ASTARTE.
     A Canaanite fertility goddess with variant cults throughout the Near East, Astarte is mentioned in the Old Testament as Ashtoreth. In the Tel Amama letters she is called Ashtart, while in Akkadian (Babylonian) she is Ishtar and in Ugaritic, Asherah. Her association with the planet Venus also links her with the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus; the Romans called her Dea Syria. The female counterpart of Baal, she was accorded first place in the Phoenician pantheon. She was identified with the moon and often represented under the symbol of the crescent; her other attributes included the pomegranate and the dove. She was worshiped in sacred groves, usually under specific trees. According to an Assyrian epic that parallels the Greek myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, Ishtar was the lover of Tam-muz, who was killed by a boar and thereafter spent half the year in the Underworld and the other half with Ishtar.