text:
Talk:Ishtar

2003
Where is the material on Astarte, now that we are being redirected here? Wetman 11:15, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I guess the topic of Astarte was all wiped out and we are supposed to accept Ishtar as being Astarte though a totally different culutre worshipping her. Amazing, Innanna we separate, but Astarte we merge. -- anonymous IP 69.76.46.169, 19:42, 5 February 2007

Star symbol
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)

please separate Inanna and Ishtar !
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 The main reference in my possession is Kramer, which may be a tad out of date by now, and I know next to nothing about Ishtar as distinct from Inanna.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)

Ok let me add details ;) Ishtar was an akkadian goddess, she appeared much later than old sumerian goddess Inanna . And there is already an article about Inanna. This article is unfortunately mixing all together... User:saggiga

This issue may be partially clarified by the wikipedia article on En-hedu-ana, which should be linked to this article!!!!! Lily20 (talk) 18:35, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Removed "Pleiadian" from "Pleiadian-sumerian". As there was "Semetic" nearby, I don't even want to know what was meant with it. --Oop 09:29, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

the second name derives from the first Semitic people, the Akkadians. I'm pretty sure Akkadians were not the first Semitic people. -Tydaj 21:34, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

yes there are significant problems with the Inanna / Ishtar seperation. One very problematic entry is on the Uruk Vase. THis depicts Inanna, not Ishtar. And indeed mentions of inscriptions are misleading. There are no inscriptions on the vase. In addition its identification of the depicting Inanna's Sacred Marriage Rite is problematic. The Uruk Vase which appears to depict the Sacred Marriage Rite predate any texts which mention the Sacred Marriage Rite. So either that attribution is an anachronism. Or as I have argued in my thesis, the visual depictions on the Uruk Vase are in fact neccessary for the particularities of the Sacred Marriage Rite to appear textuality. That is to say that the Uruk Vase is the visual model with complex representational and recursive properties that actually aid in the later development of textual language that can accurately describe the Sacred Marriage Rite. I'm very interested in this topic, and have done much scholarly work on it. I shall create an account soon so that I may give a serious update to the Inanna entry on the wikipedia.

Perhaps you may be interested in a difference between I-Nanna and Ishtar as this following theory if it can be allowed in Ishtar Talk (not being the main article) without someone scrapping it out before you read it. I-Nanna is Sumerian but so is the dates of the sumerian 360-day calendar. Where as Ishtar is later during the 365-day calendar. Nannar is said to be the moon, and yet nannar means great mother, a name that was applied to Venus. Aligning long NeoBabylon chronology to short Genesis chronology and you get the same 177 years for Ur by either. However, in the short Meskiag-Nannar begins 243 years after the Hebrew Flood which is a Venus cycle not lunar. As for those who dont want Ishtar and Astoreth to be the same goddess Venus, do see my answer to AnonMoos below.69.76.46.169 03:35, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no I-nanna, if you want to know how to spell it in sumerian, it's In-anna. She was originally Ninanak, or the lady of the datepalm storehouses, but she eventually evolved to take on more attributes slowly becomming Inanna. Though she is the daughter of Nanna, that's not part of her name. I'm not sure what you are talking about with a 365 day calendar, do you mean during the hellenistic era? There really wasn't any babylonian/assyrian/sumerian paganism left by the time they adopted (if they did) that calendar), as the local religions got absorbed into the zoroastrian and zoroastrian-influenced religions of the time.

Nannar doesn't mean great mother, learn akkadian. As for the Venus cycle, the only calendars that go by that are the mayan one. Other than that, its not applicable elsewhere. As for Ishtar and Ashtoreth, they aren't the same. Ashtoreth is a hebrew invented word, and no such deity was worshipped. They corrupted the name Ashtart/Athtart, of whom is etymologically linked to Ishtar, but they aren't the same necessarily. [User:Abdishtar|Abdishtar] 15:12 31 January 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abdishtar (talk • contribs) 20:12, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

 * 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)

Of the Sleep of Ishtar
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)
 * I can tell you that Cuthalu and Azag-Thoth are just bastardizations of Cthulhu and Azathoth. --Tydaj 00:16, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * 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)

Ishtar
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)

And neither of you supplied any sources for either of your statements, so your'e both wrong.

Response: Is not the Catholic version of Mary revered as the "Queen of Heaven"? Jeremiah 44 is sufficient enough evidence to clearly see how the "Queen of Heaven" is an insult to Yahweh God — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.94.96.131 (talk) 16:12, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

213.141.89.20 06:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

2012
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)

 * 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)

 * 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, ISBN 0-292-70794-0), 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)
 * I agree!😎👍 2600:6C50:487F:B3B3:C03B:9109:16C2:3557 (talk) 19:19, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Two things. ..
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)

ashtaroth was a demon name given to her by the hebrews i think like calling baal bezelbub. im pretty sure of that. im pretty sure u all know that — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.31.107.12 (talk) 22:02, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Arabic script
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)

Ishtar's role in the story of Gilgamesh
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)

She actually does show up in the Epic of Gilgamesh, she plays a bigger role in the Babylonian epic than in the sumerian tales. If it hasn't been already, I will try to get around to adding in the role she takes in it. Abdishtar (talk) 02:10, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Eostre
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)

 * 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)

 * 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)

Problems with recent edits
The name Asherah begins with an Aleph (glottal stop) consonant, while the etymological cognates of Ishtar (such as Hebrew `Ashtoreth) begin with an `Ayin (voiced pharyngeal) consonant. Therefore it is extremely unlikely that there is any etymological connection between these two words. Also, "Goddess" should not be capitalized except when it appears at the beginning of a sentence. And Eostre is nonsense. AnonMoos 19:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

 * I agree with AnonMoos here, as much as i disagree. I agree both are Venus. But the words define a different Venus. As AnonMoos would disagree at my quote of Ish-shtar meaning Man's star, i have said before that Ash means lion or in Leo, though some translate it as Arcturus or as Big Dipper which are both in the zodiac zone of Leo from equator to pole. If you look at Venus in 1770 BC you will see that the sun passes thru Leo at the time of Venus morningstar which then rises atthe horizon above Regulus in the NE while Sothis rises the same time to the SE. This Ishtar of Hamurabi which would mean man's star is the same planet at year for it to be called by others as Ash-star or Leo star. So if some like to equate Ishtar and Astoreth as the same there is reason, yet if they wish to argue they are different, then that too they are not being define or labeled with the same name thought the same date and year. Now as for Inanna, she is Venus centuries before Hamurabi, and before the 365-day calendar whether long chronology 2900-2700 BC or short chronology 2300-2200 BC.

