[Mehrbod]

Anahita - Part 7 : Conflation with Ishtar

When Persia conquered Babylonia (in the 6th century BCE), Anahita began to show some similarities with the goddess Ishtar. Since then her cult included also the practice of temple prostitution. During the reign of king Artaxerxes (436-358 BCE) many temples were erected in her honor; in Soesa, Ecbatana, and in Babylon.

As the divinity of purifying waters, Anahita is associated with fertility, healing and wisdom. At some point prior to the 4th century BCE, this yazata was conflated with (an analogue of) Semitic Ishtar-Inanna, likewise a divinity of "maiden" fertility and from whom Aredvi Sura Anahita then inherited additional features of a divinity of war and of the planet Venus. It was moreover the association with the planet Venus, "it seems, which led Herodotus to record that the Persis learnt 'to sacrifice to "the heavenly goddess"' from the Assyrians and Arabians"

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In this statue, Goddess Anahita surrounded by members of the animal kingdom, this Goddess displays her role in supporting life on earth. (made From a pre-Roman bronze hydria (large jar) found in Switzerland, 600 BCE)

Ishtar also "apparently" gave Anahita the epithet Banu, 'the Lady', a typically Mesopotamian construct that is not attested as an epithet for a divinity in Iran before the common era. It is completely unknown in the texts of the Avesta, but evident in Sassanid-era middle Persian inscriptions, and in a middle Persian Zend translation of Yasna, Also in Zoroastrian texts from the post-conquest epoch (651 CE onwards), the divinity is referred to as 'Anahid the Lady', 'Ardwisur the Lady' and 'Ardwisur the Lady of the waters'.

Because the divinity is unattested in any old Western Iranian language, establishing characteristics prior to the introduction of Zoroastrianism in Western Iran (c. 5th century BCE) is very much in the realm of speculation. According to Boyce, it is "probable" that there was once a Perso–Elamite divinity by the name of *Anahiti (as reconstructed from the Greek Anaitis). It is then likely (so Boyce) that it was this divinity that was an analogue of Ishtar, and that it is this divinity with which Aredvi Sura Anahita was conflated. Boyce concludes that "the Achaemenids' devotion to this goddess evidently survived their conversion to Zoroastrianism, and they appear to have used royal influence to have her adopted into the Zoroastrian pantheon." According to an alternate theory, Anahita was perhaps "a daeva of the early and pure Zoroastrian faith, incorporated into the Zoroastrian religion and its revised canon" during the reign of "Artaxerxes I, the Constantine of that faith."


In this statue, Goddess Anahita surrounded by members of the animal kingdom, this Goddess displays her role in supporting life on earth. (made From a pre-Roman bronze hydria (large jar) found in Switzerland, 600 BCE)

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by Carlos Reyes