...

, Innana, Astarte

Astarte

Astarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times...

. Hera

Hera

Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...

and possibly Asherah

Asherah

Asherah , in Semitic mythology, is a Semitic mother goddess, who appears in a number of ancient sources including Akkadian writings by the name of Ashratum/Ashratu and in Hittite as Asherdu or Ashertu or Aserdu or Asertu...

(by the prophet Jeremiah

Jeremiah

Jeremiah Hebrew：יִרְמְיָה , Modern Hebrew:Yirməyāhū, IPA: jirməˈjaːhu, Tiberian:Yirmĭyahu, Greek:Ἰερεμίας), meaning "Yahweh exalts", or called the "Weeping prophet" was one of the main prophets of the Hebrew Bible...

). Elsewhere, Nordic Frigg

Frigg

Frigg is a major goddess in Norse paganism, a subset of Germanic paganism. She is said to be the wife of Odin, and is the "foremost among the goddesses" and the queen of Asgard. Frigg appears primarily in Norse mythological stories as a wife and a mother. She is also described as having the power...

also bore this title. In Greco-Roman times Hera

Hera

, and her Roman aspect Juno

Juno (mythology)

Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...

bore this title. Forms and content of worship varied. The title Queen of Heaven

Queen of Heaven

Queen of Heaven is a title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary by Christians, mainly of the Roman Catholic Church, and also, to some extent, in the Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox churches, to whom the title is a consequence of the Council of Ephesus in the fifth century, where the Virgin...

is used by Catholics and Orthodox Christians for Mary

Mary (mother of Jesus)

Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...

Isis

Isis was venerated first in Egypt. As per the Greek historian Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

, writing in the fifth century BCE, Isis was the only goddess worshiped by all Egyptians alike, and whose influence was so widespread by that point, that she had become completely syncretic

Syncretism

Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...

with the Greek goddess Demeter

Demeter

In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...

. It is after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, and the Hellenization

Hellenization

Hellenization is a term used to describe the spread of ancient Greek culture, and, to a lesser extent, language. It is mainly used to describe the spread of Hellenistic civilization during the Hellenistic period following the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon...

of the Egyptian culture initiated by Ptolemy I Soter

Ptolemy I Soter

Ptolemy I Soter I , also known as Ptolemy Lagides, c. 367 BC – c. 283 BC, was a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great, who became ruler of Egypt and founder of both the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Ptolemaic Dynasty...

, that she eventually became known as 'Queen of Heaven'.
Lucius Apuleius confirmed this in Book 11, Chap 47 of his novel known as The Golden Ass

The Golden Ass

The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass , is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety....

, in which his character prayed to the "Queen of Heaven". The passage says that the goddess herself responded to his prayer, in which she explicitly identified herself as both the Queen of Heaven and Isis.

Then with a weeping countenance, I made this orison to the puissant Goddess, saying: O blessed Queen of Heaven...

Thus the divine shape breathing out the pleasant spice of fertile Arabia, disdained not with her divine voice to utter these words unto me: Behold Lucius I am come, thy weeping and prayers has moved me to succor thee. I am she that is the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of powers divine, Queen of Heaven... and the Egyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustomed to worship me, do call me Queen Isis.

Inanna

Inanna was the Sumerian Goddess of love and war. Despite her association with mating and fertility of humans and animals, Inanna was not a mother goddess, and is rarely associated with childbirth. Inanna was also associated with rain and storms and with the planet Venus.

Queen of Heaven is a title used for goddesses central to many religions of antiquity. Inanna's name is commonly derived from Nin-anna "Queen of Heaven" (from Sumerian

Sumerian language

Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...

NIN "lady", AN

Dingir

Dingir is a cuneiform sign, most commonly the determinative for "deity" although it has related meanings as well. As a determinative, it is not pronounced, and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript "D" as in e.g. DInanna...

"sky"), although the cuneiform sign for her name (Borger 2003 nr. 153, U+12239 𒈹) is not historically a ligature of the two.

In some traditions Inanna was said to be a granddaughter of the creator goddess

Mother goddess

Mother goddess is a term used to refer to a goddess who represents motherhood, fertility, creation or embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother.Many different goddesses have...

Nammu

In Sumerian mythology, Nammu was a primeval goddess, corresponding to Tiamat in Babylonian mythology....

or Namma.. These difficulties have led some early Assyriologists to suggest that Inanna may have been originally a Proto-Euphratean

Proto-Euphratean

Proto-Euphratean was considered by some Assyriologists , to be the substratum language of the people that introduced farming into Southern Iraq in the Early Ubaid period ....

goddess, possibly related to the Hurrian mother goddess Hannahannah

Hannahannah

Hannahannah is a Hurrian Mother Goddess related to or influenced by the pre-Sumerian Goddess Inanna, although the similarity in name to the Biblical Hannah, mother of Samuel ; the Canaanite Anath, and the Christian St Anne are coincidental, the name Hannah in Hebrew having a different etymology...