2018
Linguistics alone does not explain away syncretisms, epithets, and the understanding of entities in the past. Ishtar is a major deity and has as many names, if not more, than Marduk and YHWH. Inanna, from d.NIN.AN.AK, LITERALLY means GOD. LADY/QUEEN. of Heaven. Ishtar, despite all its derived meanings, literally means 'DAWN STAR', IE MORNING STAR. Dawn happens in the east. The only reason people will not accept the connections is because recognising the importance of Ishtar will literally wreck every existing major religion. Goodnight.

JUDGEMENT AGAINST ME
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)

Star
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)

Ishtar Easter
I would like to suggest this article show the Ishtar/Easter connection, with the fertility symbols of Rabbits and eggs and all. does anyone agree? Kljenni 14:57, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I'm sorry, but there is no absolutely no valid evidence whatsoever of any LINGUISTIC connection between the names Ishtar and Eostre. You can discuss at length the possible pagan connections of Easter on the Easter article (provided that you can assemble reputable sources for such connections), but such exposition doesn't belong here on article Ishtar, because no one has ever been able to prove to the satisfaction of the majority of scholars that the similarity between Eostre and Ishtar is anything other than a meaningless coincidence of sounds. AnonMoos 15:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Who are these 'majority of scholars'? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:57, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Why not look up "Easter" in any standard scholarly dictionary which includes etymologies, and see whether the word is traced back to "Ishtar"? I looked in two dictionaries just now, and they don't do so.  Rather, they trace the word back to an Indo-European root whose most basic meaning appears to be "Dawn".  P.S.  It's not very user-friendly to replace the display of your username with characters which do not display in many browser software setups. AnonMoos 16:12, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

There is overwhelming evidence that Astarte, Ishtar Ashtoreth is also Easter. Let it be mentioned at least as a possibility.

“What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte. . . the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country [England]. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. The worship of Bel and Astarte was very early introduced into Britain. . . . Such is the history of Easter. The popular observances that still attend the period of its celebration amply confirm the testimony of history as to its Babylonian character. The hot cross buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now.”

The Two Babylons (London; 1957), by Alexander Hislop pp. 103, 107, 108. Kljenni 00:58, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I notice you didn't bother to link to Alexander Hislop or The Two Babylons. If you had, then it would have become clear that he was a mid-19th-century crank who constructed a hyper-elaborate conspiracy theory to "prove" that the Roman Catholic church is the evil antichrist.

 * In any case, proposed etymologies must satisfy technical linguistic criteria, which take into account many factors other than overall vague resemblances of sounds (see Junggramatiker), and the Ishtar-Easter connection fails such tests, as is seen by the fact that it isn't mentioned in standard etymological reference works. AnonMoos 02:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I would not refer to Mr Hislop as a "crank" as you do, but can you show that his beliefs were wrong? Kljenni 20:01, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Because none of his unique beliefs have been accepted by current mainstream scholarship, and his main thesis of a unique Babylonian-Roman Catholic direct connection (bypassing other forms of Christianity) is pretty much completely wrongheaded. Please take this to the Easter page -- you can debate the pagan origins of bunnies and eggs to your heart's content there, while leaving Ishtar (and the technical linguistic issues connected with it, which you do not seem to be willing to take the effort to master) aside... AnonMoos 01:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

From the Easter wiki page with cited sources:
 * Easter as a Babylonian festival

Some suggest an etymological relationship between Eostre and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar (variant spelling: Eshtar) ([2] [3] [4] [5]) and the possibility that aspects of an ancient festival accompanied the name, claiming that the worship of Bel and Astarte was anciently introduced into Britain, and that the hot cross buns of Good Friday and dyed eggs of Easter Sunday figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now.

Any alleged connection between Ishtar and Easter is geographically distant and linguistically untenable.[3]

Claiming a connection between Ishtar and Easter also ignores the fact that Easter is called "Passover" in almost every other language in the world. (The only exceptions appear to be the languages of those people who first learned Christianity at the hands of English or other Anglophone missionaries.) Examples of this are the Hebrew Pesach; the Greek Paskha; the Latin Pascha; the Italian Pasqua; the Spanish La Pascua; and Scots Gaelic An Casca. The holiday was not called "Easter" until the 8th Century, by which time it had already been in existence for 700 years.

There is the additional problem that the very lands where Ishtar was once known have never been known to use a name like "Easter" for this or any other spring holiday.[4]

Xuchilbara 02:02, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

2012
It doesn't prove that roman catholic church is evil but it does prove it was all copied from pagans and that is why no one wants to talk about it. 170.3.8.253 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:12, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

 * Why, when there's no valid evidence accepted by mainstream scholarship of any linguistic connection between the words "Easter" and "Ishtar"?? -- AnonMoos (talk) 20:12, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

The Jews had their passover so the hellenistic jews who were creating a new religion wanted to have a similar sprintime holiday but if they canlled it passover it'd look like they were copying. So they called it easter which helped get them new converts from pagans who already followed the holiday celebrating ishtar in the spring, a fertility goddess because spring is when the soil is fertile again, and all the rabbits and eggs also symbolize this. Why do christians intend to deny this to their deathbed when it is obvious? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.3.8.253 (talk) 15:15, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

 * Dude, early Christians were not at all afraid of "copying" from Judaism (and often considered themselves to be the true spiritual heirs of Biblical Judaism, and called their commemoration of Christ's crucifixion πασχα (in Greek), from Hebrew פסח. "Easter" didn't come into it until centuries in later in Anglo-Saxon England, and there is absolutely no connection between the Germanic word "Easter" and the Semitic word "Ishtar", as discussed above... AnonMoos (talk) 20:06, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

 * They did call it "Passover". It's still called "Passover" in nearly every language but English. In most languages it's derived from the Greek name for Easter, which is "Pascha", and "Pascha" is Greek for Passover. The Greek Old Testament uses the exact same word for the Jewish feast. Its meaning is transparent to any Greek Christian, and Greek hymnology for the day harps strongly on the Passover theme. It's only this small groups of Germanic barbarians to the North who decided to rename it after the month in which it usually fell.

