к a Worship Ishtar was believed to be the daughter of Anu, the god of the Although she was widely venerated, she was particularly worshipped in the Upper Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria (modern Iraq,

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Worship
Ishtar was believed to be the daughter of Anu, the god of the
Although she was widely venerated, she was particularly worshipped in the
Upper Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria (modern Iraq, north
east Syria and south east Turkey), particularly at the cities of Nineveh, IN A
Ashur and Arbela (modern Erbil), and also in the south Mesopotamian city У
of Ishtar was closely associated with lions and with the eight-
pointed star, which were her most common In the Babylonian
pantheon, she the divine personification of the planet
The cult of Ishtar may have involved sacred byt
this is Hierodules known as ishtaritum are reported to
have worked in Ishtar’s but it is if such priestesses
actually performed any sex and several modem scholars have Star of Ishtar
argued that they did
Androgynous and hermaphroditic men were heavily involved in the cult of Kurgarrd and assinnu were servants
of Ishtar who dressed in female clothing and performed war dances in Ishtar's Several Akkadian proverbs
seem to suggest that they may have also engaged in homosexual Gwendolyn Leick, an anthropologist
known for her writings on Mesopotamia, has compared these individuals to the contemporary Indian in one
Akkadian hymn, Ishtar is described as transforming men into
During the reign of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal, Ishtar rose to became the most important and widely venerated deity
in the Assyrian pantheon, surpassing even the Assyrian national god