Astarte ꜥstrt

Overview

Astarte drives.

Her Egyptian title is "mistress of horses, lady of the chariot, dweller in Apollinopolis Magna" [budge-1904], and the image matches it exactly: a lioness-headed woman with a solar disk, standing in a four-horse chariot, riding over the bodies of her enemies.

She is the clearest case in this reference of a god arriving with a technology.

Attestation history

The title and the image. "She is called 'mistress of horses, lady of the chariot, dweller in Apollinopolis Magna' (Edfu). Conformably to this description the goddess is represented in the form of a woman with the head of a lioness, which is surmounted by a disk, and she stands in a chariot drawn by four horses and drives over her prostrate foes" [budge-1904].

When she arrived, and why. Budge dates it: her cult "cannot have been introduced into Egypt much earlier than the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and it was probably not well established until the reign of Amen-hetep III" [budge-1904]. It "was comparatively widespread in Egypt at the time when the priest-kings began to reign, and it flourished in the Delta, at least, until Christian times."

A letter from a foreign king. "In a letter from Tushratta, king of Mitani, to [Amenhotep III] he refers to the going down of 'Ishtar of Nineveh (i.e., Ashtoreth, or Astharthet), lady of the world,' into Egypt, both during his own reign and that of his father, and he seems to indicate that her worship in Egypt had declined, and begs Amen-hetep to make it to increase tenfold" [budge-1904].

A foreign king writing to a pharaoh to complain that his goddess is being neglected. The Tell el-Amarna correspondence is the source.

Identified with Hathor and Isis. In Egypt she "was identified with one of the forms of Hathor," or with Isis, "and was regarded both as a Moon-goddess and as a terrible and destroying goddess of war" [budge-1904].

What the texts say

The horse dates her, and Budge makes the argument well. "As a war-goddess she was the driver of the rampant war-maddened horses and the guide of the rushing chariot on the field of battle, and this consideration shows that as a goddess of horses she was unknown in Egypt before the XVIIIth Dynasty. The Egyptians learned to employ the horse in war from the Semites of the Eastern Desert, and their knowledge of the value of that animal for charging and for drawing war-chariots is not older than about B.C. 1800" [budge-1904].

That is the same kind of reasoning that dates Khnum by his extinct ram, and it is sound: a goddess whose defining attribute is a technology cannot predate the technology. Egypt had no chariots before the Hyksos period; Astarte's title is untranslatable before then.

She is Sekhmet's shape with a foreign job. Lioness head, solar disk — that is Sekhmet's exact iconography. But Sekhmet is a plague and a rage; Astarte is a driver. Same body, different profession, and the profession is the imported part.

A goddess with diplomatic standing. The Tushratta letter is worth dwelling on: a king of Mitanni tracks whether his goddess is being properly honoured in Egypt and formally asks for it to be increased. Gods travelled with treaties and marriages, and their upkeep was a matter of correspondence between courts.

Iconography

Lioness-headed, disk above, in a four-horse chariot, driving over fallen enemies [budge-1904]. Budge reproduces an illustration captioned "'Ashtoreth."

Cult and practice

Edfu by title; the Delta in practice, where her worship "flourished… until Christian times" [budge-1904]. No temple is named.