 * Only someone who speaks English as a first language, and speaks English exclusively, could take this cockamamie theory seriously. 192.91.173.34 (talk) 21:00, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

2018
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)

Ishtar and Biblical `Ashtoreth
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)

I don't see why it's necessary really to have her under Ishtar. Aside from that, Ishtar actually has more connections with the male deity Athtar, from whom her name is derived. Though you are right, there is a valid connection between them. I don't know why whoever cut it out. Abdishtar (talk) 02:05, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Misc
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)

Anunit/Atarsamain/Esther/Ishtar

 * "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)

 * 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)

Actually, Anunit is a seperate goddess, she isn't Ishtar, Cuthaean Creation Legend: 'I prayed to Ishtar, (...), Zamama, Anunit, Nabu, (...) and shamash the warrior' I think that you are confusing the Ishtars with the goddess herself. The Ishtars were a group of goddesses, that included both Ishtar and Anunit. Is there any references to Atarsamain being female? [User:Abdishtar|talk] 15:25 31 January 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abdishtar (talk) 22:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC) (talk • contribs) 20:25, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

A call for critical review of ...
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 --124.78.214.145 (talk) 07:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=allintitle%3A+Ishtar&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0

Sacred Prostitution
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)

 * 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, ISBN 0-292-70794-0) and you'll be convinced... AnonMoos (talk) 23:29, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to add that you can also read up on sacred prostitution with regards to Ishtar in Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East, though I have to look up the author. I'm sure the title should pop up on google books or amazon. Abdishtar (talk) 02:02, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * 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)

Time for an update
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)

No mention of the movie
No mention of the movie "Ishtar"? Shjacks45 (talk) 06:10, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

 * 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)

"In other media" section needs major cleanup
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)
 * 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)

Ishtar is not Easter
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. (|Jesus) --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

 * 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)

 * 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)

 * 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)

 * 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)

 * Seems fine now... AnonMoos (talk) 10:13, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

"his ideas have become so widely promulgated"

That is really news to me. Other than a few references in fringe books read by my deceased mother and a couple of mocking mentions in the Internet, I have barely even heard of Hislop. I thought he was just another long-forgotten crackpot.

"receiving over 8,000 more page views than Jesus"

I am not certain if this has anything to do with Hislop. Ishtar turns up often in books that have to with comparative mythology, neo-paganism, and various fantasy novels. For example in the Conan the Barbarian series and its adaptations, many characters are Ishtar worshipers. In the "Black Colossus" (1933), the monotheistic god Mitra tries to intervene in a military conflict in favor of Princess Yasmela, but she points that she and her people are mostly Ishtar worshipers. Dimadick (talk) 20:12, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

 * 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)

 * Would it be worthwhile to coordinate with editors at Talk:Easter to discuss a unified rebuttal? Ian.thomson (talk) 07:03, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

 * 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)

 * 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)

 * 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)

Cuneiform
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)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 July 2017
The article on the goddess Ishtar currently states in paragraph 3:

"Although various publications have claimed that Ishtar's name is the root behind the modern English word Easter, reputable linguists have unanimously rejected these putative etymologies as entirely false."

This is a strong claim and has no citations. It should either have more than one citation added, reduce the strength of the claim if only adding one citation, or (probably the best option) the claim should be removed altogether and replaced with something akin to "The etymology of the name Ishtar is currently unknown and disputed".

Also, I pose a similar but far more detailed argument for the entire final section, titled "Alleged associations with Easter":

Once again, strong claims of Ishtar having nothing to do (etymologically) with Easter (and by extension, Eostre) are made, yet your cited sources numbers 34 (Grabbe, Lester L., 1997) and 35 (Mcllhenny, Albert M., 2011) are not written by linguists, and do not even mention the etymology of Ishtar, but simply discredit Hislop. Further, your cited sources numbers 39 (Haupt, P., 1885), 40 (Barton, George A., 1911), and 41 (Pinker, A., 2005) have the following major issues: numbers 39 and 40 are both well over 100 years old, and we'll just say that the field of linguistics has come some ways since then. Number 41, once again, does not even mention the etymology of the word Ishtar (it discusses the translations of several verbs in the story of her descent to the underworld, and mentions that Ishtar is "identified" with the dawn star/Venus (Pinker, A., 2005, p. 92), but nothing about the etymology of her actual name). In short, your sources do not satisfactorily (in the case of 39 and 40) or at all (in the case of 41) support your claim that the word Ishtar has nothing to do with the word Easter.

I am not vouching for Hislop here per se, but the facts are thus:

1. There is no definitive linguistic consensus on the meaning of Ishtar, and the topic does not seem to have been published on in any reputable journals (or any journals at all, that I can find) recently... meaning, in the past 30 years or less... or even the past 50. The field of linguistics is quite young (and was in its infancy when Haupt and Barton wrote their works), and works from over 100 years ago, especially on topics that are only discussed by (as far as I can find) two people, are hardly definitive. 2. Ishtar is associated with the dawn star ( Pinker, A. (2005). Descent of the Goddess Ishtar to the Netherworld and Nahum II 8. Vetus Testamentum, 55(1), p. 92) 3. The nameEsther is also associated with the dawn star as well as with the word Ishtar (Yahuda, A. (1946). The Meaning of the name Esther. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 78(3-4), 174-178. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00100413), also attested in the far out-dated work of Barton (1911, p. 356) 4. The name Eostre, from which it is well-agreed that the word Easter derives (and your own sources agree), is also associated with the dawn, and of course, the east. 5. Aphrodite, in one of your sources (which didn't mention the etymology of Ishtar) is claimed to be "the Greek counterpart of Ishtar" and "is also often associated with doves, which are her symbol" (Pinker, A. 2005, p. 98), and she (Aphrodite) is also claimed linguistically to be related to the Indo-European dawn goddess *Haéusōs, whose etymology you argue for in the final paragraph in question (that being the one titled "Alleged associations with Easter"). This also argues against your claim that the Greek adoption of the word "Pascha" for "Easter" is significant, since "Pascha" is clearly a loan word from Hebrew, and so all it really means is that they decided to call Easter by the Hebrew word instead of by a clearly Pagan-origin word such as "Aphrodite Day" or some such, as the Greek have historically often chosen not to do when it comes to Christianity (but it does not stop non-Greeks from doing it with their own similar dawn goddesses).

As someone with a masters degree in linguistics, I can tell you that it is not much of a stretch, especially given the phonological similarities, to see how there might be some linguistic connections here, and the mythological similarities strengthen these possibilities.

