ISTAR. - The principal female divinity of the pantheon of the Babylonians and Assyrians, as well as of numerous other peoples of ancient western Asia, although not all gave her this name. Among the Babylonians and Assyrians she possessed many traits of Sumerian origin, although it cannot be maintained that this goddess derived from the Sumerians among all the other ancient Oriental nations as well. The Sumerians called her Inninni.
Already among them she bears those two principal characteristics that are described or mentioned many times in Babylonian or Assyrian texts: goddess of love and of war. This latter trait was especially emphasized by the Assyrians, a distinctly warlike people. She presided over both sexual love and pure love, but she was primarily the divinity of fertility and childbirth, among human beings as well as among animals, and throughout nature also. She was the divinity of mercenary love, and was regarded as the prostitute among the gods, she who was not satisfied even by the love of men and even of animals. Since she was the most conspicuous female divinity of the pantheon, she absorbed into herself the figures of almost all the other goddesses, so that in the Assyrian period her name became synonymous with goddess. She was, on the other hand, the divinity of war, who bestowed victory upon her people, for whom she fought and vanquished their enemies. As a warrior goddess, she was depicted fully armed, in the Assyrian period with a halo formed of stars. I. was an important figure in Mesopotamian myths, above all in that called La discesa di I. agli inferi.