Gods, Goddesses, and the Women Who Serve Them

Preface

In 1980, when I started graduate school and began seriously to study the Hebrew Bible, I did so with two main interests in mind: a love of ancient history (an iconic moment of my childhood was a family trip to Stonehenge) and my undergraduate major, religion. What appealed to me most about the Bible, it follows, was the way it could serve as a window into ancient Israel’s past (as opposed, say, to the way the Bible might speak to modern theological concerns), and especially the way in which the Bible could help illuminate the world of ancient Israelite religion (as opposed, say, to the way it might illuminate ancient Israel’s political, social, or economic history). But I also brought a certain feisty streak to my study of the Bible (and to almost everything else, but that’s a different story!), and I think it is because of this feistiness that my work in biblical studies came to focus on the outliers and even the renegades of ancient Israelite religion: those ancient Israelites whose religious beliefs and practices the biblical writers either ignored (at best) or, more often than not, denigrated. In my doctoral dissertation, for example, I examined, among other things, biblical denunciations of child sacrifice and certain practices concerning deceased spirits, such as necromancy, and considered why some ancient Israelites might see these ritual acts as legitimate religious undertakings, even as the biblical writers disapproved.

Twice in my dissertation, I also touched on issues of women’s religious practice: first, in discussing the prophet Jeremiah’s censure of those Israelites, including women, who, in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE worshipped a goddess called the Queen of Heaven (Jer 7:16–20; 44:15–19, 25); then, in discussing the prophet Ezekiel’s indictment of women who sat in the north gate of Yahweh’s temple precinct in Jerusalem mourning over Tammuz, a Mesopotamian god of fertility (Ezek 8:14). Issues regarding women and gender had become, moreover, an increasingly important topic within colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher learning at that time. Indeed, I earned the equivalent of a minor in women’s studies as an undergraduate, and after I completed my doctorate in 1987 and began my academic career, I found myself more and more engaged in conversations about women and the religion of ancient Israel. I was often asked to speak or write about issues related to Israelite women’s religious lives and experiences, for example, and I also often found myself working on issues regarding women’s religious culture without being asked.

The results of this work ended up in many disparate places, some easily obtained (such as my 1998 monograph, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel), some not as readily accessed. It is thus a pleasure to have the opportunity to republish some of my less accessible essays here, in order to make them more available. Even more so, it is a pleasure to offer updated versions of certain aspects of these previously published works. In some cases, this has meant deleting materials about which I no longer feel as confident or with which I no longer agree; in other cases, it has meant updating some key arguments in the text and some key items in the bibliography. In one instance, moreover, I have added a 2022 Postscript, responding to a 2020 challenge to my original article’s thesis; in another, I have rewritten a major section of my original essay to reflect my updated thinking. I have also tried to polish my original prose, and I have, in addition, modified systems of citation and other stylistic features used in the original publications to make the essays as presented in this volume harmonious in terms of format.

What has brought me the greatest pleasure, however, in revising these essays for republication is to present them in the form of a narrative that charts the different yet interrelated directions my analyses have taken over the years. In part, this narrative is put forward in the short introductions that I have provided at the beginning of almost every chapter, and so I need not reiterate those ideas here. But it is appropriate that I comment at this point on the ways the narrative that shapes this volume is embedded in the four-part organizational strategy I have deployed.

Part 1 of this volume begins in the same place I began all those years ago, during my doctoral work, with a chapter about the Queen of Heaven, the goddess whose worship by women (among other Israelites) results in Jeremiah’s censure in Jer 7:16–20 and 44:15–19, 25. There then follow chapters that concern two other goddesses: Asherah, the great mother goddess of the Canaanite world, and Tiamat, the primordial sea goddess of Mesopotamian mythology. In each of these chapters, I consider how these goddess figures might be associated (explicitly or implicitly) with portrayals of women characters found in the biblical text.