Of course, the most direct etymology for the term Easter must be to Eostre and east, and so I would argue that this should be made the main crux of the argument against Easter being based on Ishtar. However, the fact that the word Easter is based on Eostre does not preclude Easter per se from also having a more distant linguistic (and/or mythological) relationship with Ishtar, insofar as the word and Goddess Ishtar is probably related to the word and Goddess Eostre. An elementary understanding of historical linguistics would encourage you not to make such strong claims in the absence of thorough research on the topic (which, from a purely linguistic standpoint, there does not appear to be much research, as most papers published about Ishtar are in relation to anthropology or her mythologies, not the linguistics of ancient Akkadian), ESPECIALLY in the presence of so much probably-not-so-circumstantial evidence both phonologically and thematically between the two Goddesses of Eostre and Ishtar.

Thank you. 68.134.216.244 (talk) 07:28, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I wholeheartedly endorse this person's argument, and encourage him or her to set up a personal wiki account and thus to edit this entry in an encyclopedic (not argumentative) style. Well done! Spem Reduxit (talk) 13:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Padlock-silver-open.svg Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 14:44, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The reason the statement in the lead is uncited is because the lead is supposed to be a summary of the rest of the article. That particular statement is intended as a summary of the final section discussing the putative connections between Ishtar and Easter, which discusses the subject at much greater length and provides sufficient citations to support the statement.
 * Sources 34 and 25 are not being used to support statements regarding the etymology of Easter; they are being used to support much more general statements that Hislop's claims have been debunked. You seem to be criticizing them for not supporting statements that they are not being used to support.
 * The fact that sources 39 and 40 are old does not automatically make them outdated; they are only outdated if there are newer sources directly contradicting them. The fact that they do not directly address Hislop's claims is because, quite simply, most reputable scholars of the Near East do not take Hislop seriously and do not feel that it is necessary to address him. These sources do establish, however, an etymology for Ishtar which is unrelated to the etymology for Eostre, which is really all they need to do.
 * Stating that Ishtar and Easter are etymologically unrelated is not a "strong claim" as you say. Saying that they are related is a strong claim. Stating that they are not related is not claiming anything.
 * Your argument for how Ishtar and Eostre may be related is flawed and also qualifies as original research. Eostre was probably associated with the dawn, whereas Ishtar was only associated with the morning star (i.e. the planet Venus), not the dawn itself. It is a bit of a leap to claim that this somehow qualifies as a thematic correlation between the two. *Haéusōs and Ishtar both likely influenced the cult of Aphrodite, but they did so independently. The fact that the both influenced her does not in any way make them related. As Jaan Puhvel explains on pages 142 through 143 of his Comparative Mythology, ancient Greek religion consisted of a complex synthesis of heterogeneous mythological traditions. The fact that Ishtar influenced Aphrodite does not in any way imply that she therefore influenced the Proto-Indo-European *Haéusōs or the Anglo-Saxon Eostre. For the most part, your whole argument seems to consist of unwarranted speculation. For instance, you speculate that because the word Pascha is Hebrew, it must have been used to make an originally pagan holiday sound more acceptable for Christian celebrants. First of all, I would like to correct you that the word Pascha does not come from Hebrew; it actually comes from Aramaic Paskha. The Hebrew word Pesach is merely a cognate. Second of all, I would like to point out that it is far simpler to assume that the holiday was originally a Christian one and that the name Pascha is simply a carry-over from the original Aramaic spoken by early Christians. You are taking a pagan origin for granted when there is no evidence that such an origin exists.
 * In conclusion, just because it is theoretically plausible that somehow the cult of Ishtar could somehow be related to the cult of Eostre in some hypothetical way does not mean that this was necessarily the case, especially considering the broad implausibility that presents itself when we take into account the vast geographic area between Mesopotamia and Britain, as well as the fact that a much more sensible etymology for Eostre has been already proposed (i.e. the one which holds that she is derived from the Proto-Indo-European goddess *Haéusōs). If you have a reliable source which proposes a connection between Ishtar and Eostre, I would invite you to share it. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

 * STRONGLY OPPOSE CHANGES -- Please see the 2007 discussion at above.  The simple facts are that the Christian festival of Easter was never referred to by a word resembling "eostre"/easter" in the Mediterranean area, or anywhere in the world before about 500 A.D. for that matter.  It was only in the Anglo-Saxon realms, far from the Mediterranean and long after the Christian observance of Easter had already been established, that it was decided to translate the quasi-universal Christian term pascha into a local equivalent.  The people who made that decision had no way of knowing about Ishtar, and were very unlikely to have ever heard of Astarte.  They would have heard of Ashtoreth, but only through rather vague references in the Bible.  If you look up the etymology of the word "Easter" in any reputable relevant reference work, you will not find Ishtar or Astarte listed as a source. AnonMoos (talk) 23:04, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

 * " It was only in the Anglo-Saxon realms, far from the Mediterranean and long after the Christian observance of Easter had already been established, that it was decided to translate the quasi-universal Christian term pascha into a local equivalent." I wonder why they didn't translate "pascha" as "pascha" like others did? "The people who made that decision had no way of knowing about Ishtar, and were very unlikely to have ever heard of Astarte. They would have heard of Ashtoreth, but only through rather vague references in the Bible." Those sentences are indefensible. Spem Reduxit (talk) 23:32, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

 * I don't particularly know why the local-equivalent approach was followed in that particular case. The usual main reason for such an approach in some other cases was to relate new customs to what people were already familiar with -- and occasionally the intention was to aggressively take over something pagan and repurpose it for Christian use (but not, of course, to incorporate paganism as paganism directly into Christianity).  Can you tell me why the names of the Croatian months were given local equivalents, while in the very closely-related Serbian language the Latin names were borrowed?
 * And please do tell me how Anglo-Saxons and emissaries from western continental Europe in 500 A.D. could have heard of Ishtar?? What Greco-Romans knew of Akkadian culture was basically Berossus, but Christians generally weren't interested in anything beyond his chronological framework, and few people in early Anglo-Saxon England would have even been able to read Greek. AnonMoos (talk) 00:32, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

 * England wasn't Chirstianised til much later than 500AD, see Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England History_of_Anglo-Saxon_England and even then, you'd need to look up the first reference to Easter in Anglo-Saxon literature to get a glimpse. Does the Venerable Bede talk about it? Spem Reduxit (talk) 01:22, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Bede wrote in Latin, about paschali, in Ch XX of HISTORIAM ECCLESIASTICAM... so it's unclear. And then one has to account for the Normans who wrote in French until the 13th C... Spem Reduxit (talk) 01:31, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Have you searched Shakespeare yet? Spem Reduxit (talk) 01:45, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

