Talk:Ishtar

message: Removed this theory on the eight-pointed star: 
:This star, joined with the crescent moon, became a symbol of the Ottoman Empire and later of Islam.
because I can't find anything to confirm it, and it states a connection that could just as well be coincidence. I rather doubt that the Turkish Osmanli adopted the cult of a Mesopotamian goddess, especially considering the generally shamanistic bent of pre-Islamic religion among the Turks. —Charles P. (Mirv) 11:48, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Star symbol

message: It would be VERY good to separate Inanna and Ishtar !
Inanna was a sumerian goddess.
Ishtar was babylonian (mix of sumerian and akkadian) and came much later (1000 years). That's why Ishtar inherited semitic properties and replaced Innana in the babylonian religion.
Indeed.  This is only one of the things wrong with this article.  It contains a number of speculations that appear to be original work, or should at least not be presented uncritically as fact. (For example "She was probably the precursor to the Greek Athena," and similar assertions are not things documented in any relible source I know of.) I'd undertake this myself only I'm insufficiently expert in the subject.  The main reference in my possession is Kramer, which may be a tad out of date by now, and I know next to nothing about Ishtar as distinct from Inanna. Csernica 20:55, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, Ashtoreth, like the Canaanaite word which gave rise to "Astarte" is a  linguistic cognate to Ishtar... AnonMoos (talk) 23:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  please separate Inanna and Ishtar ! 

message: The text "Of the Sleep of Ishtar" appears in Simon's Necronomicon and is readily available on the net (in this location among others). Is this an actual ancient Sumerian or Babylonian text? (Note: I am asking about this particular text, not the myth in general.) 
I am asking because I don't know how much of Simon's Necronomicon is fiction and how much consists of actual myths and authentic texts. (Also, the text contains names such as Cuthalu and Azag-Thoth, which I have not seen anywhere outside the Necronomicon.) Does anyone know? SpectrumDT 22:58, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I can tell you that Cuthalu and Azag-Thoth are just bastardizations of Cthulhu and Azathoth. --Tydaj 00:16, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That was my point. I want to know if these names have any connection with actual Sumerian mythology, as the writer of this "Necronomicon" claims. SpectrumDT 17:08, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I did some research (googling) myself, and apparently "Of the Sleep of Ishtar" as well as pretty much everything else in the Simon's Necronomicon is fiction, loosely based on actual Mesopotamian myths. See here for more info. SpectrumDT 20:28, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A lot of stuff in the Cthulhu mythos is borrowed from real mythologies, but I'm not sure how much of the Simon Necronomicon is new to the book itself and how much is true to pre-existing mythology. --Tydaj 13:31, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Of the Sleep of Ishtar 

message: Of course the one thing not mentioned is that Ishtar is also the origin of "Mary & baby Jesus" paintings and worship in the RCC - Ishtar by another name.
*I am going to be blunt here, so sorry in advance: this is nothing but anti-Catholic propaganda from fundamentalist Protestants. - Mike Rosoft 16:32, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Read WP:VERIFY. And read this talk page - it's clearly not obvious and consensus has been it doesn't belong here. Dougweller (talk) 15:33, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

text: 170.3.8.253 -- Judging by the book Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary by Jeremy Black and Anthony Green (1992, ), pp. 108, 173, the goddess Inana/Ishtar is NOT generally depicted with accompanying infant, and there are few indications that she was ever even thought to have children (except for scattered sources mentioning the minor Shara (god)). Whoever came up with this nonsense was very confused between Inana/Ishtar vs. Isis-with-baby-Horus... AnonMoos (talk) 19:52, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree!😎👍 2600:6C50:487F:B3B3:C03B:9109:16C2:3557 (talk) 19:19, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ishtar 

message: You don't have to provide sources for obvious things . . .  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.3.8.253 (talk) 15:07, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Read WP:VERIFY. And read this talk page - it's clearly not obvious and consensus has been it doesn't belong here. Dougweller (talk) 15:33, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

text: 170.3.8.253 -- Judging by the book Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary by Jeremy Black and Anthony Green (1992, ), pp. 108, 173, the goddess Inana/Ishtar is NOT generally depicted with accompanying infant, and there are few indications that she was ever even thought to have children (except for scattered sources mentioning the minor Shara (god)). Whoever came up with this nonsense was very confused between Inana/Ishtar vs. Isis-with-baby-Horus... AnonMoos (talk) 19:52, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree!😎👍 2600:6C50:487F:B3B3:C03B:9109:16C2:3557 (talk) 19:19, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: 2012