Next, in part 2, I present three chapters regarding the two major types of religious functionaries attested in the biblical record, priests and prophets, exploring first the stories of the few women in the Bible who are designated as prophets (nĕbîʾâ) in order to ask why these designations are so rare, especially when compared to all the men whom the Bible identifies as prophets. Even more urgently, I ask in all three chapters, and especially in the third, why, when compared to other cultures of the ancient Near East, there is no ancient Israelite tradition of women priests. I do maintain, however, that in Israel’s Southern Kingdom of Judah, the queen mother (that is, the mother of the reigning king or, as in 1 Kgs 15:9–10, a mother figure who fulfilled this role) played an important role as a religious functionary within the royal court. The two chapters in part 3 of this volume are devoted to that topic, describing, first, the evidence that I suggest supports my contention that the queen mother served as an official religious functionary within the royal court in Jerusalem and exploring, second, evidence regarding the queen mother’s religious role elsewhere in biblical tradition and in the ancient Near East.

Finally, in the two chapters in part 4 of this volume, I seek to bring together many of the ideas that I introduce in the chapters in parts 1, 2, and 3, first by looking in tandem at several of the instances of women’s goddess worship that I document in earlier chapters, and second by asking what the relationship is between these various instances of women’s goddess worship that I have documented and women’s engagement in the cult of Israel’s national god, Yahweh. Indeed, this volume’s final chapter, which considers the cult of Yahweh, goddess worship, and women’s participation in both Yahwistic and goddess traditions, aims to bring together the three aspects of Israelite religion that comprise this book’s title, Gods, Goddesses, and the Women Who Serve Them. As such, the chapter seems a fitting conclusion to this volume and, I hope, a fitting summary of the thirty years of my scholarly work presented in these pages.

PART 1

Goddesses

CHAPTER 1

And the Women Knead Dough

THE WORSHIP OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN IN SIXTH-CENTURY JUDAH

This chapter is based on the first article I ever published, in 1989. At that time, very little scholarship had been generated about the Queen of Heaven, the goddess who appears in the Bible in Jer 7:16–20 and 44:15–19, 25 and who is said by the prophet Jeremiah to have been worshipped by some of the inhabitants of sixth-century BCE Judah, especially women. Indeed, although short discussions about the Queen of Heaven had appeared in various commentaries on the book of Jeremiah and in standard Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias, and kindred reference works, the goddess had been the subject of only five stand-alone studies (a sixth appeared just as my essay was going to press). My research thus focused on what I took to be a fundamental issue for furthering the nascent scholarly deliberations: Who was the goddess referred to only by the epithet Queen of Heaven? Several other scholars have since taken up this question, and while the answers they have proposed have been diverse, I still stand by my original conclusion: that the Queen of Heaven is a goddess who combines characteristics of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar and the West Semitic goddess Astarte.

I also retain my interest in the question that I hoped identifying the Queen of Heaven might help answer: Why was the worship of this goddess especially appealing to Judean women? To be sure, it was not only women who participated in the cult of the Queen of Heaven; rather, according to Jer 7:18, entire families (men, women, and children) contributed to a household ritual of baking bread cakes that were offered to the goddess, and according to Jer 44:17–18, husbands and wives affirmed together their intent to burn incense and pour out libations to the Queen of Heaven, despite Jeremiah’s condemnation. Jeremiah 44:17 also identifies Judah’s kings and princes as being among those who had at some point made offerings to the goddess. Still, it is women alone who speak of pouring out libations, burning incense, and baking bread cakes for the Queen of Heaven in Jer 44:19. And while the Hebrew text of Jer 44:25 is grammatically confused, the ancient Greek translation of the Bible (the LXX) makes clear that in this verse, Jeremiah specifically denounces women who have spoken and vowed to make incense and libation offerings to the Queen of Heaven. In addition, in Jer 7:18, the prophet specifically identifies women as kneading the dough used for the bread cakes that are to be offered to the Queen of Heaven, and, presumably, these women baked the cakes as well—acts that were surely more integral to a family’s fulfilling its ritual commitments to the goddess than were the contributions of the children and fathers (gathering wood and kindling fires so the cakes can be baked).

In the concluding paragraphs of my 1989 article, I offered some thoughts about why the worship of the Queen of Heaven might have special appeal for women, and I have returned to that topic with more fully fleshed-out ideas elsewhere: for example, in my 2006 essay Women and the Worship of Yahweh in Ancient Israel, which is included in this volume as chapter 10. Over the years, I have also become increasingly interested in another matter that I raised only briefly in my original 1989 article: not who the Queen of Heaven was and why her adherents were attracted to her cult but rather where this goddess was worshipped. Again, some of my more developed thoughts on this subject are addressed in this volume’s chapter 9, At Home with the Goddess, which was originally published in 2003.