 * I'm not at all attached to 500 A.D. -- it was just a nice convenient round number, which everybody would agree that there was no meaningful Anglo-Saxon Christianity before that date. Taking the Gregorian mission into account, 600 A.D. would of course be more plausible as an approximation as to the time when the conventions of Anglo-Saxon Christianity were being established.  But I don't think you understand that the later you get into the early middle ages, the less likely the people in England would be to know any Greek, or to have heard of any eastern Mediterranean goddesses not mentioned in the Bible (so later dates are not favorable to your case).  And Bede is of course the only source for Eostre in the first place. I have no idea what the rest of your remarks are supposed to mean. AnonMoos (talk) 04:45, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Your contention that "the later you get into the early middle ages, the less likely the people in England would be to know any Greek" verges on preposterous. You cannot sustain anything about "later dates" in this context. Thanks for the reference to Eostre re Bede. Spem Reduxit (talk) 12:13, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I read the passage you added to the Easter section. I have made a few changes, but I think it is alright. I do think that we should try not to fixate on the whole Easter problem too much because it does not really have anything to do with Ishtar, the subject of the article, and there is already an article about Ēostre. On the other hand, though, it may be worth noting that that one passage from The Reckoning of Time by Bede is the only place in the whole corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature where Ēostre is even mentioned. There are some scholars who have (rather dubiously, in my opinion) argued that Ēostre may have been invented Bede from whole cloth in order to suit his etymological purposes and that she may have never really been worshipped at all. Personally, though, I find it unlikely that Bede, a devout monk, would make up a pagan goddess just to come up with an etymology for the name of a month.
 * AnonMoos's statement that "the later you get into the early middle ages, the less likely the people in England would be to know any Greek" is entirely accurate. During the High Middle Ages, knowledge of Greek was practically unheard of in western Europe. As I have previously written in the article ancient Greek literature: "The medieval writer Roger Bacon wrote that 'there are not four men in Latin Christendom who are acquainted with the Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic grammars.'" In any case, even if there were people in England who could read Greek (which is not entirely implausible; there may have been a few such individuals) these people could have been familiar with the name Ishtar since it does not occur in any extant work of Greek literature. The Greeks only knew Ishtar by her Phoenician name, Astarte, and by their own Greek name for her, Aphrodite, neither of which sound even remotely like Ēostre. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:26, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree with AnonMoos's statements above. There is simply no realistic possibility that the word Easter could be in any way related to the name Ishtar. Ēostre was worshipped a whole continent away from Mesopotamia by a people who could not have possibly heard of Ishtar and, as I have already repeatedly pointed out, there is already a very good etymology for her name that has no connection to Ishtar whatsoever. The only evidence that anyone has ever offered to support the notion that they are somehow related is the fact that the two words sound similar, which does not prove anything. In the language of the Mbabaram people, an Australian aboriginal tribe, the word for "dog" is "dog," but the language is completely unrelated to English; the phonological similarity is merely a random coincidence. Something similar appears to have happened with the words Easter and Ishtar. Notice that, as we trace the word Easter further back closer to its origin, it sounds less like Ishtar: Easter comes from Ēostre, which comes from *h₂éwsōs. It is only the most recent version of the word that sounds at all like Ishtar. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:04, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Image
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)

 * 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)

Problem with mentioning Hislop
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)

 * 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)

 * 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)

 * 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)

I went to the local university library and looked up Ištar in the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, but it had nothing about the wider Semitic etymology, and I'm not sure where else to find a quasi-modern source on that... AnonMoos (talk) 17:38, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Star of Ishtar symbol
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)
 * 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)

Thanks for the unnecessary title
We have been through this same cycle many times before. People keep adding their own conspiracy theories in effort to "prove" that Easter and Ishtar could somehow be related. Apart from being clear cases of original research and synthesis, these arguments also go against the mainstream academic consensus, which holds that the names Ishtar and Easter are unrelated. They sound similar, sure, but if you trace the name Easter back to its origins, the further back you go, the less it sounds like Ishtar. That, combined with the fact that the cult of Ishtar could not have been spontaneously transported across the entire European continent from the Middle East to England without leaving any trace of an intermediary, the fact that Ishtar and Eostre's cults do not even remotely resemble each other, as well as dozens of other obvious problems, have led scholars to conclude that the names cannot be connected; it is not even etymologically plausible. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:43, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

There are intermediaries, and it is etymologically plausible. Many of the included sources do not give any clear indication and the written conclusions in the articles are synthesis themselves. I included sources to recent information that suggests a genealogical and historical connections between peoples of the north, and peoples of the mid-east, along with evidence to suggest that there is a link (stronger than the current article has against it). There is also no mention of the link between Ishtar, Astarte, Artemis/Diana, Ishtar was twin with UTU as Artemis is with apollo ( technically triplets with Ereshkigal, though that may actually be a duality of ishtar), Asherah, Tārā, and various other syncretisms as Ishtar absorbed pretty every other role of the 'lady of heaven' or 'lady of the night/hunt'. The fact you dismiss it as 'cannot be linked' and broadly suggest 'mainstream academics' have said ' it cannot' be connected, is absolute nonsense. Throwing around the words such as 'conspiracy theories' with the intentional aim to withhold actual viable information on the subject with no solid support of that actual position. Wikipedia is a record of what is and what may be, and doesn't always present facts, and and situations where there is on-going debate, the debate must be represented for either side of the discussion, and not just one side which says 'no, I don't think that is true'. This isn't a 'fringe theory', especially when you can DIRECTLY connect Ishtar to Hausos (Hittite Sawska was rendered as Ishtar in Cuneiform), and the Caucasus connection can link Astghik directly to ÁSTRÍÐR (Astrid) = Freyja = Ostara Eostre. I appreciate you wishing to protect the information people will come to read, but that information should be informative, accurate and well represented. If the page is going to address the 'Easter connection', it should represent both sides with all current information, rather than have a nonsense synthesized conclusion of 'it is not connected' based on bad sources that say nothing of the sort, while intentionally trying to discredit the entire notion again based on nothing. You stated as a reason for taking what I put up down that 'it damages the article', when in actuality, the only thing the connection actually damages is all modern religions.I3R0K3N7FEET (talk) 12:15, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

I just read a few paragraphs up. You have made some good points previously, but I still feel that the discussion should be equally represented, or the sub-article should simply be removed. I3R0K3N7FEET (talk) 12:52, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

