Astarte

Astarte (Hebrew Ashtoreth, plural Ashtaroth) was the principal female deity of the Phoenician and Canaanite pantheon — a goddess of fertility, love, sexuality, and war, identified with the planet Venus and cognate with the Babylonian Ishtar and the Egyptian Isis. She was the consort of Baal and was venerated across the ancient Near East under varying names and forms. Her cult involved ritual prostitution, fertility rites, and worship at shrines and high places with wooden cult objects (Asherah poles).

Israelites periodically abandoned YHWH to serve Baal and Ashtaroth, particularly during the period of the judges (Judg. 2:13; 10:6; 1 Sam. 7:3-4). Samuel called Israel to put away the Ashtaroth as a condition of covenant renewal (1 Sam. 7:3). Solomon built a high place for 'Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians' under the influence of his foreign wives (1 Kings 11:5, 33), a syncretism that persisted until Josiah destroyed the high place during his reform (2 Kings 23:13). The Elijah narrative's confrontation at Mount Carmel implicitly targeted the Baal-Asherah cult that Jezebel had institutionalized in the northern kingdom.