Ishara was a goddess of Eblaite origin, among the important deities of the third-millennium archive, where she was closely associated with the royal family and received royal offerings. She was a goddess of love and of oaths, and was held to punish those who swore falsely, typically by inflicting disease. From Ebla her cult spread widely: she became an onomastic element in Mesopotamia from the Akkadian period and was prominent in later Hurrian and Hittite religion. Her etymology is uncertain and is usually traced, like that of Kura and Hadabal, to a pre-Semitic substrate. Her Mesopotamian emblem was at first the mythical serpent bashmu, later (from the Kassite period) replaced by the scorpion with which she is most often pictured on boundary stones.