 * I will now address some of your arguments here:
 * 1) It was commonplace in the ancient Near East to syncretize unrelated deities on the basis of superficially similar characteristics. The fact that, for instance, the Hittites equated Ishtar with Sawska does not imply that they were actually previously related in any way. (You also mention a connection to Artemis, which is plausible, since Ishtar did influence Aphrodite and possibly also Athena, but I have yet to find mention of a connection between Ishtar and Artemis in a reliable source.)
 * 2) The fact that Ishtar influenced other Near Eastern goddesses does not in any way indicate that she influenced an Anglo-Saxon goddess from half a world away.
 * 3) You claim that this Easter connection damages "all modern religions," but, actually, the whole Easter conspiracy theory was invented by Alexander Hislop a fundamentalist Scottish clergyman and its strongest present-day proponents are fundamentalist Protestants. In fact, until you mentioned that you think it damages "all modern religions," I assumed you were probably one of them.
 * 4) Wikipedia is supposed to reflect the consensus of mainstream scholars and it only discusses "disputes" if there are actual scholars supporting both sides. Right now, there is no dispute among mainstream scholars regarding the etymology of the word Easter.
 * 5) I did not want to include a section about the whole Easter conspiracy theory to begin with and the only reason why I included that section was because I thought it was necessary after I saw this page's views spike far above their usual levels during Easter 2017, indicating that thousands of people were visiting this article because they thought there was some kind of connection. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:15, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I have just removed all references to Hislop's whole Easter conspiracy theory. No work on ancient Mesopotamian religion that I am aware of even mentions his theories for the sake of debunking them. The entry for Ishtar in Jeremy Black and Anthony Green's comprehensive Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary does not mention anything at all about the supposed Easter connections. We should not grant Hislop or his disciples WP:UNDUE legitimacy by bothering to mention them here. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:40, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Merge to Inanna
Hello! Some of you may recall that, when I first came along, there was a proposal to merge this article into the article Inanna. I opposed that merge and removed the tag suggesting it. I am now going back on that decision, for several reasons, which include the following:
 * 1) The Inanna article previously dealt only with Inanna during the Sumerian period; whereas this article dealt with only Ishtar during the post-Sumerian periods. I decided that this was not a good idea because, then, a reader of either article only learns half the story and is left partially uninformed upon completing the article.
 * 2) Inanna and Ishtar are only separate and distinct up until the time of Sargon, when they were syncretized; after that point, they seem to have largely been seen as a single goddess. Incidentally, however, both goddesses were relatively obscure up until this syncretism and it was only after the syncretism that they became wildly popular.
 * 3) A large amount of the material in this article was just a repeat of information from the article Inanna. For instance, the "Iconography," "Worship," and "Character" sections were almost entirely copied and pasted from the corresponding sections in the Inanna article, with minor points added about later changes.
 * 4) Most sources treat the two goddesses as the same. Jeremy Black and Anthony Green's Dictionary of Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, for instance, has only one entry titled "Inana (Ištar)" and the entry for "Ištar" simply states "see Inana." Louise Pryke's book Ishtar, published last year, talks about both goddesses and uses the two names interchangeably.
 * 5) I have just brought Inanna up to GA status and I am considering potentially trying to bring it up to FA. By merging the two articles, I can bring them both up at once.

I have already moved all of the material from this article into the article Inanna, which means that all we need to do to complete the merge is turn this article into a redirect. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:34, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Why did you do this unilaterally? The articles were fine separate. I liked that article and I don't think this really helps anything by deleting everything. Thanks a lot. 216.80.118.27 (talk) 07:51, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I concur with the above user; the two articles were fine as separate entries, much like the entities of Ishtar and Inanna seemed to have been quite distinct before the discovery of the Sumerian mythology in the 19th Century. Moreover any such grave actions as deletion or merging of major Wikipedia articles should have been undertaken only after extensive debate and reaching of a community consensus; not unilaterally by a single user, however well-meaning.

Thus the two articles should be restored as separate encyclopedic entries; at least until such time as an aforementioned discussion and community consensus is reached. Jove (talk) 07:48, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

 * Most academic sources generally treat the goddesses as the same and do not distinguish between them after the rule of Sargon of Akkad. Furthermore, having all the information in one article gives the reader a more complete view of the subject; whereas separating them gives the reader only half of the picture and can lead to misunderstanding and confusion. Just to give a few examples: the "Worship" section of this article talked about the kurgarrū and assinnu, but not their Sumerian precursors, the gala; whereas the Inanna article only talked about the gala. The "Mythology" section in this article only talked about myths that use the name "Ishtar," even though most of the stories about Inanna were also told about Ishtar. (Inanna and Ebih was, in fact, written by the Akkadian princess Enheduanna as part of the syncretism between the two goddesses during the reign of Sargon and, even though it was written in Sumerian and uses the name "Inanna," it is fundamentally also a myth about Ishtar.) Furthermore, the "Mythology" section talked about the Akkadian Ishtar's Descent into the Underworld, but did not describe in detail the much longer Sumerian Inanna's Descent in to the Underworld of which Ishtar's Descent is clearly just an abridged version.
 * The reason I went ahead and merged the articles without discussion was because I assumed that no one would be likely to object, since, before I came along, there was already a proposal to merge the articles, but I was the one who removed it. I will admit that some of the distinction between the two article may have been my fault for setting up artificial boundaries between the two different names. I would also like to clarify that I have not deleted any information; all of the information that was in this article has simply been moved. In fact, I have actually added a great deal of information that pertains to the name Ishtar to the article Inanna that was not mentioned at all in this article prior to the merge. Another reason why I merged the articles is a practical one: I am hoping to bring Inanna up to FA status and, by merging the two articles, I can bring the material from the article Ishtar up to FA as well at the same time, without having to work on two separate articles that deal with essentially the same subject. --Katolophyromai (talk) 12:43, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

 * Still, even Ishtar and Inanna are treated by academic sources as one goddess, they are still belong to Sumerian and Babylonian respectively.
 * Most of all, if you want to merge two pages, you should place on top of the page Ishtar instead of only bringing the topic in Talk:Ishtar without any notice. I concur with User:Jove, "two articles should be restored as separate encyclopedic entries; at least until such time as an aforementioned discussion and community consensus is reached."
 * -- TX55   TALK  05:34, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

As it stands it would seem, noticing both the talk page for Ishtar, as well as the talk page for Inanna, if anything the community consensus currently seem to favor a restoration of Ishtar and Inanna as separate articles. Indeed I can only agree that there should have been a notice of a proposed merger, and a community discussion and consensus prior to merging the two articles of the Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian/ Babylonian Ishtar. What would be the next step in a merge spree? Merging Aphrodite, Venus, Astarte and every goddess associated with planet Venus? Or perhaps a single page for ALL goddesses? Jove (talk) 11:50, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Please see my response at Talk:Inanna. --Katolophyromai (talk) 12:27, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Complaint
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)

Move discussion in progress
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)

title: Talk:Ishtar


text:
Eschrichtius

Eschrichtius is a genus of baleen whale containing two species: the gray whale (E. robustus) and the extinct Akishima whale (E. akishimaensis).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Eschrichtius


text:
Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity

The Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity is the oldest professorship at the University of Cambridge. It was founded initially as a readership by Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII, in 1502. Since its re-endowment at the end of the 20th century, it is now specifically a chair in New Testament and early Christian studies.