message: First of all, I would like to make a note on the above message concerning the origin of the classic Madonna-with-baby-Jesus image.  Although I've never heard of any Ishtar-Madonna conection, I would like to note that it is widely believed that the image ultimately derives from the ancient Egyptian image of Isis suckling baby Horus.  For text evidence, try pg. 63 of the following book: Fletcher, Joann.  The Egyptian Book of Living and Dying.  London: Thorsons, 2002.  Also, try looking on the  Wikipedia Isis page.  There's a set of two images on the page that show the similarities between the images.
Secondly, while studying Mesopotamian cultures in school recently, my class participated in a simulation to see how ancient empires worked.  The simulation, known simply as "Empires," is complex and directs the classroom teacher to assign all the students into one of five groups, the Babylonians, Hittites, Medes, Persians, and Phoenicians.  As a member of the Babylonian group, I began to search for a Babylonian god or goddess that our group could "worship" (although the simulation didn't require this, we thought it might be fun).  After researching the subject, I suggested Ishtar (coincidentally, my birthday is on the same day as a festival of hers).  While I was doing my research, I read some text that strongly implied that Ashtaroth was another name for Isthar.  Is this correct, or is this just a misperception?
--The Great Honker 22:48, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two things. . . 

message: The Arabic script is totally irrelevant to this page, since Ishtar was not an Arab goddess, and since there was no real significant permanent presence of Arabs in Mesopotamia until Christianity was already getting pretty solidly established in the area.  Also, the form of the Arabic name عشتار reveals that this Arabic word is not even any kind of close or direct borrowing from an Akkadian language -- since the Akkadian languages had no pharyngeal ع or `Ayn consonant, and since the so-called "š" of the late Akkadian languages was in fact borrowed into other languages as an "s" sound.  Arabic عشتار is probably the end product of a rather convoluted Canaano-Aramaic historical transmission path, ultimately resulting from Akkadian Ishtar being equated with Canaanite Ashtoreth.  So Arabic عشتار really has no ascertainable relevance whatsoever to Akkadian Ishtar. AnonMoos 07:18, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Arabic script

message: The article says that Ishtar is a major figure in the story of Gilgamesh.  But the Wikipedia page about Gilgamesh doesn't mention Ishtar.  A sentence or two here explaining her major role in the epc would be good.
:It's based on the conventional equivalence Akkadian Ishtar = Sumerian Inanna, I assume... AnonMoos 19:25, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ishtar's role in the story of Gilgamesh 

message: The Biblical name Esther actually has a much more solid connection to Ishtar than does pagan Eostre.  Strange but true... AnonMoos 19:34, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you cite that?  I don't find any connection at all to Queen Esther and the goddess Ishtar except phonetically. So, is Santa also Satan?  69.228.239.77 20:25, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Due to certain linguistic correspondence patterns in borrowings from Akkadian languages into Canaanite languages during the first millennium BC, the forms of the names Ishtar and Ester (no "th" in the Hebrew of this word) are such that Ester could phonologically perfectly well be a borrowing from Akkadian -- and some have noted that the consonants of Mordechai are also the same as those of the name of the god Marduk.  It doesn't necessarily prove anything, but it's quite a bit more than anyone has been able to show for Ishtar and Anglo-Saxon Eostre. AnonMoos 09:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Eostre

message: I find it very offensive that AnonMoos is allowed to take astronomy and judge it as occultism which would mean astrological nonsense. He degrades every form of astronomy aspect for any myth or calendar or god or legend. And it is a very disgrace to treat astronomy in this fashion when its exact physical laws have provided the satelite orbits and technology to have this internet and communicate in any of this fashion. Ishtar is Venus, it does come from various related languages, scholars every where have different theories, it is NOT point of view and favoritism in any form other than to let AnonMoos make his little editorial judgements on every posting following around like a policeman. This is not an attack on AnonMoos but rather a defence stating that AnonMoos is doing the attacking if he can claim anything he wants as fiction, and occult, and name call away any label he perceives others writings to be. May i state that i disagree with many encyclopedia claims or theories, i don't wipe out and judge as being fanatic anything i have read on Wikipedia. -- anonmous IP 69.76.46.169, 19:42, 5 February 2007
:Why don't you consult Usenet message http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/c39c89ca7ce8bd8d ?  However, I'd like to know what is the nature of the comments you added to Talk:Kali if not occultism?  It certainly looks like New Age eclecticism resynthesized into an esoteric theory to me... AnonMoos 01:06, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Dude, the issue at question was not the basic 8-pointed star symbol itself, but rather whether this became the basis for the star-and-crescent symbol of islam... AnonMoos 11:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: JUDGEMENT AGAINST ME

