astarte queen of heaven astrolabe

Goddess Astarte Queen of Heaven Astrolabe Statue

This Goddess Astarte Astrolabe Statue was created from the sculpture work of Paul Borda of Dryad Design. Reflects the natural texture of the original sculpture of Astarte with an Astrolabe in polyresin. A beautiful symbolic decorative element for your home. Astarte is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern Goddess Ashtart or Athtart (Northwest Semitic), a deity closely related to Ishtar (East Semitic), worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity. The name is particularly associated with her worship in the Ancient Levant among the Canaanites and Phoenicians, though she was originally associated with Amorite cities like Ugarit and Emar, as well as Mari and Ebla. She was also celebrated in Egypt, especially during the reign of the Ramessides, following the importation of foreign cults there. Phoenicians introduced her cult in their colonies on the Iberian Peninsula.

Iconographic portrayal of Astarte, very similar to that of Tanit, often depicts her naked and in presence of lions, identified respectively with symbols of sexuality and war. She is also depicted as winged, carrying the solar disk and the crescent moon as a headdress, and with her lions either lying prostrate to her feet or directly under those. Aside from the lion, she’s associated to the dove and the bee. She has also been associated to botanic wildlife like the palm tree and the lotus flower. A particular artistic motif assimilates Astarte to Europa, portraying her as riding a bull that would represent a partner deity. Similarly, after the popularization of her worship in Egypt, it was frequent to associate her to the war chariot of Ra or Horus, as well as a kind of weapon, the crescent axe. Within Iberian culture, it has been proposed that native sculptures like those of Baza, Elche or Cerro de los Santos might represent an Iberized image of Astarte or Tanit.

An Astrolabe instead (Ancient Greek: Astrolabos; Arabic: al-Asturlāb; Persian: Setāreyāb) is an ancient astronomical instrument that was a handheld model of the Universe. Its various functions also make it an elaborate inclinometer and an analogue calculation device capable of working out several kinds of problems in astronomy. In its simplest form it is a metal disc with a pattern of wires, cutouts, and perforations that allows a user to calculate astronomical positions precisely. Historically used by astronomers, it is able to measure the altitude above the horizon of a celestial body, day or night, it can be used to identify stars or planets, to determine local latitude given local time (and vice versa), to survey, or to triangulate. It was used in classical antiquity, the Islamic Golden Age, the European Middle Ages and the Age of Discovery for all these purposes. The astrolabe’s importance comes not only from the early developments into the study of astronomy, but is also effective for determining latitude on land or calm seas.

Although it is less reliable on the heaving deck of a ship in rough seas, the mariner’s astrolabe was developed to solve that problem. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the translation “star-taker” for the English word astrolabe and traces it through medieval Latin to the Greek word astrolabos, from astron “star” and lambanein “to take“. In the medieval Islamic world the Arabic word al-Asturlāb (i.e. astrolabe) was given various etymologies. In Arabic texts, the word is translated as ākhidhu al-Nujūm (star-taker), a direct translation of the Greek word. Al-Biruni quotes and criticises medieval scientist Hamza al-Isfahani who stated: “asturlab is an arabisation of this Persian phrase”, (sitara yab, meaning “taker of the stars“). In medieval Islamic sources, there is also a folk etymology of the word as “lines of lab“, where “Lab” refers to a certain son of Idris (Enoch). Astarte Queen of Heaven Astrolabe Statue measures: 4.5 inches / 11.5 cm x 11.25 inches / 28.5 cm x 13.6 inches / 34.5 cm.