Ishtar is a goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex[1] In the Babylonian pantheon, she "was the divine personification of the planet Venus".[2] Ishtar was above all associated with sexuality: her cult involved sacred prostitution; her holy city Uruk was called the "town of the sacred courtesans"; and she herself was the "courtesan of the gods".[2] Ishtar had many lovers.
Mesopotamian eight-pointed star symbol of the goddess Ishtar (Inana/Inanna), representing the planet Venus as morning or evening star. 
The Goddess Ishtar
"The Lightbringer". Babylonian High-Mother-Goddess. Like Inanna, she is the goddess of fertility, love and war. Her cult was the most important one in ancient Babylon and Ishtar became under various names the most important Goddess of the Near-East and Western Asia.
The Ishtar Gate is one of the most dramatic finds from ancient Babylonia. Covered with dragons and bulls, Nebuchadnezzar dedicated the huge, ceremonial gate to the goddess Ishtar. It was the main entrance to the inner streets and temples of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar II was known for awesome building projects such as the restored temple of Marduk and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
enormous burnt-brick entryway located over the main thoroughfare in the ancient city of Babylon (now in Iraq). Built about 575 bc, it became the eighth fortified gate in the city. The Ishtar Gate was more than 38 feet (12 metres) high and was decorated with glazed brick reliefs, in tiers, of dragons and young bulls. The gate itself was a double one, and on its south side was a vast antechamber. Through the gatehouse ran a stone- and brick-paved avenue, called the Processional Way, that has been traced over a length of more than half a mile.
The Ishtar Gate at Babylon Reconstruction Glazed Brick Total Height–47 Feet, Width-32 Feet Neo-Babylonian 7th–6th Centuries BC Dedicator: Nebuchadnezzar II Language: Akkadian Date of Excavation: 1899-1914 Staatliche Museen , Berlin. |
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 The Ishtar Festivals were symbolical of Ishtar as the goddess of love or generation. As the daughter of Sin, the moon god, she was the Mother Goddess who presided over child birth; and women, in her honor, sacrificed their virginity on the feast day or became temple prostitutes, their earnings being a source of revenue for the temple priests and servants.
We learn about these Temple Prostitutes from The Interpreter's Dictionary of The Bible, Volume 3, pages 933-934:
a. The roll of the sacred prostitute in the fertility cult. The prostitute who was an official of the cult in ancient Palestine and nearby lands of biblical times exercised an important function. This religion was predicated upon the belief that the processes of nature were controlled by the relations between gods and goddesses. Projecting their understanding of their own sexual activities, the worshipers of these deities, through the use of imitative magic, engaged in sexual intercourse with devotees of the shrine, in the belief that this would encourage the gods and goddesses to do likewise. Only by sexual relations among the deities could man's desire for increase in herds and fields, as well as in his own family, be realized. In Palestine the gods Baal and Asherah were especially prominent (see BAAL; ASHERAH; FERTILITY CULTS). These competed with Yahweh the God of Israel and, in some cases, may have produced hybrid Yahweh-Baal cults. Attached to the shrines of these cults were priests as well as prostitutes, both male and female. Their chief service was sexual in nature__the offering of their bodies for ritual purposes.
Sexual relations for ritual purposes was the ceremony for the Fertility Cults. The Interpreter's Dictionary, Volume 2, page 265 says:
FERTILITY CULTS.
The oldest common feature of the religions of the ancient Near East was the worship of a great mother-goddess, the personification of fertility. Associated with her, usually as a consort, was a young god who died and came to life again, like the vegetation which quickly withers but blooms again. The manner of the young god's demise was variously conceived in the myths: he was slain by another god, by wild animals, by reapers, by self-emasculation, by burning, by drowning. In some variations of the theme, he simply absconded. His absence produced infertility of the earth, of man, and of beast. His consort mourned and searched for him. His return brought renewed fertility and rejoicing.
In Mesopotamia the divine couple appear as Ishtar and Tammuz, in Egypt as Isis and Osiris. Later in Asia Minor, the Magna Mater is Cybele and her young lover is Attis. In Syria in the second millennium b.c., as seen in the Ugaritic myths, the dying and rising god is Baal-Hadad, who is slain by Mot (Death) and mourned and avenged by his sister/consort, the violent virgin Anath. In the Ugaritic myths there is some confusion in the roles of the goddesses. The great mother-goddess Asherah, the wife of the senescent chief god El, seems on the way to becoming the consort of the rising young god Baal, with whom we find her associated in the O.T.Ashtarte also appears in the Ugaritic myths, but she has a minor and undistinguished role.
The O.T. furnishes abundant evidence as to the character of the religion of the land into which the Israelites came. Fertility rites were practiced at the numerous shrines which dotted the land, as well as at the major sanctuaries. The Israelites absorbed the Canaanite ways and learned to identify their god with Baal, whose rains brought fertility to the land. A characteristic feature of the fertility cult was sacral sexual intercourse by priests and priestesses and other specially consecrated persons, sacred prostitutes of both sexes, intended to emulate and stimulate the deities who bestowed fertility. The agricultural cult stressed the sacrifice or common meal in which the gods, priests, and people partook. Wine was consumed in great quantity in thanksgiving to Baal for the fertility of the vineyards. The wine also helped induce ecstatic frenzy, which was climaxed by self-laceration, and sometimes even by self-emasculation. Child-sacrifice was also a feature of the rites. It was not simply a cult of wine, women, and song, but a matter of life and death in which the dearest things of life, and life itself, were offered to ensure the ongoing of life.
ISHTAR
 (pronounced EASTER) of Assyria was worshiped in Pagan Antiquity during her spring festival! Collier's Encyclopedia, 1980, Volume 15, page 748, gives us this information:
Ishtar, goddess of love and war, the most important goddess of the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon. Her name in Sumerian is Inanna (lady of heaven). She was sister of the sun god Shamash and daughter of the moon god Sin. Ishtar was equated with the planet Venus. Her symbol was a star inscribed in a circle. As goddess of war, she was often represented sitting upon a lion. As goddess of physical love, she was patron of the temple prostitutes. She was also considered the merciful mother who intercedes with the gods on behalf of her worshipers. Throughout Mesopotamian history she was worshiped under various names in many cities; one of the chief centers of her cult was Uruk.
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