Note 69 — d'INDY

It has been said that the concluding passage of this version (in Mr. Apthorp's prose translation the last four lines) is not in the original Babylonian poem, but is an arbitrary addition by the French translator. Moreover, the French version is credited to the Gilgamesh epic (the Assyrio-Babylonian epic of which Izdubar, or Gilgamesh, is the hero), with which, it has been pointed out, the story of Istar's descent into Hades has nothing to do. Istar (or Ishtar) was the chief deity of the Babylonians and Assyrians. At first a merely local deity, she ultimately came to be regarded as the personification of fertility (both of the soil and of human and animal life) and of war. She corresponded in general to the Ashtoreth (Astarte) of the Syrio-Canaanites, save that she was conceived as ruling the planet Venus, rather than the moon, over which Ashtoreth held sway. Being the representative of the principle of fertility, Istar was regarded also as the goddess of sexual love.