In short, although this chapter first appeared in print a little over three decades ago, the questions it raises have continued to occupy my (and other scholars’) attention, and it is thus a pleasure to re-present my analysis here. I have used this opportunity to polish my original language a little, to augment and refine some of my arguments, and to update key (but by no means all!) bibliographic references. But my continued commitment to my prior convictions means that in most respects, this chapter stands as it was previously published.

The typical historian of ancient Israelite religion, especially the historian of Israelite religion of the so-called preexilic period (ca. 1200–586 BCE), relies heavily, if not exclusively, on the Bible. This is unavoidable, since the Bible is in essence the only written source (and indeed the only significant source of any kind) that describes the religion of preexilic Israel and Judah. Yet it has become increasingly obvious to historians of Israelite religion that the Bible’s descriptions of the preexilic cult are highly selective. For example, the biblical materials, which come predominantly from the hands of priests and prophets, present priestly and prophetic religion as normative and orthodox in ancient Israel, while nonpriestly and nonprophetic religious beliefs and practices are condemned as heterodox and deviant. A more nuanced reconstruction of the religion of ancient Israel suggests, however, that despite the biblical witness, neither the priestly nor prophetic cult was normative in the religion of the preexilic period. Rather, a diversity of beliefs and practices thrived and were accepted by the ancient Israelites as legitimate forms of religious expression.

Uncovering this diverse character of ancient Israelite religion requires special methodologies. First, we must train ourselves to supplement continually the biblical picture of Israelite religion by referring to other sources. Archaeological remains from Israel are crucial, as are comparative data from the ancient Near East and from elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. Yet this evidence is often sparse and not easily interpreted. It is thus equally important that we learn to treat our major source, the Bible, differently. We must examine the biblical presentations of the orthodox with an eye to the heterodox, seeking, for example, to look without prejudice at those cultic practices that the biblical writers so harshly condemn. Only when we acknowledge the polemical nature of many biblical texts can we see, underlying their words, evidence of the multifaceted nature of ancient Israelite religion.

This second methodological point especially helps illuminate an often overlooked aspect of ancient Israelite religion: women’s religion. The all-male biblical writers treat this issue with, at best, silence and, at worst, hostility; still, a careful reading of the biblical text suggests that the women of Judah and Israel had a rich religious tradition.¹ Some of the women of early sixth-century BCE Judah, for example, devoted themselves to the worship of a goddess called the Queen of Heaven (Jer 7:16–20; 44:15–19, 25). Indeed, although the prophet Jeremiah makes the women of Judah and Jerusalem the objects of his special scorn due to their devotion to the Queen of Heaven (Jer 44:25),² the women are steadfast in their worship of the goddess: baking bread cakes in her image as offerings (Jer 7:18; 44:19) and pouring out libations and burning incense to her (Jer 44:15, 19).³ This devotion in the face of persecution indicates that the worship of the Queen of Heaven was an important part of at least some women’s religious expression in the sixth century BCE. Here, by establishing the identity of the goddess whom the Bible calls the Queen of Heaven,⁴ I propose to explore why the women of Judah found this goddess’s cult so appealing.

Scholars, unfortunately, have reached no consensus on the identity of the Queen of Heaven. The great East Semitic goddess Ishtar,⁵ Ishtar’s West Semitic counterpart, Astarte,⁶ the West Semitic goddesses Anat and Asherah,⁷ and even the Canaanite goddess Šapšu have been suggested.⁸ Other scholars maintain that it is impossible, given the available data, to determine to which goddess of the Semitic world the Queen of Heaven corresponds.⁹ Finally, there are some who believe that the Queen of Heaven is not one deity but rather a goddess who combines the characteristics of East Semitic Ishtar and West Semitic Astarte.¹⁰

My own sympathies lie with this latter position, which sees in the Queen of Heaven characteristics of both West Semitic Astarte and East Semitic Ishtar. The Queen of Heaven as described in the Bible certainly shares with Astarte many features: first, the title of Queen or some related epithet. For example, in texts from the Egyptian New Kingdom (ca. 1539–1075 BCE), Astarte is called Lady of Heaven.¹¹ More notably, in the first millennium BCE, Astarte bears the title Queen. On the obverse face of the fifth-century BCE Kition Tariff inscription, which lists the monthly expenditures for the Phoenician temple of Astarte at Kition, Cyprus, Astarte is referred to as the holy Queen and the Queen.¹² In his Phoenician History, Philo of Byblos, citing the hierophant Sakkunyaton, also attests to Astarte’s queenly role in first-millennium BCE Phoenicia by describing Astarte as the coregent of King Zeus Demarous (Canaanite Baal Haddu) and remarking that she wears on her head a bull’s head as an emblem of kingship (basileias).¹³

