Queen of Heaven (antiquity)

Inanna

Inanna is the Sumerian goddess of love and war. Her name is commonly derived from Nin-anna, meaning Queen of Heaven in Sumerian, from NIN (lady) and AN (sky), though the cuneiform sign is not historically a ligature of those words. She was associated with rain, storms, and the planet Venus; the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa refers to Venus as the bright Queen of Heaven. Inanna was not a mother goddess and is rarely linked to childbirth, despite her role in human and animal fertility.

Myths describe her as daughter of Nanna, the moon god, or sometimes of Enki or An. Some early Assyriologists suggested she may have been a Proto-Euphratean goddess, possibly related to the Hurrian mother goddess Hannahannah, accepted late into the Sumerian pantheon, a view supported by her youthfulness and initial lack of fixed responsibilities. In Sumer she was hailed as Queen of Heaven in the third millennium BCE; in Akkad she was later worshipped as Ishtar.

Her cult was deeply embedded in Mesopotamia and among Canaanites. F. F. Bruce linked Ishtar, Tammuz, Innini, Ma, Mami, Dingir-Mah, Cybele, Agdistis, Pessinuntica, and the Idaean Mother to a great mother goddess cult.

Astarte

Astarte, known from Northwestern Semitic regions, is cognate in name, origin, and functions with Ishtar. Other names include Ashtoreth, ‘Athtart, Astartu, and Uni-Astre.

She was connected with fertility, sexuality, and war, with symbols including the lion, horse, sphinx, dove, and a star within a circle representing Venus. Pictorial representations often show her naked. The Greeks accepted her as Aphrodite, and Cyprus, a major faith center, supplied the name Cypris as Aphrodite's common byname.

Hebrew Bible references

The Queen of Heaven appears in the Book of Jeremiah, where the prophet condemns her worship as the cause of Yahweh declaring he would remove his people from the land. Scholars have associated this figure with Anat, Astarte, Ishtar, Ashtoreth, or a composite.

In Jeremiah 44:15–18, the people vow to continue offering incense and libations to the Queen of Heaven. A temple of Yahweh in Egypt in the 6th–7th centuries BCE at Elephantine worshipped Yahweh alongside the goddess Anath, also named Anath-Bethel and Anath-Iahu. The goddesses Asherah, Anat, and Astarte appear as distinct in Ugaritic tablets, but biblical scholars often treat them as one under the title Queen of Heaven.

Isis

Isis, venerated first in Egypt, was described by Herodotus as the only goddess worshipped by all Egyptians alike, and by his time had become syncretic with Demeter. After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great and the Hellenization under Ptolemy I Soter, she became known as Queen of Heaven. In Apuleius's The Golden Ass, a character prays to the Queen of Heaven, and the goddess responds, identifying herself as both the Queen of Heaven and Isis.