Alexander Stolbov wrote:
>
> As far as I know Aphrodite (+ male Ares) was imported from West Semitic (Astarta
> + male Astar) where she was the Great Mother Goddess. The most early (again, as
> far as I know) representation of this personage in Old Semitic was Asirat ( I
> guess cognate to Egyptian Isida), who produced Akkadian Ishtar, Ugaritic Asirtu,
> Ashera in Ivrit and was exported not only in Greece but also in Hittite as
> Ashertu and in Hurritic as Ashtabi (a male variant - initially the
> husband-servant the of the Great Goddess like Astar and Ares). By the way, in
> Southern Arabia mainly male gods of this origin were spread (Astar).
>
> Alexander
Actually, Aphrodite is a Cypriote creation (so to speak). It was
only later in Greek history that the Greeks associated their Aphrodite
with the Levantine Astarte, and then reinterpreted Astarte as a sex
goddess. In reality, in both Bronze Age and Iron Age texts, Levantine
'Ashtart (Astarte) is a goddess associated with war-fare, royalty and
divine justice; it's only in the Greek texts that she's associated with
sex. Originally, they were linked due to their common role as "Goddess
of Cyprus."
I believe that Aphrodite emmerged on Cyprus due to a mixing of
Levatine influence (mainly from the goddess Ishhara, the Mesopotamian
goddess of sex and war-fare, possibly a sub-section of Ishtar, who also
contributed to Aphrodite) and some Minoan iconography. The reason that
her name never seems accurately to relate to anything either Greek/I-E or
Semitic is because it is probably heavily influenced (at least) by
Eteo-Cypriot.
By the bye, neither Aphrodite, Astarte, nor Ishhara or Ishtar are
mother goddesses. Of the lot, only Aphrodite has children (Ishtar has
one child, named Sharra, in the myth of the Anzu Bird, but never again),
and these children, and motherhood in geneeral, are not a source of
Aphrodite's power in the same as, for example, Demeter and Hera. Sex,
fertility and maternity were separate concepts in ancient Greece and the
Near East, and it is a modern mis-conception (no pun intended) that all
goddesses, especially the really powerful ones, are "Mother Goddesses."
The Mother goddesses of the ancient Near East are Asherah (in Ugarit) and
Ninhursag in Mesopotamia. Asherah and Astarte are completely different
goddesses (atrt vs 'ttrt in Ugaritic).
Ares is an I-E deity, to the best of my knowledge. The theories
as to why he wound up with Aphrodite are:
1) Opposites attract (the structuralist approach, I guess)
2) Ares was seen by the Greeks to parallel the warrior-god
worshiped on Cyprus along side Aphrodite, a deity also associted with
metallurgy, thus the connection with Hephaistos as well...
3) There may have been an early warrior element to Aphrodite,
recorded in the art but not the literature (at Kythera, Sparta and
Corinth her cult statues were armed.)
'Athtar/Ashtar (the male equivalent of Astarte) was quite a minor
deity in the Bronze Age texts, most likely associated with the morning
star, and definately not a warrior!