The biblical Queen of Heaven in addition shares with Astarte an association with the heavens. Astarte’s astral features, already indicated in the second millennium BCE by the Egyptian title Lady of Heaven, are abundantly attested within first-millennium BCE sources. In both the Eshmunazor and the Bodashtart inscriptions from Phoenicia, Astarte’s sacred precinct in Sidon is called the highest heavens.¹⁴ Elsewhere in the Mediterranean world, Astarte’s associations with the heavens are suggested by her identification with Greek Aphrodite, the goddess of Venus, the Morning and Evening Star: as Philo of Byblos writes, the Phoenicians say that Astarte is Aphrodite.¹⁵ This identification is also made clear also by a fourth-century BCE Greek/Phoenician bilingual inscription from Athens that translates the Phoenician name ʿAbdʿaštart [‘Servant of Astarte’] the Ashkelonite as Aphrodisios [‘Dedicated to Aphrodite’] the Ashkelonite.¹⁶ Notably, moreover, the Astarte or Aphrodite worshipped by ʿAbdʿaštart/Aphrodisios and other Ashkelonites is explicitly known as Aphrodite of the Heavens (Aphroditē ourania), as is made clear by both Herodotus (1.105) and Pausanias (1.14.7), who remark on the cult of Aphrodite of the Heavens in Ashkelon.¹⁷ This correspondence of Astarte with Greek Aphrodite of the Heavens is further confirmed by a second-century BCE inscription from Delos dedicated to Palestinian Astarte, that is, Aphrodite of the Heavens.¹⁸

Another datum showing Astarte’s association with the heavens comes from Pyrgi, a site on the west coast of Italy about fifty km west-northwest of Rome. The bilingual inscription found there, from ca. 500 BCE, is dedicated in its Phoenician version to Astarte and in its Etruscan form to the goddess Uni. Joseph A. Fitzmyer notes that Etruscan Uni is Roman Juno, and, significantly, that Uni is closely associated with Juno of the Heavens (Juno caelestis) in Roman Africa.¹⁹ Philo of Byblos, too, remarks on Astarte’s heavenly associations: When traveling around the world, she [Astarte] discovered a star which had fallen from the sky. She took it and consecrated it in Tyre, the holy island.²⁰ Still more evidence comes from Herodian, who, in his second-century CE History of the Roman Empire (5.6.4), reports that the Phoenicians referred to Aphrodite of the Heavens (= Astarte) as Queen of Stars (astroarchē).²¹ Also in the second century CE, Apuleius, in his Metamorphoses (11.2), calls Caelestis Venus of the Cypriot city of Paphos Queen of Heaven (regina caeli).²² Latin Caelestis Venus is a simple translation of Greek Aphroditē ourania, Aphrodite of the Heavens, whom I have identified with Palestinian Astarte.

A third characteristic Astarte shares with the biblical Queen of Heaven is her close associations with fertility and with war. The fertility aspects of the Queen of Heaven are made clear in Jer 44:17, where the people of Judah claim that when they worshipped the Queen of Heaven, we had plenty of food, and we prospered. Conversely, since we stopped worshipping the Queen of Heaven and stopped pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and been consumed … by famine (44:18). At the same time, the Queen of Heaven seems to have an association with war: according to her followers as quoted in Jeremiah, her proper worship guaranteed that the people saw no evil (44:17), but when her cult was abandoned, we were consumed by the sword (44:18).