, accepted only latterly into the Sumerian pantheon, an idea supported by her youthfulness, and that, unlike the other Sumerian divinities, she at first had no sphere of responsibilities.
The view that there was a Proto-Euphratean

Proto-Euphratean

Proto-Euphratean was considered by some Assyriologists , to be the substratum language of the people that introduced farming into Southern Iraq in the Early Ubaid period ....

substrate language in Southern Iraq before Sumerian is not widely accepted by modern Assyriologists. In Sumer Inanna
Inanna
Inanna, also spelled Inana is the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare....

was hailed as "Queen of Heaven" in the 3rd millennium BC

3rd millennium BC

The 3rd millennium BC spans the Early to Middle Bronze Age.It represents a period of time in which imperialism, or the desire to conquer, grew to prominence, in the city states of the Middle East, but also throughout Eurasia, with Indo-European expansion to Anatolia, Europe and Central Asia. The...

. In Akkad

Akkad

The Akkadian Empire was an empire centered in the city of Akkad and its surrounding region in Mesopotamia....

to the north, she was worshipped later as Ishtar
Ishtar
Ishtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:...

. In the Sumerian Descent of Inanna, when Inanna is challenged at the outermost gates of the underworld, she replies
Her cult was deeply embedded in Mesopotamia and among the Canaanites to the west.

Astarte

The goddess, the Queen of Heaven, whose worship Jeremiah so vehemently opposed, may have been possibly Astarte

Astarte

Astarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times...

.
Astarte is the name of a goddess

Goddess

A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....

as known from Northwestern Semitic

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

regions, cognate in name, origin and functions with the goddess Ishtar

Ishtar

Ishtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:...

in Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

n texts. Another transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

is ‘Ashtart; other names for the goddess include Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

עשתרת (transliterated Ashtoreth), Ugaritic

Ugaritic language

The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Ugaritic, Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew:-Grammar:Ugaritic is an inflected language, and as a Semitic language its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Classical Arabic and Akkadian...

‘ṯtrt (also ‘Aṯtart or ‘Athtart, transliterated Atirat), Akkadian

Akkadian language

Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...

^DAs-tar-tú (also Astartu) and Etruscan

Etruscan language

The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...

Uni-Astre (Pyrgi Tablets

Pyrgi Tablets

The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy , are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAshtaret. Pyrgi was the port of the southern Etruscan...

According to scholar Mark S. Smith

Mark S. Smith

Mark Stratton John Matthew Smith is an American professor and Biblical scholar who currently holds the Skirball Chair of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University....

, Astarte may be the Iron Age (after 1200 BC) incarnation of the Bronze Age (to 1200 BC) Asherah

Asherah

.

Astarte was connected with fertility

Fertility

Fertility is the natural capability of producing offsprings. As a measure, "fertility rate" is the number of children born per couple, person or population. Fertility differs from fecundity, which is defined as the potential for reproduction...

, sexuality

Human sexuality

Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...

, and war

War

War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...

. Her symbols were the lion

Lion

The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...

, the horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

, the sphinx

Sphinx

A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...

, the dove

Dove

Pigeons and doves constitute the bird family Columbidae within the order Columbiformes, which include some 300 species of near passerines. In general terms "dove" and "pigeon" are used somewhat interchangeably...

, and a star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

within a circle indicating the planet Venus

Venus

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...

. Pictorial representations often show her naked. Astarte was accepted by the Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

s under the name of Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....

. The island of Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

, one of Astarte's greatest faith centers, supplied the name Cypris as Aphrodite's most common byname. Asherah was worshipped in ancient Israel as the consort of El and in Judah

Kingdom of Judah

The Kingdom of Judah was a Jewish state established in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. It is often referred to as the "Southern Kingdom" to distinguish it from the northern Kingdom of Israel....

as the consort of Yahweh

Yahweh

Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...

and Queen of Heaven (the Hebrews baked small cakes for her festival):

Hebrew Bible references

Worship of a "Queen of Heaven", in Hebrew Malkath haShamayim (מלכת השמים) is recorded in the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah

Jeremiah

, circa 628 BC, in the context of the Prophet condemning such religious worship as blasphemy

Blasphemy

Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...

and a violation of the teachings of the God of Israel. In Jeremiah 7:18:
In Jeremiah 44:15-18:
It should be remembered in this context that there was a temple of Yahweh

Yahweh

in Egypt at that time that was central to the Jewish community at Elephantine

Elephantine

Elephantine is an island in the River Nile, located just downstream of the First Cataract at the southern border of Ancient Egypt. This region is referred to as Upper Egypt because the land is higher than that near the Mediterranean coast. The island may have received its name because it was a...

in which Yahweh was worshipped in conjunction with the goddess Anath (also named in the temple papyri as Anath-Bethel and Anath-Iahu)..

The goddesses Asherah

Asherah

, Anath and Astarte

Astarte

Astarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times...

first appear as distinct and separate deities in the tablets discovered in the ruins of the library of Ugarit

Ugarit

Ugarit was an ancient port city in the eastern Mediterranean at the Ras Shamra headland near Latakia, Syria. It is located near Minet el-Beida in northern Syria. It is some seven miles north of Laodicea ad Mare and approximately fifty miles east of Cyprus...

(modern Ras Shamra, Syria), although some Biblical scholars who have not explored the earlier documented evidence tend to jumble all these goddesses together.

John Day

John Day (Old Testament scholar)

John Day is an English Old Testament scholar. He is Professor of Old Testament Studies in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford. He is the editor of In search of pre-exilic Israel and wrote God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea. He is also Fellow, Tutor in Theology, and Dean of...

states that "there is nothing in first-millennium BC texts that singles out Asherah as 'Queen of Heaven' or associates her particularly with the heavens at all."

Isis

Inanna

Astarte

Hebrew Bible references

See also