Ishtar

1987 film starring Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty. It was rumored to cost around $40 million to make and took in half that amount at the box office. It was completely ignored by the Academy but picked up quite a few Razzie Awards.

The story centers around two lounge singers, Hoffman and Beatty, who are booked in Morocco. Somewhere along the line, they become pawns in an international intrigue between the CIA, the emir of Ishtar, and a group of rebels hoping to overthrow the emir.

She is Anu's second consort, daughter of Anu and Antum (the earliest example of incest?). She is the goddess of love, procreation, and war. Her temples have special prostitutes of both genders. She is often accompanied by a lion, and sometimes rides it.

The Eanna in Uruk is dedicated both to her and Anu. As Irnini, she has a parakku (= throne-base = dais, mound, platform) at the Cedar Mountain¹. She loved Tammuz in her youth, although he spends half the year in the nether world wailing. She loved a lion, a stallion, a shepherd, from all of whom she asked great sacrifice and then abandoned. She loved Ishullanu², a gardener who was taken aback when she revealed herself to him, so she turned him into a frog (the word may mean dwarf).

She asks Gilgamesh to be her lover and husband, offering him many gifts and the homage of earthly rulers and kingdoms. But because she is a goddess Gilgamesh rejects her. She doesn't take that too well and asks Anu to send the Bull of Heaven to kill Gilgamesh, and he agrees.

In another adventure she determines to go to the Underworld. To force the gatekeeper to open the gate, she threatens to smash it and raise the dead so that they would eat and outnumber the living. She holds the great keppu-toy (a whipping top). The gate keeper takes her through seven gates to Ereshkigal's realm. By Ereshkigal's rites, she is stripped of items of clothing in this order as she passes through each of the gates:

• crown
• earrings
• necklace
• tudditu (breast pins)
• belt of birthstones
• wrist and ankle bangles
• her garment

While she in the underworld, no creatures ah... engage in acts of procreation. She was kept in Egalgina ( = ? Palace of Justice) and brought forth by Namtar after being sprinkled with the water of life. She is led back out through the gates, given back her accouterments, and released in exchange for Dumuzi (Tammuz). Symbol: an eight or sixteen-pointed star Sacred number: 15 Astrological region: Dibalt (Venus) and the Bowstar (Sirius) Sacred animal: lion and perhaps dragon

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¹ from the Gilgamesh Legend (Tablet V) "Then they saw the Cedar Mountain, the Dwelling of the Gods..."
² from the Gilgamesh Legend (Tablet VI) "You loved Ishullanu, your father's date gardener, who continually brought you baskets of dates, and brightened your table daily. You raised your eyes to him, and you went to him: 'Oh my Ishullanu, let us taste of your strength, stretch out your hand to me, and touch our vulva."

The goddess Ishtar (also known as Astarte among other things) appears in the Brief Lives series of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, as a one-time friend of Dream's errant brother destruction, now working as a stripper since her cult - and therefore her powers - dwindled almost to nothing.

She appears, too, as guardian of Nirvana in the excellent but mythologically dubious Martin Millar-penned comic Lux & Alby Sign On and Save The Universe.