Astarte, too, has fertility attributes in addition to associations with war. The most striking evidence for Astarte’s role as a guarantor of fertility is found in the Hebrew Bible, where the noun ʿaštārôt, which Judith M. Hadley has described as a de-deification of the divine name Astarte (ʿaštart), means increase, progeny (Deut 7:13; 28:4, 18, 51).²³ As for Astarte’s associations with war: an Egyptian New Kingdom stele of Pharaoh Merenptah (r. 1213–1204 BCE) depicts the goddess with shield and spear,²⁴ and other Egyptian representations of Astarte show her on horseback carrying weapons of war.²⁵ In addition, Pharaoh Thutmose IV (r. 1400–1390 BCE) is described as being mighty in the chariot like Astarte,²⁶ and along with Anat, Astarte is called a part of a thirteenth-century BCE king’s war chariot.²⁷ She is also, together with Anat, called a shield to Pharaoh Rameses III (r. 1187–1156 BCE).²⁸ Furthermore, during the New Kingdom (ca. 1539–1075 BCE), she carries the epithet Lady of Combat.²⁹ A millennium later, an Egyptian text from the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BCE) likewise describes her as Astarte, Mistress of Horses, Lady of the Chariot.³⁰ In the Canaanite realm, Astarte acts as a war goddess in concert with Ḥoron in Ugaritic mythology,³¹ and in later Phoenician tradition, King Esarhaddon of Assyria decrees in a treaty text from 670 BCE that Astarte should break the bow of King Baal of Tyre in the thick of battle and cause King Baal to crouch at the feet of your enemy were he to violate the treaty’s terms.³² Moreover, in the Bible, according to 1 Sam 31:10, the armor of the dead Saul is taken by the Philistines to the temple of Astarte, which may also indicate Astarte’s associations with war.

A fourth reason for identifying Astarte with the biblical Queen of Heaven is that the cult of Astarte has as a crucial element the offering of bread cakes, a ritual that also plays an important role in the worship of the Queen of Heaven (Jer 7:18; 44:19). The Kition Tariff inscription cited above is again noteworthy, for line 10 of that inscription mentions the two bakers who baked the basket of cakes for the Queen;³³ the Queen, I have argued, must be Astarte.³⁴ In addition, William Culican has drawn attention to a Hellenistic votive model found off the Phoenician coast.³⁵ The model shows six figures positioned around a domed object. Culican identifies four identical seated females as votaresses. Another female figure stands and is pregnant; Culican believes her to be Astarte. This identification cannot be certain, but Astarte’s well-attested popularity in the Phoenician and Punic realm in the late first millennium BCE (see below) makes Culican’s hypothesis attractive. Culican identifies the sixth figure on the model, a male, as a priest of the goddess. The domed object around which the six figures cluster is interpreted as a beehive oven. Culican proposes the scene is a cake-baking ritual in honor of Astarte. This is a speculative suggestion, but in light of the Kition Tariff inscription and Jer 7:18 and 44:19, it is appealing.

A fifth and final factor that suggests the biblical Queen of Heaven is Astarte is the popularity of the goddess Astarte in the West Semitic realm during the first millennium BCE. Hundreds of Phoenician and Punic personal names incorporate the divine element ʿštrt, Astarte. The goddess’s name also appears in many Phoenician and Punic inscriptions, both from the Phoenician mainland and from the Mediterranean world and North Africa; likewise, according to Philo of Byblos, Astarte is an important Phoenician goddess, wife of Kronos, and, as noted above, a coregent with Zeus Demarous/Baal Haddu.³⁶ The second- or first-century BCE inscription of Paalaštart from Memphis (KAI 48), in addition to other first-millennium BCE Egyptian material cited above, attests to the popularity of Astarte in Egypt. And in Israel, the Deuteronomistic Historians accuse the people of worshipping Astarte in Judg 2:13; 10:6; 1 Sam 7:3–4; 12:10; 1 Kgs 11:5, 33; and 2 Kgs 23:13.³⁷

Astarte is thus a worthy candidate for the Queen of Heaven. Yet certain elements of the worship of the Queen of Heaven remain unexplained if we interpret the cult of the Queen of Heaven only as a cult of West Semitic Astarte. For example, the word used in Jer 7:18 and 44:19 for the cakes baked for the Queen, kawwānîm, is used nowhere in the extrabiblical materials that pertain to Astarte. Similarly, the biblical reference to baking cakes in her image (Jer 44:19) cannot be understood by reference to the worship of West Semitic Astarte. Third, West Semitic evidence attests to no special role for women in the cult of Astarte. However, as we will see, these elements in the worship of the Queen of Heaven can be explained if we examine the cult of the East Semitic goddess, Ishtar.