message: It is no theory that Ishtar is depicted as 8 points on thousands of reliefs on tablets. And it is astronomical fact not occultism that Venus returns to the same stars in 8 years (8x365 days) after 5 orbits (5x584 days) of 5 risings. Someone needs to learn actual real astronomy instead of finger pointing name calls of occultism and of astrology and claiming its personal view points. And how is it if Catholicism is the Catholic viewpoint, and Judaism is the Jewish viewpoint, that Sumerian astral stories aren't astral viewpoints in contrast to Babylon's astral stories as their viewpoint. This editing games is getting redundant and shows no professionalism at all to learn. I find it offensive that under Ishtar we can find smart ass reply remarks on comments made in other places, the Kali Talk, or Google Talk, following me and others around. And in the end of the matter, I would like to say that those who are wrong thruout history will wish they were dead if there ever is a God of resurrection back to life on earth. Like Judas whom millions would say to him how dare you, you killed Jesus, and like Egypt's Jannes who millions would say look how you defied Moses, and to quote Jesus as saying a Queen of Sheba who comes back and says you fools, i see an AnonMoos who likewise would come back to millions who will recall the high almighty atitude AnonMoos ruled Wikipedia with so that millions of others couldnt learn because you feel i must be killed like Moses or Jesus. Quit trying to shut me up, i am learning to use the discussion section for topics to consider rather than change the main article, and i am also presenting sources. Not to mention i am also defending many others you seem to be freely editing as if youre the God of final decision. Grow up and join the learning process instead of defying it making many others miserable...i speak this for them, not just me. -- anonymous IP 69.76.46.169, 6 February 2007
:Dude, the issue at question was not the basic 8-pointed star symbol itself, but rather whether this became the basis for the star-and-crescent symbol of islam... AnonMoos 11:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Star

message: Actually, I am noticing a huge amount of information pointing towards the Ishtar and Easter connection to be real. starting to get sick of defending all aspects and corners constantly in various places, and sick of people thinking that 'linguists' actually have any theological, anthropological, and historical understanding outside of the scope of linguistics itself and they are clearly inept at piecing together history, and should stick to language alone. Especially when there ARE linguistic connections that arent being put together. I think I will just write a book to sort this situation out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by I3R0K3N7FEET (talk • contribs) 
:Unfortunately all reliable sources among reputable scholars point AGAINST any meaningful valid Ishtar/Easter connection... AnonMoos (talk) 15:29, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: 2018

message: Can someone verify some of the info provided outside of 'The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets' by Barbara G. Walker? It's kinda hard to trust that book, and it's not usually considered a reference source.
Xuchilbara 19:32, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Citations

message: A lot of nonsense was cut from this article a while back, but the valid connection between Ishtar and Biblical Hebrew `Ashtoreth was also cut out (see Ancient Semitic religion). AnonMoos 15:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ishtar and Biblical `Ashtoreth

message: Text of article includes "To sum it up, she was a HO FO SHO". Seems to not belong in there.
Ryz 14:30, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Misc

message: :"Anunit, Atarsamain and Esther are alternative names for Ishtar."
I have removed the sentence from the article lead; article Atarsamain makes no mention of the goddess being a counterpart of Ishtar, and the link between biblical Esther and Ishtar is highly disputed by scholars - the article shouldn't state it as a fact. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 08:13, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the fact that there are valid linguistic correspondences between the word Ishtar and Hebrew Ester, suitable to a late Akkadian loanword to west Semitic (but not suitable to an inherited cognate, of course) is not very controversial, as far as I'm aware.  What many people are skeptical about is whether this has any great significance or deep meaning... AnonMoos (talk) 22:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Anunit/Atarsamain/Esther/Ishtar

message: the following books...
* http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=&field-author=&field-title=Ishtar&field-isbn=&field-publisher=&node=&url=&field-feature_browse-bin=&field-binding_browse-bin=&field-subject=&field-language=&field-dateop=&field-datemod=&field-dateyear=&sort=relevancerank&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=36&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=15
^^^^^
FYI
* http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=allintitle%3A+Ishtar&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0
--124.78.214.145 (talk) 07:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A call for critical review of ... 

