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 bore many traits of Sumerian origin, though it cannot be affirmed that this goddess derived from the Sumerians among all the other ancient Near Eastern nations. The Sumerians called her Inninni.
Already among these peoples, she possessed the two principal characteristics that are frequently described or alluded to in Babylonian and Assyrian texts: goddess of love and of war. The latter trait was particularly emphasized by the Assyrians, a distinctly warlike people. She presided over both sexual love and pure love, but was primarily a divinity of fertility and childbirth, both among humans and animals, and throughout all nature. She was the divinity of mercenary love, and was regarded as the prostitute among the gods, she who did not disdain even the love of men and even of animals. Since she was the most prominent female divinity of the pantheon, she absorbed into herself the figures of almost all other goddesses, so that in the Assyrian period her name became synonymous with "goddess." She was, moreover, the divinity of war, who granted victory to her people, for whom she fought and vanquished 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 known as *The Descent of I. to the Underworld*.