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From Ishtar to Eostre: Third Expanded Edition

 

For over three millennia, the worship of the Near Eastern goddess Astarte, queen of love, war, fertility, and the stars, stretched across continents, empires, and civilizations. From her earliest Semitic inscriptions in ancient Mesopotamia (c.2600 BCE), her cult spread across the Levant, into Egypt and North Africa, through Cyprus, Greece, and Rome, and eventually reached the farthest edges of the Roman Empire, including the British Isles and the frontiers of Germania.

 

Between 43 CE and 410 CE, during the height of Roman occupation, the cult of Astarte, alongside her consort Ba'al, underwent a powerful revival across both Britannia and Germania. This resurgence intensified under the Severan dynasty, whose emperors were closely tied to the priesthoods of Ba'al and who elevated the cult to unprecedented prominence. Under the later Syrian-born emperors, temples to Ba'al and Astarte spread even further across the northern provinces, with some Roman military units embracing the cult as a semi-official religion.

 

This long-standing prominence was once reflected within German academia. Until less than two centuries ago, it was widely accepted among German scholars (e.g. Clüver, Mushardo, Zelder, Münchhausen) that the origins of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre (or Ostara) lay in the Near Eastern goddess Astarte (or Astaroth). This view began to shift in 1835 with the publication of Jacob Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, a treatise in which Grimm proposed a nationalist reinterpretation: that Eostre was a purely Germanic dawn goddess, and one unconnected to foreign origins. This idea disregarded all of the earlier academic consensus. Yet Grimm’s proposal was a hypothesis, not a historical certainty.

 

In this expanded third edition, From Ishtar to Eostre moves beyond internet memes and online debates to rigorously explore the archaeological, historical, and academic evidence. With a particular focus on temples, altars, and inscriptions across Europe and beyond, this book challenges modern assumptions and aims to revive a forgotten truth: that the goddess now remembered vaguely as “Eostre” or “Ostara” was once known, worshipped, and celebrated across vast lands under the name of Astarte.

 

No other goddess in recorded history was venerated for so long and by so many.

 

About the Author:

 

Steff V Scott is a writer, researcher, and a prominent Pagan Rights Activist in his home country, having served two terms as the Presiding Officer (Elected) of the Pagan Federation (Scotland). He has spoken at Pagan Events both Nationally and Internationally on the subject of ‘Sumerian Paganism in Practice’, as well as to Colleges, Universities, City and Community Councils, Museums representing ‘Modern Paganism’ in general. In 2021 he led a panel at the Parliament of the World’s Religions on ‘Anti-Pagan Prejudice & Discrimination’.

 

He was the first Pagan to be elected as Chair of an Interfaith Organization in his Home Country, and the first Pagan to give the Welcome Address at Scotland’s prestigious Interfaith Week National Launch Event.

 

Academically he has studied the Archaeology of the Near East, Literature and Art of the Ancient Near East, Ancient Near Eastern Demonology, the Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, the Cult of the God Mithras, and the Cult of the Goddess Anat, between the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow. He has also taught a class on ‘Contemporary Paganism’ at Glasgow University’s summer school on 'Religion and Spirituality in Scotland'.

 

He is the Co-Founder of the ‘Temple of Inanna’, and is the Director of ‘Eanna Press’: a Publishing Imprint dedicated to Reviving and Reconstructing the Sumerian / Mesopotamian Religion for the Modern Practitioner.

 

This is his first book.

From Ishtar to Eostre - Standard Paperback B/W Edition

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