Ishtar: Also known as “Inanna” or “Lilitu” and as “Astarte” to the later Semitic Cannanite culture. Ishtar is the first named Goddess to have ever existed, before settling in the land of Sumer the Al Ubaid were already worshiping Ishtar, Ishtar is thus the root of all other Goddesses that came after her and each of them has a basis in Ishtars mythology. Ishtar was the mother Goddess with many titles including “Queen of Heaven”. Ishtar was the daughter of the moon God Sin and represented a deification of the planet Venus, Ishtar was also the wife of the vegetation God Tammuz. As a deification of the planet Venus another of Ishtars titles was the “morning star” she was symbolically connected to a crescent moon and five pointed star symbol now associated with Islam and also an eight pointed symbol known as the “star of Ishtar”. Ishtar was also symbolically connected to the lion (symbolic of the Sumerian king) and with the owl of wisdom. Ishtar was a Goddess of life, wisdom, magic, war, passion, fertility, sex and arts. Ishtar was heavily connected to the sacred marriage or Hieros Gamos rituals and her temple priestesses practiced ritual prostitution which did not have the same negative connotations it carries today. Ishtar was probably connected to early Sumerian Kabbalistic magics as illustrated in the story where she tends to a sacred Huluppu tree which becomes infested with malicious spirits before the hero Gilgamesh chases them away, Gilgamesh was an unlikabke Sumerian king who likely wrote himself into mythology to make himself seem greater, after this act Ishtar attempts to seduce him and he refuses her listing the terrible fates of the men and beasts she has consorted with in the past, in return Ishtar sets the bull of heaven Gugulana on Gilgamesh but it is slain. In some stories the slaying of Gugulana prompts Ishtar to visit her sister Ereshkigal in the underworld while in others Ishtar seeks to reclaim a lost love of her own, she stands before the Girtablilu at the gates and demands entrance promising to shatter the fresh hold and bring up the dead as zombies to eat the living if she is refused entrance, she is allowed in however she must strip her seven items of clothing at each of the seven gates of the underworld causing her to become trapped and unable to escape, with the Goddess of life in the underworld the world begins dying and the sky God Enlil creates Asu-Shu-Namir (a bird-like hermaphrodite being) from the dust under his nails to save Ishtar. Asu-Shu-Namir pours the waters of life onto Ishtar in the underworld resurrecting her although this is probably an indication of a Hieros Gamos resurrection/rejuvination mythology evidenced by an exchange of waters and Asu-Shu-Namir being hermaphroditic, it is also evident in later carvings of Ishtar (as above) which show the Goddess as part bird having merged with Asu-Shu-Namir. When Ishtar escapes the underworld a host of Gallu demons accompany her demanding equal exchange; a soul to take her place, eventually Ishtar allows them to take her lover Tammuz who is festive in her absence flirting with courtesans. This myth may relate to the changing of seasons explaining the “death” of the planet in winter when Ishtar is in the underworld and its resurrection in spring and would later influence such mythologies as the abduction of Persephone and even potentially Amatarasu and the cave. In one myth Ishtar is raped by a gardener while she sleeps and seeks vengeance against him. Ishtar especially in her later form “Lilitu” would be combined with several other spirits, demons and Goddesses to form the later Semitic concept of Lilith.