There is also a Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford.

List of Lady Margaret's Professors
Dates shown are date of election.

• 1502 John Fisher

• 1504 Thomas Cosyn

• 1506 William Burgoyne

• 1511 Desiderius Erasmus

• 1515 John Fawne

• 1521 Thomas Ashley

• 1532 William Buckmaster

• 1538 John Redman

• 1542 William Skete

• 1544 Wiliam Glyn

• 1549 John Redman

• 1554 Thomas Sedgwick (or Segiswycke)

• 1556 George Bullock

• 1559 Robert Beaumont (or Beamond)

• 1561 Matthew Hutton

• 1563 John Whitgift

• 1567 William Chaderton

• 1569 Thomas Cartwright

• 1570 John Still

• 1573 John Hansome (or Hanson)

• 1574 Peter Baro

• 1596 Thomas Playfere (or Playford)

• 1609 John Davenant

• 1623 Samuel Ward

• 1643 Richard Holdsworth

• 1649 Richard Love

• 1661 Peter Gunning

• 1661 John Pearson

• 1673 Ralph Widdrington

• 1688 Humphrey Gower

• 1711 Robert Jenkin

• 1727 John Newcome

• 1765 Zachary Brooke

• 1788 John Mainwaring

• 1807 Herbert Marsh

• 1839 John James Blunt

• 1855 William Selwyn

• 1875 J. B. Lightfoot

• 1879 Charles Swainson

• 1887 Fenton John Anthony Hort

• 1892 J. Rawson Lumby

• 1895 Arthur James Mason

• 1903 Alexander Kirkpatrick

• 1907 William Ralph Inge

• 1911 James Bethune-Baker

• 1935 F. S. Marsh

• 1951 C. F. D. Moule

• 1976 Morna Hooker

• 1998 Graham N. Stanton

• 2007 Judith M. Lieu

• 2018 George van Kooten

title: Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity


text:
Indigo bunting

The indigo bunting (Passerina cyanea) is a small seed-eating bird in the cardinal family, Cardinalidae. It is migratory, ranging from southern Canada to northern Florida during the breeding season, and from southern Florida to northern South America during the winter. It often migrates by night, using the stars to navigate. Its habitat is farmland, brush areas, and open woodland. The indigo bunting is closely related to the lazuli bunting and interbreeds with the species where their ranges overlap.

The indigo bunting is a small bird, with a length of 11.5 - 13 cm. It displays sexual dimorphism in its coloration; the male is vibrant blue in the summer, with brightly colored plumage during the breeding season to attract a mate. It is brown during the winter months, while the female is brown year-round. Nest-building and incubation are done solely by the female. The diet of the indigo bunting consists primarily of insects during the summer months and seeds during the winter months.

Taxonomy
The indigo bunting is included in the family Cardinalidae, which is made up of passerine birds found in North and South America, and is one of seven birds in the genus Passerina. It was originally described as Tanagra cyanea by Linnaeus in his 18th-century work, Systema Naturae. The current genus name, Passerina, is derived from the Latin term passer for true sparrows and similar small birds, while the species name, cyanea, is Latin for cyan, the color of the male's breeding plumage.

The indigo bunting is a close relative of the lazuli bunting and interbreeds with the species where their ranges overlap, in the Great Plains. They were declared to form a superspecies by the American Ornithologists' Union in 1983. However, according to sequencing of the mitochondrial cytochrome-b gene of members of the genus Passerina, it was determined that the indigo bunting and lazuli bunting are not, in fact, sister taxa. The indigo bunting is the sister of two sister groups, a "blue" (lazuli bunting and blue grosbeak) and a "painted" (rose-bellied bunting, orange-breasted bunting, varied bunting, and painted bunting) clade. This genetic study shows these species diverged between 4.1 and 7.3 million years ago. This timing, which is consistent with fossil evidence, coincides with a late-Miocene cooling, which caused the evolution of a variety of western grassland habitats. Evolving to reduce size may have allowed buntings to exploit grass seeds as a food source.

Description
The indigo bunting is a smallish songbird, around the size of a small sparrow. It measures 11.5 – long, with a wingspan of 18 –. Body mass averages 14.5 g, with a reported range of 11.2 - 21.4 g. During the breeding season, the adult male appears mostly a vibrant cerulean blue. Only the head is indigo. The wings and tail are black with cerulean blue edges. In fall and winter plumage, the male has brown edges to the blue body and head feathers, which overlap to make the bird appear mostly brown. The adult female is brown on the upperparts and lighter brown on the underparts. It has indistinct wing bars and is faintly streaked with darker markings underneath. The immature bird resembles the female in coloring, although a male may have hints of blue on the tail and shoulders and have darker streaks on the underside. The beak is short and conical. In the adult female, the beak is light brown tinged with blue, and in the adult male the upper half is brownish-black while the lower is light blue. The feet and legs are black or gray.

First years and adult males are distinguishable through close observations of the skull and its degree of ossification. Juvenile skulls have a slightly pinkish color that gives under pressure due to its singular layer. Adults instead have a double layer skull, which gives more resistance when applying pressure. First year birds also tend to have a fleshy, yellow gape in the corner of the mouth, apparent in all months except October and November. When comparing males to females that both have brown molt, increased wing length and weight typically indicate a bunting is a male.