Certainly Ishtar is a goddess who appropriately bears the title Queen of Heaven. Indeed, the ancient Sumerian name of Ishtar, Inanna, was thought by the subsequent inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the Akkadians, to mean Queen of Heaven (reading [N]IN.AN.NA[K]), and thus the name Inanna is routinely rendered in Akkadian texts as Queen of Heaven (šarrat šamê) or Lady of Heaven (bēlet šamê).³⁸ Ishtar is also called by related epithets: Queen of Heaven and the Stars, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Lady of Heaven and Earth, Sovereign of Heaven and Earth, and Ruler of Heaven and Earth.³⁹ In the west, too, Ishtar is known as Lady of Heaven. In an Egyptian New Kingdom inscription from Memphis, Ishtar of Nineveh (whom the ancient scribe calls Hurrian Astarte) is given this title.⁴⁰ Ishtar has other astral features in addition to her epithets.⁴¹ In Mesopotamia, for example, Ishtar is equated with Sumerian DIL.BAT, the Sumerian name of the planet Venus.

Also, Ishtar is a fertility goddess, as the Mesopotamian stories of Dumuzi/Tammuz and Inanna/Ishtar show. These stories tell of the young fertility god, Tammuz, a symbol of prosperity and yield, and his courting and wooing of the maiden Ishtar, who represents the communal storehouse in which harvested foodstuffs were kept. Tammuz is successful in his courtship, and the young fertility god and goddess marry. With their sexual union, they guarantee fruitfulness in the land and bounty in the storehouse. This is symbolized in the myth by the fact that Tammuz, as his wedding gift to Ishtar, brings to Ishtar produce to be placed in her storehouse.⁴² The identification of Ishtar with the grain storehouse in these myths and elsewhere demonstrates her role in guaranteeing continual prosperity and preventing famine, an attribute associated with the Queen of Heaven in Jer 44:17–18.

Ishtar also has associations with war. In the epilogue to the eighteenth-century BCE Code of Hammurapi, Hammurapi calls Ishtar the lady of the battle and of the fight (col. 50 [rs. 27], 92–93). Her powers on the battlefield are clearly indicated by the curse she is to inflict on Hammurapi’s enemy (col. 51 [rs. 28], 2–23):

May she shatter his weapon at the battle site. May she establish for him confusion (and) rioting. May she cause his warriors to fail. May she give the earth their blood to drink. May she pile up everywhere on the plain heaps of corpses from his army. May she not take pity. As for him, may she give him into the hands of his enemies. May she lead him, bound, to the land of his enemies!

The myth of Inanna and Ebeh, in which Inanna/Ishtar assaults the mountain Ebeh, also attests to Ishtar’s warring nature.⁴³

Lexicographers generally agree that kawwānîm, the word used for the cakes baked for the Queen of Heaven in Jer 7:18 and 44:19, is a loan word from Akkadian kamānu, cake.⁴⁴ In Akkadian texts, kamānu cakes are often associated with the cult of Ishtar. A hymn to Ishtar reads as follows:

O Ishtar merciful goddess, I have come to visit you,

I have prepared for you an offering, pure milk, a pure cake baked in ashes (kamān tumri),

I stood up for you a vessel for libations, hear me and act favorably toward me!⁴⁵

Another text describes a healing ritual associated with the Ishtar cult, in which a cake baked in ashes (kamān tumri) is prepared in honor of the goddess.⁴⁶ Finally, in the Gilgamesh epic (tablet VI, lines 58–60), Gilgamesh describes how Tammuz brought ash cakes (tumru) to his lover Ishtar. Although the term kamānu is not used in this passage, most commentators assume that the reference to tumru is a shorthand expression for kamān tumri, cake baked in ashes, the cake associated with the Ishtar cult in our first two examples.⁴⁷

Scholars who have commented on the biblical cult of the Queen of Heaven are generally puzzled by the phrase cakes in her image (kawwānîm lěhaʿ ǎṣībāh; Jer 44:19).⁴⁸ Those holding that the Queen of Heaven is Ishtar sometimes explain what in her image means by pointing to several clay molds found at Mari, a site in northwest Mesopotamia. These molds portray a nude female figure who holds her hands cupped under her breasts. Her hips are large and prominent.⁴⁹ It has been suggested that the molds represent Ishtar and that they were used to shape cakes baked in the image of the goddess. These cakes were then offered to Ishtar as part of her sacrificial cult.⁵⁰ Although there are problems with this suggestion,⁵¹ the proposal to relate the Mari molds to the Bible’s kawwānîm lěhaʿǎṣībāh is still worth noting.

