ASTARTE, a Semitic goddess whose name appears in the Bible as Ashtoreth. She is everywhere the great female principle, answering to the Baal of the Canaanites and Phoenicians and to the Dagon of the Philistines. She had temples at Sidon and at Tyre (whence her worship was transplanted to Carthage), and the Philistines probably venerated her at Ascalon (I. Sam. xxxi. I o) . Solomon built a high-place for her at Jerusalem which lasted until the days of King Josiah (I. Kings xi. 5; II. Kings xxiii. 13), and the extent of her cult among the Israelites is proved as much by the numerous biblical references as by the frequent representations of the deity turned up on Palestinian soil. The Moabites formed a compound deity, Ashtar-Chemosh (see MoAB), and the absence of the feminine termination occurs simi larly in the Babylonian and Assyrian prototype Ishtar. The old South Arabian phonetic equivalent `Athtar is, however, a male deity. Another compound, properly of mixed sex, appears in the Aramaean Atargatis (`At[t]ar-`athe), worn down to Derketo, who is specifically associated with sacred pools and fish (Ascalon, Hierapolis-Mabog) . (See ATARGATIS.) As the great nature-goddess, the attributes of fertility and reproduction are characteristically hers, as also the accompany ing immorality which originally, perhaps, was often nothing more than primitive magic. As patroness of the hunt, later identi fication with Artemis was inevitable. Hence the consequent fusion with Aphrodite, Artemis, Diana, Juno and Venus, and the action and reaction of one upon the other in myth and legend. Her star was the planet Venus, and classical writers give her the epithet Caelestis and Urania. Robertson Smith argues that As tarte was originally a sheep-goddess, and points to the interesting use of "Astartes of the flocks" (Deut. vii. 13) to denote the offspring. To nomads, Astarte may well have been a sheep goddess, but this, if her earliest, was not her only type, as is clear from the sacred fish of Atargatis, the doves of Ascalon (and of the Phoenician sanctuary of Eryx), and the gazelle or antelope of the goddess of love (associated also with the Arabian Athtar).