ʿAśtar^um / ʿAthtar^um

Locally worshipped goddess in the western part of inland Ḥaḍramawt during the 1st millennium BCE.

Her only temple, Ḥaḍrān, was discovered in the oasis of Raybūn (site Rb I, building 1), Ḥaḍramawt (Yemen), and completely excavated in 1983, during the first field campaign undertaken by the Soviet-Yemenite multidisciplinary expedition.

The gender of this goddess, as well as the name of her temple, were indisputably defined thanks to the inscribed fragmentary stele, Raybūn-Ḥaḍrān 213. According to the same text, one of the functions of ʿAśtar^um was healing eye diseases. Almost half (44 %) of the authors of 68 votive inscriptions originating from Ḥaḍrān, whose gender can be determined, were women. The similarity of this goddess’ name with that of the god ʿAthtar, who was the father of Syn in the pantheon of Ḥaḍramawt, suggests that they formed a joint archaic androgynous deity in the early pantheon of South Arabia. In any case, it is difficult to assign the function of a morpheme to the ending -m, marking the feminine gender.

The identification of ʿAthtar^um with the Babylonian goddess Ishtar (Robin (ed.) 1997: 148) seems dubious.

Serge Frantsouzoff

References and suggested reading

• Bauer, G.M. Эпиграфика Рейбуна (сезоны 1983-1984 гг., общий обзор) [Epigraphic Documentation of Raybūn (Field Campaigns of 1983-1984, General Survey)], Труды Совестко-йеменской комлексной экспедиции [Works of the Soviet-Yemenite Multidisciplinary Expedition], t. I: 115–116, fig. 2. Moscow: Publishing House “Oriental Literature” of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
• Frantsouzoff, S.A. 2001. Raybūn. Ḥaḍrān, temple de la déesse ʿAthtar^um/ʿAśtar^um, avec une contribution archéologique d’A. Sedov, fasc. A: Les documents, fasc. B: Les planches (Inventaire des inscriptions sudarabiques, t. 5). Paris, Rome: De Boccard, Herder.
• Frantsouzoff, S.A. 2012. К востоку от Адена. Оазис Райбун в I тысячелетии до н.э. (эпиграфические памятники, религиозная жизнь и социальное устройство культового центра древнего Хадрамаута) [East of Aden. Oasis of Raybūn in the 1st Millennium BC (epigraphic documentation, religious life and social structure of a cult center of ancient Hadramawt)]. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Philology, Nestor-Historia.
• Frantsouzoff, S.A. 2014. История Хадрамаута с древнейших времен до конца британского владычества, т. I: История Хадрамаута в эпоху древности [History of Hadramawt from the Earliest Time up to the End of the British Rule, vol. I: History of Hadramawt in Antiquity]. St. Petersburg: Linguistic Society of St. Petersburg.
• Robin, C.J. (ed.) 1997. Yémen, au pays de la reine de Sabaʾ. Exposition présentée à l’Institut du monde arabe du 25 octobre 1997 au 28 février 1998. Paris: Flammarion.

_{Alternate spellings: ʿAthtarum, ‘Athtarum, Athtarum, ʿS³trm}