Astarte
The great Phoenician goddess of love, war and sovereignty, present in Punic cult (the Pyrgi dedication; Tas-Silġ on Malta; the Berger 1898 Carthaginian dedication naming sanctuaries of both Astarte and Tanit). Shares theonym and origin with the eastern Phoenician Astarte (corpus id phoenician_astarte); authored here in her Punic role. SOLITARY in this batch: at Carthage she is overshadowed by, and assimilated to, Tanit (Tanit-Astarte) — the older view that Tanit is a Punic form/hypostasis or successor of Astarte is widely reported but increasingly contested (current scholarship tends to distinguish them, Tanit likely originally local/Libyan), so no kin/identity edge is wired; at Tyre she is paired with Melqart. The Aphrodite/Venus (also Iuno, in the Uni/Caelestis milieu) interpretatio is recorded here, not wired as a relation (counterpart not in this batch).
Domains
- love and fertility
- war and sovereignty
Powers
- Kindles desire, fertility and procreation
Epithets
- Rabat (rbt, 'Lady')
Sources
- Pyrgi Tablets, KAI 277 (c. 500 BCE); Punic sanctuary of Astarte, Tas-Silġ, Malta; Ph. Berger, 'Inscription dédicatoire des sanctuaires d'Astarté et de Tanit à Carthage', Revue d'Assyriologie 5/1 (1898), 11–25
- E. Lipiński, Dieux et déesses de l'univers phénicien et punique (Studia Phoenicia XIV, 1995); Serge Lancel, Carthage: A History (1995)