message: A few years ago I was interested in writing a book about temple prostitution for Ishtar, and quickly found most serious scholars don't think it was true. Apparently, from what I recall, the only report of it comes from Herodatus (the same guy who gave us the story of the Lost City of Atlantis) and no actual reports come from within the culture. This makes it a bit tricky to write about, since that Herodotus thing gets quoted all over the place and can easily be cited, but nevertheless might not be true. --174.56.0.212 (talk) 14:05, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: In recent work, there seems to be a great deal of doubt or dispute over what the term "sacred prostitution" exactly means, or whether the concept is at all useful in discussing ancient Mesopotamia.  However, the idea that Ishtar is associated with various forms of exuberant sexuality does not depend on one dubious passage in Herodotus -- just take one look at the illustration on p. 152 of the book Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary by Jeremy Black and Anthony Green (1992, ) and you'll be convinced... AnonMoos (talk) 23:29, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I just thought I would make a correction here; Herodotus did not give us the story of Atlantis. He did write about giant, furry, gold-digging ants living in India, but he did not write about Atlantis. The story of Atlantis comes from Plato's dialogues Critias and Timaeus. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:55, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Sacred Prostitution

message: The sacred prostitution and sexuality obsession with Ishtar in this Wikipedia entry is really outdated and needs to be updated.  It currently relies on a book of essays and some dubious theory references.  There has been considerable scholarship and archaeology in the past three years since this text was last edited. The references from Guirand, Felix, 1968, are especially out of date and just plain wrong. It's certainly fun to ascribe sexual inferences to ancient gods who were female, but that doesn't make it accurate or useful to scholars. We can do better than this.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.231.129.144 (talk) 06:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time for an update 

message: No mention of the movie "Ishtar"?
Shjacks45 (talk) 06:10, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure what substantial connection there is between the movie and the goddess, other than the name.  There's a link to Ishtar (disambiguation) at the top of the article, and that links to Ishtar (film), which is standard Wikipedia practice... AnonMoos (talk) 09:41, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  No mention of the movie 

message: The "In other media" section for this article has become full of uncited and irrelevant information. This is the same problem that I have been encountering at Inanna in the "In popular culture" section. I am writing this notification to warn that, unless someone objects to it within the next day or so, I will go through the "In other media" section and delete all material I deem irrelevant to the subject of the article. I also think that some basic guidelines must be set in place regarding what content is allowed in this section. My proposal is that all new material added to the section should be required to meet all of the following requirements:
1. The new material must include at least one citation to a reliable source. If it has no citation, it should not be added.
2. The popular culture artifact being discussed must mention Ishtar at least five times. If she is only mentioned once or twice in the entire book/movie/song/television show, then it does not have a strong enough connection to her to be worth mentioning in this article.
3. The popular culture artifact must be notable enough in itself to warrant an article of its own. If it is an obscure novel by some author no one has ever heard of, then it is not worth mentioning here.
If you have any objections over any of this, please leave a response explaining your reasons for opposition. I am not doing this because I enjoy deleting material willy-nilly or because I enjoy imposing restrictions on what material can be added, but rather because I earnestly feel that this is a necessary measure in order to ensure the protection and well-being of this article.--Katolophyromai (talk) 04:25, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, after having carefully reviewed the section several times, I do not think there is anything at all in this section that is actually worth keeping. I will probably just delete the entire section altogether. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:43, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "In other media" section needs major cleanup 

message: I have just added a brief section to the end of the article explaining how the words Ishtar and Easter are totally unrelated. I really did not want to include any mention of Alexander Hislop or his ludicrous Two Babylons theory, but, unfortunately, his ideas have become so widely promulgated on the internet in recent years that I fear there is no other solution but to provide some kind of a rebuttal to them in the article. Sadly, the main reason why most people are coming here seems to be to find out if the name Ishtar really is related to Easter (which, of course, it is not), as is evidenced by the fact that the number of people viewing this page spiked exponentially during Easter 2017, far above its usual levels, receiving over 8,000 more page views than Jesus. () --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The paragraph added to the end of the first section doesn't seem to be very well coordinated with the "Alleged associations with Easter" section at the end... AnonMoos (talk) 02:50, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: What aspect of it do you think is not well coordinated? To me they seem well coordinated, but if you can point out any specific problems I would be happy to resolve them. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:06, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The section at the bottom discusses nitty-gritty etymological details, while the paragraph near the top discusses sources of erroneous speculation. I guess you could consider it a division of labor, but some people might eventually add "citation needed" tags to things in the top section which are not cited below. AnonMoos (talk) 06:27, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I could perhaps move the mention of Alexander Hislop down into the paragraph at the end and add a citation to it so that there will be nothing in the lede that is not cited below. That might solve the problem. --Katolophyromai (talk) 10:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems fine now... AnonMoos (talk) 10:13, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