Finally, we observe that women seem to have a special place in the Ishtar cult. In Mesopotamian mythology, as noted above, the largest complex of stories about Ishtar deals with her courtship and marriage to the young fertility god Tammuz. In the myths, Tammuz symbolizes the spring season of prosperity and yield, a season when dates and grain were harvested, calves and lambs were born, and milk ran. But when the spring harvest season ended, the mythology perceived that the god Tammuz had died.⁵² The death of Tammuz was an occasion of sorrow for his young bride, Ishtar, and Akkadian mythology preserves many of her laments over her dead lover.⁵³ And as a woman (Ishtar) laments the death of her lover in myth, it is women (devotees of Ishtar) who lament Tammuz’s passing in the rituals of the Mesopotamian Tammuz cult.⁵⁴ Indeed, women’s role in these lamentation rituals is vividly illustrated in the Bible in Ezek 8:14, where it is women who are specifically identified as those who sit at the gate of the Jerusalem temple’s inner court mourning over Tammuz. I suggest that it is this special place of women in the cult of Tammuz that is reflected in the biblical materials about the Queen of Heaven.

At first glance, it may seem a long jump from the role of women mourning over Tammuz to the role of women in baking cakes for the Queen of Heaven. But, in fact, the two are closely related. The kamānu cakes associated with the Ishtar cult (kawwānîm baked as offerings to the Queen of Heaven) were a staple food of Mesopotamian shepherds,⁵⁵ and Tammuz was the prototypical and patron shepherd of Mesopotamia. Moreover, as I noted above, in the Gilgamesh epic (tablet VI, lines 58–60), Gilgamesh describes Tammuz as the one who heaps up ash cakes for his lover, Ishtar. The cult of Tammuz the shepherd is thus closely tied to the Ishtar cult that involves the baking of offering cakes, and the cultic participants who mourned the death of Tammuz are thus the worshippers who baked cakes for Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven. And as women played a crucial role in the ritual mourning over Tammuz, they also played an important role in the cult involving the baking of kamānu cakes.

I submit that the Queen of Heaven is a deity whose character incorporates aspects of West Semitic Astarte and East Semitic Ishtar. This synthesis probably occurred early in Canaanite religious history, well before the sixth century BCE. Certainly the people of Judah, in Jer 44:17, and Jeremiah himself, in Jer 44:21, describe the cult as one practiced by past generations. Moreover, we know that the cult of Ishtar of Nineveh is attested in Egypt during the New Kingdom and as far west as Spain by the eighth century BCE.⁵⁶ This would suggest that the cults of Astarte and Ishtar were exposed to each other and began intermingling sometime during the last centuries of the second millennium BCE. This intermingling then continued throughout the first millennium BCE. Indeed, the cult of the Queen of Heaven prospered in the first half of the first millennium BCE, in particular attracting the women of sixth-century BCE Judah and Jerusalem.

But surprisingly, this women’s cult did not prosper only in those spheres where we might expect to find women’s religious practice, such as the home and the family. To be sure, there is a strong domestic component to the cult, seen especially in Jer 7:18, where the sons gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough to make bread cakes for the Queen of Heaven.⁵⁷ But if Jer 44:17 is to be taken at all seriously, then the kings and princes of Judah are also among those who worshipped the Queen. And if the worship of the Queen of Heaven was a part of the religion of the monarchy, the Queen’s cult may also have been at home in what was essentially the monarch’s private chapel, the temple. This is certainly suggested by Ezek 8:14, where the women who participate in the related cult of wailing over the Queen’s deceased lover, Tammuz, sit at the north gates of the temple’s inner court. The presence of a temple dedicated to the Queen of Heaven in fifth-century BCE Egypt, a century after Jeremiah berates the Judahites who have fled to Egypt for their worship of the Queen of Heaven (Jer 44), is also suggestive.

Jo Ann Hackett has argued that women in ancient Israelite society had a higher status and more opportunities to hold public and powerful positions in times of social dysfunction.⁵⁸ Certainly, the calamitous years of the late seventh and early sixth centuries