As indicated by data collected from Charles H. Blake from his banding experiments in Hillsborough, NC, the Indigo Bunting has a weighted annual survival rate of 0.585. Using his own methods (Blake 1967, p. 5) and a pool of 25 indigo buntings captured and observed, it was determined that approximately two out of twenty-five indigo buntings should live up to six years. Using the calculated annual rate of six-year-old birds obtained (2/25 = 0.08), an annual rate of 0.656 was calculated, 12% higher than the annual rate of 0.585, leading to the 1 out of 25 statistic. The oldest recorded bunting was at least 13 years and 3 months old. However, not much emphasis should be placed on these values since the pool of individuals is small, where any individual can affect the weighted average.

Distribution and habitat
The habitat of the indigo bunting is brushy forest edges, open deciduous woods, second growth woodland, and farmland. Increases in population size have been seen in the event of forest clearings and development of land into farms. The breeding range stretches from southern Canada to Maine, south to northern Florida and eastern Texas, and westward to southern Nevada. The winter range begins in southern Florida and central Mexico and stretches south through the West Indies and Central America to northern South America. It has occurred as a vagrant in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Denmark, Ecuador, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Serbia and the United Kingdom.

Vocalizations
The indigo bunting communicates through vocalizations and visual cues. A sharp chip! call is used by both sexes, and is used as an alarm call if a nest or chick is threatened. A high-pitched, buzzed zeeep is used as a contact call when the indigo bunting is in flight. The song of the male bird is a high-pitched buzzed sweet-sweet chew-chew sweet-sweet, lasting two to four seconds, sung to mark his territory to other males and to attract females. Each male has a single complex song, which he sings while perched on elevated objects, such as posts, wires, and bush-tops. In areas where the ranges of the lazuli bunting and the indigo bunting overlap, the males defend territories from each another.

Migration
Migration takes place in April and May and then again in September and October. Previous research indicates that towards the end of August there is a spike in migration, indicated by a rapid surge of captures in the last ten days of August. Migration activities peak in late September and fall off rapidly as October approaches. Only a small percentage of buntings remain as summer residents instead of migrating (7.2% of banded birds in Burke's observation).

The indigo bunting often migrates during the night, using the stars to navigate. This is not an unusual proposal, for many other birds such as the blackcaps or red-backed shrikes were used to test if birds have orientated migratory behavior or Zugunruhe. Research indicates that indigo buntings placed in funnel cages outside on cloudless autumn nights or in artificial planetariums made more southern directional choices. When introduced to increasingly overcast nights, many bunting's abilities to distinctively make southern directional changes decreased, possibly indicating a negative correlation between Zugunruhe and cloud coverage. When in the artificial planetarium scenario and in the presence of a magnetic field similar to Earth's, birds were unable to orientate themselves in a no-star environment, indicating that past hypotheses supporting that birds use geophysical clues as well may be incorrect.

Indigo buntings do not rely on individual stars or the general brightness of groups of stars, but instead use them as clues in navigation. Prior experiments removing certain constellations and stars (Big Dipper, Cassiopeia or Polaris) from the sky had minimal effect on Zugunruhe. Indigo buntings do use the northern sky to help navigate both in the fall and in the spring. It was thought that the bunting has an internal clock, being able to compensate for the movement of stars. However, temporal compensation for stellar motion is not a part of their migratory methods.

In captivity, since it cannot migrate, it experiences disorientation in April and May and in September and October if it cannot see the stars from its enclosure.

While debate has occurred over the years about how birds migrate near the Gulf of Mexico, indigo buntings migrate to South America by flying both over the Gulf of Mexico and around the Gulf of Mexico, with a majority of buntings choosing the trans-Gulf path. Past evidence indicated that indigo buntings did not have a high enough fat content to travel across the Gulf, but that evidence is misleading since most of those birds supporting that study were immature, not having a high body fat content.

Since indigo buntings and many other birds are at their lightest after mating season, questions arose whether increases in overall weight were attributed to fat or other factors such as water weight, or carbohydrates. Research indicates that most if not all weight gain is a gain in fat content.

Quantitative methods of estimating flight range instead look at metabolic rates of the bunting and how much fat it has to use as fuel. Research indicates that the metabolic rate of a lean 13 g indigo bunting is 0.64 kcal/hour. With an average speed of 20 mph, 5 extra grams of fat (47.5 kcal of energy) extends a bunting's range to 688 mi. 19 g is equivalent to 826 mi. Given that the trip across the Gulf of Mexico from Florida is approximately 600 mi, buntings weighing at least 18 g could make the trip without any stops.

Breeding
These birds are generally monogamous but not always faithful to their partner. In the western part of their range, they often hybridize with the lazuli bunting. Nesting sites are located in dense shrub or a low tree, generally 0.3 – above the ground, but rarely up to 9 m. The nest itself is constructed of leaves, coarse grasses, stems, and strips of bark, lined with soft grass or deer hair and is bound with spider web. It is constructed by the female, who cares for the eggs alone. The clutch consists of one to four eggs, but usually contains three to four. The eggs are white and usually unmarked, though some may be marked with brownish spots, averaging 18.7 x in size. The eggs are incubated for 12 to 13 days and the chicks are altricial at hatching. Chicks fledge 10 to 12 days after hatching. Most pairs raise two broods per year, and the male may feed newly fledged young while the females incubate the next clutch of eggs.

The brown-headed cowbird may parasitize this species. Indigo buntings abandon their nest if a cowbird egg appears before they lay any of their own eggs, but accept the egg after that point. Pairs with parasitized nests have less reproductive success. The bunting chicks hatch, but have lower survival rates as they must compete with the cowbird chick for food.

Diet
The indigo bunting forages for food on the ground or in trees or shrubs. In winter, it often feeds in flocks with other indigo buntings, but is a solitary feeder during the breeding season. During the breeding season, the species eats seeds of grasses and herbs, berries, spiders and insects, including caterpillars, grasshoppers, true bugs, and beetles. The seeds of grasses are the mainstay of its diet during the winter, although buds and insects are eaten when available. The young are fed mainly insects at first, to provide them with protein. The indigo bunting does not drink frequently, generally obtaining sufficient water from its diet.

Predators and parasites
Indigo bunting nests are vulnerable to a variety of climbing and flying predators, including Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), domestic cat (Felis catus), blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata), eastern racer (Coluber constrictor) and raccoon (Procyon lotor). The bird is also susceptible to parasitism by louse flies.

Conservation status
The criteria for a change in conservation status are a decline of more than 30% in ten years or over three generations. The species is classified as being of least concern according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with an estimated range of 5900000 km2 and a population of 28 million individuals. Global population trends have not been quantified, but the species is not believed to approach the thresholds for a population decline warranting an upgrade in conservation status.

title: Indigo bunting