text: All of the stories linking Ishtar with Easter ultimately go back to Hislop. Most of the conspiracy theorists do not cite him as a source, even though their arguments are clearly derived from his, which is why most people have never heard of him, even though they have heard of the supposed connection between Ishtar and Easter. The fact that the article received over 8,000 more page views than Jesus is only relevant to this discussion because it occurred specifically on Easter. The average number of page views for this article per day is only 2,789, which is not even a quarter of the number of page views it received this Easter Sunday. There is no doubt that Hislop was a crackpot; unfortunately, while his name may be forgotten, his ideas are not. If you do a search for "Ishtar" in Google, just look at the number of images that come up claiming that Ishtar is Easter. One particularly notorious one shared by the Richard Dawkins Foundation on Facebook shows an image of the Burney Relief and has been seen by millions of people online, despite the fact that all of the information on it is entirely wrong and very clearly derived from Hislop. --Katolophyromai (talk) 22:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe, but they have a lot of issues to deal with (such as the allegedly pagan origins of bunnies and eggs etc. etc.), while this article has just one narrow etymological/linguistic issue in connection with Easter... AnonMoos (talk) 07:23, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: User:AnonMoos has a very good point. The only part of the dispute that this article really needs to cover is the simple fact that Ishtar and Easter are unrelated, whereas Easter is supposed to discuss the whole matter of Easter's complex origins. I would prefer to keep the content in this article talking about Easter as minimal as possible since the nonexistent relationship between Ishtar and Easter is not an issue in mainstream scholarship. Instead, I would like for most of the article to focus on what mainstream scholars actually know about the ancient Babylonian goddess with a brief paragraph at the end explaining that, despite popular belief, Ishtar has no connection to Easter. It may be worthwhile for Easter to contain a sentence or two to this effect, but, for the most part, that article should discuss the real origins of Easter, not the imagined ones. A coordinated rebuttal may be a good idea, but we should make sure that each article only discusses the facet of the issue that is pertinent to the subject of that article. Also, my greatest fear in all of this is that, just by mentioning the whole "Ishtar=Easter" conspiracy at all, we may inadvertently lend credence to it, which is something we definitely do not want to do. --Katolophyromai (talk) 11:48, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Known, accepted & recorded historical facts tie Ishtar and Easter together just in the facts that both use bunnies and eggs in the celebration of their festive activities. Emperor Constantine when he accepted Christianity as a state religion brought in the paganism of Rome to Christianity one of which was Ishtar worship redefined to Christian worship of Christ since both events took place during the spring equinox. This was done to make Christianity more acceptable to the Roman public who were pagan worshipers in general
. So even if Ishtar and Easter are not the same festival they share the same attributes of bunnies and eggs minus the sexual orgies and Easter today. 2600:6C56:7700:2795:6:8CB2:CFA5:8A57 (talk) 23:20, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ishtar is not Easter 

message: Maybe the article should present the Assyrian cuneiform form of the name.  This was the type of cuneiform that was first deciphered in the 19th century, and that has been often considered quasi-standard in scholarly work on Akkadian (not Sumerian), though disfavored by the Unicode standard: AnonMoos (talk) 10:13, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Cuneiform

