Other ritual information is fragmentary but provides some interesting insights.
The night-until-morn bellowing shrieks mixed with a great wailing seem to indicate
a mourning ceremony connected with the Venus cycle in the period between her
heliacal setting at night in the east and her heliacal rising in the morning in the
west. Ishtar’s astral manifestation in Akkadian is Ishtar-kakkabum(‘Ishtar-the-Star’)
which is found in the early second millennium but changes by the end of the
millennium into Ishtar-kakkabi(‘Ishtar-of-the-Stars’). A fragmentary bilingual Exalta-
tion of Ishtarknown from first millennium manuscripts (Hrusˇka 1969 ), but probably
composed in the late second millennium, dealt with the elevation of Ishtar by the
high gods: the god of heavens, Anu; the god of the inhabited world, Enlil; and the
god of the deep, Ea, in turn. Anu accepts the young maiden as his equal and spouse
under the name Antu, endows her with the all me/pars.u in his possession and exalts
her in the sky as Venus (Sumerian Dilbat, Akkadian ‘Ishtar-the-Star’) to be on the
same level as the sun (her brother) and the moon (her father). As Anu gave her
the heavens, Enlil gives her the earth, martial powers and war games, assigns her the
name Queen of Nippur and surrenders to her the me/pars.u in his possession.
Unfortunately, Ea’s blessing is totally lost but it also probably concerned the mes in
his possession. Thus, an explanation was given as to how Ishtar obtained the mes.
First millenniumIn the first millennium, a levelling theological homogeneity can be observed among
the local pantheons of Babylonia. Two major goddesses were known as the lady (beltu)
and the queen (sˇarratu) of their home city and such appellations occur both as names
of these goddesses and as epithets. Ishtar commonly took one of these roles. At Nippur,
Ishtar presided as the Queen-of-Nippur while Gula was accorded the title ‘lady of
Nippur’ (see Groneberg in this volume). At Uruk, Nanaya was ‘queen of Uruk’ while
Ishtar was worshipped as the Lady-of-Uruk. Ishtar was further venerated as the Queen-
of-Sippar and Queen-of-Larsa. In Babylon, there seems to be intentional confusion
among the titles and epithets. Whereas Ishtar was known as Ishtar-of-Babylon or
Lady-of-Babylon and even Queen of Babylon’, Zarpanitu was worshipped as ‘lady of
Babylon’ or ‘Queen of the Esagil (temple of Marduk)’. The apparent purpose of this
confusion was probably to express the notion that Ishtar-of-Babylon and Zarpanitu
were not only syncretised theologically, but also thought to be absolutely identical
with one another. Further steps were taken in the eighth–seventh centuries to identify
Zarpanitu with Ishtar-of-Uruk and to pair her with Marduk as Beltiya. Marduk and
his symbol were introduced into the temple of Eanna, the temple of Ishtar-of-Uruk,
so that Marduk became consort of the goddess. This symbolised her subordination
to an ideology centred politically on Babylon and theologically on the status of
Marduk as ruler of the pantheon (Beaulieu 2003 : 75 – 79 ).
In Babylon, the theologians created a ménage-à-trois between the central deities
of the city: the national god Marduk, his consort Zarpanitum, and his paramour
Ishtar-of-Babylon. This relationship is reflected in the first-millennium rituals of her
cult, the so-called ‘Love Lyrics’, a ritual of divine adultery or jealousy, which provide
short notes for movements of actors around the city of Babylon and for recitations at
various locations. The main actors are Marduk playing the role of the lover, Zarpanitum
playing the role of the wronged wife who reviles her rival in the most offensive
— Joan Goodnick Westenholz —