message: A user recently attempted to change the main image for this article to this image, which is a late representation of Ishtar from the third century AD. (Although in my edit summary, I incorrectly stated that it was from the second century AD, which was wrong.) The iconography does not match the typical representation found in Akkadian, Old Babylonian, and Assyrian art at all and presents a version of Ishtar that more closely resembles Cybele than the Akkadian Ishtar. In the typical iconography, Ishtar is usually represented wearing a horned cone-shaped crown and a flounced skirt, often holding either some manner of weapons or a rod-and-ring symbol. In most representations, she is usually standing. In the new image that user added, she is shown with none of the above. Furthermore, her style of dress and the context in which she is shown seems, to me at least, to be very similar to the iconography of Cybele: seated, wearing Graeco-Roman style dress with elaborate jewelry and a cylindrical crown rather than a conical one. The original image, which I have now restored, was much more representative depiction of Ishtar the Akkadian and Babylonian goddess. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:24, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: In the 3rd century A.D., no one could even read cuneiform anymore, so I doubt that there would have been much meaningful lingering resistance to the prevailing trends of cross-cultural syncretism... AnonMoos (talk) 02:15, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image 

message: I have come to a bit of a dilemma: I am hoping to eventually bring this article up to GA status, but I think that the section on "Alleged associations with Easter" might be a major obstacle in doing so. Quite simply, no respectable encyclopedia would ever mention Alexander Hislop or the whole "Easter is Ishtar" nonsense because it is so far off from the views of mainstream scholarship, but, judging from the fact that look-ups to this article skyrocketed on Easter Sunday this year, far above their usual levels, coupled with the fact that we have had multiple people come forth with crazy conspiracy theories about how Ishtar and Easter could be related clearly indicates that a very large number of people are coming to this article to look for answers to precisely that question. I do not want to have a section about it since I would much rather devote the whole article to description of Ishtar, but I feel that the section is necessary simply due to public ignorance. AnonMoos, what do you think? Should I delete the section or leave it in? --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:10, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Hislop should definitely not be mentioned by name in the first section at the top of the article, but I think it's pretty much mandatory to have something about the issue on the article, since the stories are fairly widely spread (among JW's and some others), and if we don't have a debunking section, then drive-by editors will probably add unacceptable stuff about the topic to the article more often than they now do (as has been seen with analogous topics on other articles).  I can understand your hesitance, but I think that for better or worse the cat is already out of the bag. AnonMoos (talk) 20:55, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Alright. I will leave the section there, but I will need to improve some of the references. Do you know of any good, recent sources about the etymology of the name Ishtar? I have noticed that the aforementioned "drive-by editors" keep complaining that the sources currently being used are outdated and even I will admit that some of them are rather old. Some newer sources might be better to use here. Also, do you know of any scholarly works that specifically address the claim that Easter derives from Ishtar? I already have multiple sources criticizing Hislop for sloppy research and stating that his theories have been debunked, but I have not yet found any that specifically address his supposed "etymology" for Easter. I also have plenty of sources supporting the real etymology for the word, but none of them even reference the alleged "Ishtar" etymology. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:18, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry for delayed reply, but I have a lot of Biblical Hebrew reference works at home, but not much specifically about the Akkadian languages.  The standard newer source would probably be The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.  I may be able to look at it in the local University library here.  There may be difficulty finding a definitive scholarly debunking for the same reason as it's been difficult to find a specific scholarly debunking of "Amen comes from Egyptian Amun" and "The abbreviation Xmas was devised for the purpose of taking Christ out of Christmas" -- scholars in the relevant subject areas don't remotely take such ideas seriously, and would have little reason to confront them as part of their usual scholarly researches... AnonMoos (talk) 03:51, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with mentioning Hislop 

message: The modern uses of the Star of Ishtar symbol aren't important for this article, but they are relevant (if prominent).  If we had an article on "Mesopotamian divine symbols" or similar, they could go there, but I don't think we do... AnonMoos (talk) 17:38, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Gryffindor has already created an article entitled Star of Ishtar, which describes ancient and modern uses of the symbol. I think that this is a good solution; a description of the star's appearance in the Iraqi flag is unfitting for an article about Ishtar herself, but I think that it is perfectly fitting in an article specially devoted to the star. Besides, I think that the star of Ishtar, which was an important religious symbol in Mesopotamia for thousands of years, is certainly notable enough to warrant an article of its own. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:52, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Star of Ishtar symbol

message: The author of this highly respected page should be held accountable for his or her misinterpretation of history. And, possibly be banned from further injections of historical phallisies based on their lack of true historical facts and research. I agree we should only share truth on this page and ask for a legitimate examination on this author for the good of all that are truth seeking. I thank this page and all those who contribute to the truth. God bless you all— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.235.164.168 (talk • contribs) 
:Could you cite some professionally-published mainstream academic sources to demonstrate that the article is largely in error? Ian.thomson (talk) 06:38, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complaint 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Inanna which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 21:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress