Around this time of year it is common to see people sharing memes claiming that Easter is really an ancient pre-Christian pagan holiday that was hijacked by Christians. I wrote an article all the way back in April 2017 debunking some of the more general claims that you often hear about various Easter traditions such as the Easter bunny and painting Easter eggs. This year, though, I want to specifically debunk the popular claim that Easter originated as a festival of the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.
This is a claim that has circulated ever since the middle of the nineteenth century. Although it was originally only popular among the most die-hard of Protestant fundamentalists, it has, unfortunately, recently become very popular among atheists. It is, quite frankly, a completely ridiculous claim to anyone who knows anything about ancient Mesopotamian religion, but this sadly has not deterred the claim’s popularity.
In reality Easter is—and has always been—a Christian holiday. The only thing about the holiday that is verifiably of ancient pagan origin is the holiday’s name in English, but even the name doesn’t come from Ishtar, but rather from a totally different goddess worshipped half a world away from Mesopotamia.
A review of the misconception about Easter having originally been a festival of Ishtar
The notion that Easter was originally a festival in honor of the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar has been promoted online in recent years by a number of prominent atheist groups and organizations. Most notably, on 28 March 2013, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS) shared the following image on Facebook:
Literally every single claim made here is wrong or oversimplified. In fact, what the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is promoting here is neither reasonable nor scientific, but rather a totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that originated with an extremely die-hard fundamentalist Protestant pamphleteer in the nineteenth century.
Fortunately, I happen to be extremely well equipped to debunk the claims presented in this image because I have been studying ancient Mesopotamian religion for roughly the past seven years or so and I am the primary author of many of the articles on Wikipedia about ancient Mesopotamian deities, including the article “Inanna,” which I wrote mostly on my own and personally brought up to “Good Article” status in January 2018.
I will break down the caption from the image above into its constituent parts and debunk each part one by one, starting at the very beginning.
“This is Ishtar.”
The Old Babylonian terra-cotta relief shown in the image is the so-called “Queen of Night Relief,” also known as the “Burney Relief” after the last name of one of its previous owners. It most likely dates to sometime roughly between c. 1800 and c. 1750 BC. It was produced somewhere in southern Mesopotamia, although the exact location where it was made is unclear. Scholars have guessed that it may have been made in the city of Ur, the city of Nippur, or the city of Isin, but no one really knows.
The relief, unfortunately, has a very murky provenance. It is first attested in the possession of a Syrian antiquities dealer in the 1920s. The antiquities dealer most likely procured the relief somewhere in southern Iraq, although it is unclear exactly where he found it. The relief is now on permanent display in the British Museum in London.
When it was first discovered, the figure depicted in the relief was identified as “Lilith,” a demoness mentioned in the Book of Isaiah 34:13–15. Today, though, this identification is widely rejected among scholars and it is generally agreed that the relief depicts either the goddess Ishtar or Ishtar’s older sister Ereshkigal, the queen of the Underworld.
The reason why there is debate over whether the relief depicts Ishtar or Ereshkigal is because the iconography is mostly consistent with the known iconography Ishtar, but there have been suggestions that Ishtar and Ereshkigal, being sisters, might have shared certain iconographical features. We do not have any verifiable depictions of Ereshkigal to compare the relief to, meaning it is impossible to rule out the possibility that it could depict Ereshkigal.
The Burney Relief was originally painted, but only extremely minute traces of the original pigments have survived. We know from surviving traces of pigment that the goddess’s skin was originally red and that the background behind her was originally black. Scholars also believe based on similar images that have survived that the goddess’s crown, necklace, and bracelets as well as the rod-and-ring symbols in her hands were all originally gold.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Burney Relief
ABOVE: Image from Wikimedia Commons showing the approximate original color scheme of the Burney Relief
“Pronounced ‘Easter’”
Ishtar’s name is not, in fact, pronounced “Easter.” It is pronounced exactly how it is spelled: /ˈɪʃtɑːr/. The name Ishtar is a transliteration of the name 𒀭𒈹 (iš-tar) in ancient cuneiform. We don’t know for certain exactly how this name was pronounced in ancient times, but, as far as we can tell, it was pronounced in Akkadian fairly close to the same way Ishtar’s name is pronounced in English. In any case, it would make very little sense for scholars to transliterate the name into Latin characters in a way that the name was not meant to be pronounced.
“Easter was originally the celebration of Ishtar…”
Easter has never been a celebration of Ishtar. Our earliest evidence for the celebration of Easter as a holiday distinct from the Jewish holiday of Passover comes from Christian texts written in around the middle of the second century AD, which all refer to Easter as a Christian holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.
Of course, these early Christian sources weren’t written in English, so they don’t call the holiday “Easter”; instead, the holiday was originally known in Greek as Πάσχα (Páscha) and in Latin as Pascha. The name Pascha is derived from the Aramaic word פַּסְחָא (Pasḥā), meaning “Passover.”
For the first five hundred years or so of Christian history, the holiday of Easter was only known by the name Pascha. Even today, the holiday is known by some variant of the name Pascha in nearly every language. The word for “Easter” in every single Romance language, in every single Celtic language, and in most Germanic languages is some form of Pascha. English and German are somewhat aberrations in this regard, since the word for Easter in English is Easter and the word in German is Ostern.
Early Christians clearly saw Pascha as a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. The early Christian bishop Meliton of Sardis, who died sometime around 180 AD, wrote a homily in Greek titled “On the Pascha” in which he discusses the Pascha as a celebration of Jesus’s resurrection. We have no record of anyone in ancient times having ever associated the Pascha with Ishtar.
ABOVE: Here is a chart I made listing the words for “Easter” in a bunch of different European languages. Words derived from Greek Πάσχα are shown in red. Notice that English and German are the only languages on the list where the primary word for “Easter” does not come from Πάσχα.
The English word Easter is totally etymologically unrelated to Ishtar’s name. The word Easter actually comes from the name of the ancient Northumbrian goddess Ēostre, whose worship in antiquity is attested by a single extremely brief mention in the treatise De Temporum Ratione (“On the Reckoning of Time”), written in Latin in around 725 AD by the English monk Bede the Venerable (lived c. 673 – 735 AD).
In chapter fifteen of the treatise, Bede claims that the name of the English month Ēosturmōnaþ came from a pagan goddess named Ēostre who had a festival during that month in olden times. In the original Latin, Bede says:
“Eostur-monath, qui nunc Paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a Dea illorum quæ Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit: a cuius nomine nunc Paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquæ observationis vocabulo gaudia novæ solemnitatis vocantes.”
Translated into Modern English by Faith Wallis, this passage reads as follows:
“Ēosturmōnaþ has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ēostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.”
This is the only surviving mention of the goddess Ēostre in any surviving ancient text. There are no inscriptions with her name, no other texts that mention her, and no known surviving temples to her. This one passage from Bede is the only concrete evidence we have that Ēostre was ever worshipped.
ABOVE: Illustration of the English writer Bede the Venerable from a medieval manuscript copy of his book The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bede’s treatise De Temporum Ratione contains the only known mention of the English goddess Ēostre.
It has long been debated among scholars whether Ēostre was really worshipped at all, with some scholars arguing that Bede might have just made her up to explain where the name Ēosturmōnaþ came from. The theory that Bede simply made Ēostre up out of thin air, though, is now considered unlikely for several reasons.
For one thing, the idea that Bede would just make up a goddess out of thin air seems unlikely given Bede’s character. Bede was a very devout Christian who intentionally tried to avoid giving too much information about traditional English polytheism because he didn’t want to inadvertently promote it. It would make very little sense for him to make up a goddess without any evidence just to explain an unusual name.
Furthermore, in 1958, a group of archaeologists discovered a large number of Romano-German votive offerings at a site near Morken-Harff in North-Rhine Westphalia dated to the late second century AD bearing inscriptions stating that they were dedicated to a group of female deities known as the matronae Austriahenae or “Austriahen matrons.” This name seems to be etymologically related to the Old English name Ēostre.
Evidence from the field of historical linguistics also seems to suggest that Ēostre was, in fact, a goddess who was really worshipped in pre-Christian times and that Bede did not just make her up. Namely, Ēostre’s name appears to be derived from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word *Austrǭ, which is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root word *h₂éwsōs, meaning “dawn.”
There is reasonably strong evidence from comparative mythology that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had a dawn goddess named *H₂éwsōs. Notably, the name of the Greek dawn goddess Ἠώς (Ēṓs), the Roman dawn goddess Aurora, the Vedic dawn goddess Uṣás, the Lithuanian dawn goddess Aušrinė, and the Latvian dawn god Auseklis are all reflexes of *H₂éwsōs. This strongly suggests that, like her cognates in other Indo-European cultures, Ēostre was probably some kind of dawn goddess.
ABOVE: Illustration from 1884 by the German illustrator Johannes Gehrts, representing the goddess Ēostre as the artist imagined her
Unfortunately for those who want to believe that Easter was originally a festival of Ishtar, this idea is wrong on several levels. For one thing, we have no reason to think that Ēostre had any relation to Ishtar. Indeed, the further you trace the name Easter back etymologically, the less it sounds like Ishtar. Ēostre sounds less like Ishtar than Easter; *Austrǭ sounds less like Ishtar than Ēostre; and *H₂éwsōs sounds less like Ishtar than *Austrǭ.
It is the most recent form of the name that sounds the most like Ishtar, while the oldest form of the name sounds nothing at all like Ishtar. This is the exact opposite of the trend we would expect to see if the word Easter were really derived from the name Ishtar. All the evidence suggests that the name Easter and the name Ishtar simply happen to sound vaguely similar by pure coincidence.
Now, some people have tried to argue that many of our modern Easter traditions may be derived from ancient Germanic customs associated with a holiday in honor of the goddess Ēostre. This argument is more tenable than the argument that Easter was originally a festival of Ishtar. Unfortunately, even this argument falls flat on its face, since, as I will discuss in a moment, most modern Easter traditions are only attested fairly recently and are almost certainly not old enough to be traced back to Ēostre.
In the meantime, let’s get back to debunking that image.
“…the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess…”
Ishtar was indeed worshipped by both the Assyrians and the Babylonians, but they were not the only peoples who worshipped her. To understand how diverse Ishtar’s worshippers were, we need to look a little bit at the history of her cult. Originally, in the third millennium BC, the ancient Sumerians had a goddess named Inanna, who seems to have originally been a somewhat less prominent deity in the Sumerian pantheon.
After the Akkadian king Sargon (ruled c. 2334 – c. 2284 BC) conquered all of Sumer, he syncretized the Akkadian goddess Ishtar with the Sumerian goddess Inanna. Sargon’s daughter Enheduanna wrote many poems in Sumerian about Inanna, identifying her with Ishtar. Syncretizing deities in this fashion was extremely common in the ancient world; as I discuss in this article I wrote in September 2019, it is precisely what the ancient Greeks and Romans did with their gods around two thousand years later.
Eventually, over time, Inanna and Ishtar became seen as the same goddess. The name Ishtar became seen as nothing more than the Akkadian translation of the name Inanna. It was after this point that Ishtar’s cult really took off in Mesopotamia. Ishtar was worshipped by all later Mesopotamian peoples, including the later Akkadians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians.
The West Semitic peoples of Canaan, including the Phoenicians, identified Ishtar with their own goddess Ashtart. Ishtar was also worshipped by the Hittites in Anatolia, who identified her as the sister of their native storm god Teshub. The Phoenicians even introduced a form of Ashtart to the Greeks, who eventually became the Greek goddess Aphrodite.
“…of fertility and sex.”
Ishtar was undoubtedly closely associated with fertility and sex. These are two of her most important attributes in ancient Mesopotamian sources. For instance, in a Sumerian balbale to Inanna known as “Dumuzid-Inana P” (the Sumerian text of which can be found here) the goddess herself is portrayed giving the following speech, translated here by the Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer and edited by the poet and folklorist Diane Wolkstein:
“My vulva, the horn,
The Boat of Heaven,
Is full of eagerness like the young moon.
My untilled land lies fallow.
As for me, Inanna,
Who will plow my vulva?
Who will plow my high field?
Who will plow my wet ground?
As for me, the young woman,
Who will plow my vulva?
Who will station the ox there?
Who will plow my vulva?[…]
Make your milk sweet and thick, my bridegroom.
My shepherd, I will drink your fresh milk.
Wild bull, Dumuzi, make your milk sweet and thick.
I will drink your fresh milk.
Let the milk of the goat flow in my sheepfold.
Fill my holy churn with honey cheese.
Lord Dumuzi, I will drink your fresh milk.”
In addition to sexually explicit poetry about Ishtar, we also have a large number of surviving artistic representations of her in her role as the goddess of sex. In these depictions, she is usually shown naked, with sexual characteristic being represented in a prominent manner.
The Burney Relief is probably an example of this style of iconography, but we have many other similar surviving examples. For instance, a number of figurines from the city of Susa dating to the end of the second millennium BC depict a nude goddess figure, probably Ishtar, holding up her own breasts.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a figurine from the city of Susa dating to between c. 1300 and c. 1100 BC representing a nude goddess, probably Ishtar, clutching her breasts
Ishtar was, however, also associated with a wide array of other areas of human endeavor. Most notably, Ishtar was also closely associated with warfare. Below is a description of Ishtar from a hymn written in the Sumerian language by Sargon’s daughter Enheduanna. Here, Ishtar is referred to by her Sumerian name Inanna. There are a few lacunae in the text, but it should be readable. The passage is given as it is translated in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL):
“She stirs confusion and chaos against those who are disobedient to her, speeding carnage and inciting the devastating flood, clothed in terrifying radiance. It is her game to speed conflict and battle, untiring, strapping on her sandals. Clothed (?) in a furious storm, a whirlwind, she …… the garment of ladyship. When she touches …… there is despair, a south wind which has covered ……. Inana sits on harnessed (?) lions, she cuts to pieces him who shows no respect. A leopard of the hills, entering (?) the roads, raging (?), ……, the mistress is a great bull trusting in its strength; no one dare turn against her. ……, the foremost among the Great Princes, a pitfall for the disobedient, a trap for the evil, a …… for the hostile, wherever she casts her venom ……. Her wrath is ……, a devastating flood which no one can withstand.”
We have a number of surviving depictions of Ishtar showing her in her role as a warrior goddess. For instance, a rather famous Akkadian cylinder seal dated to between c. 2334 and c. 2154 BC depicts Ishtar as a winged goddess wearing a crown, with weapons sticking out from behind her back, wielding what appears to be some kind of weapon, perhaps a scythe, in her left hand while clutching a leash in her right hand with a fierce, roaring lion.
Her right leg is shown resting on the lion’s back to show its absolute submission to her supreme authority. An attendant is shown paying obeisance to her with hands raised in a gesture of apparent submission.
ABOVE: Impression from an ancient Akkadian cylinder seal dating to between c. 2334 and c. 2154 BC, depicting the goddess Ishtar wielding a weapon while resting her foot on the back of a roaring lion, which she holds on a leash
In addition to being associated with love and warfare, Ishtar also had a role as an enforcer of justice. It was believed that Ishtar’s twin brother was the sun-god Shamash (known in Sumerian as Utu), who was particularly associated with laws and morality. Many of Ishtar’s own myths deal with her enforcing justice against mortals who had committed transgressions.
Ishtar also had a very important political role. In ancient Mesopotamian texts, Ishtar is constantly described as bestowing favors upon the king. In many Sumerian literary texts, Inanna is described as literally having sexual relations with the king and thereby conferring upon him the right to rule with divine favor.
It was once thought among scholars that these texts were evidence of a ritual in which the king actually had real-life ritualized sexual intercourse with Ishtar’s main priestess, who was supposed to take on the role of the goddess herself. This interpretation has now been almost universally rejected among scholars, who now mostly see the sexual relationship between the king and Ishtar as a literary construct.
Especially in texts from the Neo-Assyrian Period (lasted 911 – 609 BC), Ishtar is described as protecting the king and guarding his “life.” Kings often claimed that they had been given the right to rule by other deities as well. For instance, Sargon also claimed that An was responsible for giving him the right to rule in addition to Ishtar. Nonetheless, Ishtar was one of the more prominent deities from whom kings claimed to have received their authority and her relationship with the king is always portrayed as a special one.
ABOVE: Depiction of the Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash, who was regarded as Ishtar’s twin brother, from the Tablet of Shamash, dating to between c. 888 and c. 855 BC
Unfortunately, Ishtar’s many other important roles aside from her role as a goddess of sex have been frequently ignored in modern culture and scholarship, partly because many people today are not entirely comfortable with the idea of a goddess associated with both very masculine attributes such as war and kingship and very feminine attributes such as love and beauty. Thus, people have a tendency to reduce Ishtar to merely a goddess of sex. Louise M. Pryke notes on pages 23 through 24 of the introduction to her scholarly monograph Ishtar, published by Routledge in 2017:
“Ishtar’s modern image has been frequently obscured through the influence of historiographical biases. As noted above, the goddess’ sexuality has dominated her historical image, especially in regard to her claimed association with sacred prostitution. The association of the sacred prostitution theory with the goddess in scholarly works has led to a distorted emphasis on the economic value of Ishtar’s sexual competency, in the place of considering its worth in deeper and more symbolic terms.”
“This book shifts the balance away from these historiographical traditions, towards the purpose of providing a more complex image of the world’s first goddess of love. Rather than focusing exhaustively on sexuality, Ishtar’s broader connections to love and social connectedness are explored in detail, along with the deity’s role in maintaining universal order, the use of her voice, and connections to death and vengeance. Through broadening the perspective of the goddess in this book, the path for future studies will ideally become more clear.”
Part of what makes Ishtar such a fascinating figure to study is the extraordinarily complex and ever-changing nature of her identity. She embodied a wide array of seemingly contradictory aspects while still maintaining a general character that is overall fairly consistent. Her very nature is in itself a sort of contradiction.
To give you a sense of how complex a figure Ishtar is, it is worth noting that she wasn’t even always female; sometimes she could apparently become male, since, in some texts, she is described as becoming a bearded man. Meanwhile, Ishtar was believed to not only have the power to change her own sex, but also the ability to change the sexes of mortals. In the poem Erra and Ishum, for instance, Ishtar is described as transforming men into women.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a relief carving dating to between c. 1900 and c. 1600 BC, showing Ishtar standing on the back of a lion, holding a scythe and a bow
“Her symbols (like the egg and the bunny) were and still are fertility and sex symbols (or did you actually thinks eggs and bunnies had anything to do with the resurrection?).”
Ishtar was never closely associated with eggs or rabbits. Instead, Ishtar’s primary symbols in ancient Mesopotamia were the eight-pointed star and the rosette and the animals she was most closely associated with were the lion and the dove.
The eight-pointed star appears in works of Mesopotamian artwork from the Neolithic through the Neo-Babylonian Period and beyond. It was associated with the planet Venus at least as early as the Old Babylonian Period (lasted c. 1830 – c. 1531 BC), although it was probably associated with it long before this. Because Ishtar was associated with the planet Venus, the eight-pointed star became her symbol.
There are reports that, in later times, slaves in Ishtar’s temples were sometimes branded with the mark of the eight-pointed star to show they belonged to the goddess. Even later, in some works of Greek art from the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 31 BC), the eight-pointed star is used as a symbol of Aphrodite Ourania, who was identified with Ishtar. For instance, a Makedonian coin from the city Ouranopolis dated to c. 300 BC shows an eight-pointed star and a crescent moon on the obverse and Aphrodite Ourania on the reverse.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a twelfth-century BC Babylonian kudurru, or boundary stone, depicting (from left to right in the upper register) the eight-pointed star of Ishtar, the crescent moon of Suen, and the sun disk of Shamash
ABOVE: Makedonian coin minted in the city of Ouranopolis dating to c. 300 BC depicting an eight-pointed star and a crescent moon on the obverse and Aphrodite Ourania on the reverse
The rosette is another symbol that is often associated with Ishtar in works of ancient Mesopotamian art. For instance, the temple of Ishtar at Aššur was decorated with a large number of rosettes. The Assyriologists Jeremy Black and Anthony Green state on pages 156 through 157 of their book Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: “…it is possible that in the Neo-Assyrian Period the rosette occasionally replaced the star as her [i.e. Ishtar’s] symbol. The evidence, however, is unclear.”
As I noted above, Ishtar is often associated with lions in ancient Sumerian and Akkadian art with a lion. A chlorite bowl excavated by archaeologists from the temple of Inanna in the Sumerian city-state of Nippur, dating to before the time of the Akkadian conquest, depicts a lion fighting a serpent with the inscription “Inanna and the Serpent” in Sumerian cuneiform. This suggests that Inanna herself was sometimes represented in the form of a lion.
In art from the Akkadian Period (lasted c. 2334 – c. 2154 BC), Ishtar is especially closely associated with lions. For instance, in that Akkadian cylinder seal I showed earlier, Ishtar is portrayed bearing a lion on a leash with her right foot resting on the lion’s back. The association of Ishtar with lions continued into later periods as well. In the Burney Relief, the goddess—either Ishtar or Ereshkigal—is shown standing on the backs of a pair of lions.
Lions are also notably depicted on the famed Ishtar Gate from the city of Babylon, which was constructed sometime around 575 BC under the orders of King Nebuchadnezzar II (ruled c. 605 – c. 562 BC) of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a lion from the Ishtar Gate, which was constructed in around 575 BC under the orders of Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire
Ishtar and bunnies?
I can find absolutely no evidence that the ancient Mesopotamians ever associated Ishtar with rabbits in any way—and, believe me, I’ve looked! Honestly, the closest thing I can find to a legitimate connection between Ishtar and rabbits is the fact that ancient Greek authors associated rabbits with fertility and rabbits were sometimes used in ancient Greece as gifts between lovers.
As a result of this, the ancient Greeks seems to have occasionally associated rabbits with their goddess Aphrodite, who originated as a form of Ishtar introduced to Greece by the Phoenicians. This is a very convoluted connection, though, and rabbits weren’t ever one of Aphrodite’s main symbols.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of an Attic red-figure kylix painted by Makron dating to c. 480 BC depicting a man giving a rabbit as a gift to his adolescent boyfriend, found in the city of Vulci in Etruria
Some proponents of the idea that Easter was originally a festival in honor of Ishtar have shared images like the one shown below of an ancient artifact showing a female figure with a giant bunny rabbit, claiming that this artifact is ancient Mesopotamian and that it depicts Ishtar with a rabbit.
In reality, however, the artifact shown in these images is not Mesopotamian at all and it has absolutely nothing to do with Ishtar or Easter. The artifact doesn’t even come from the same continent of Ishtar, since it actually comes from central America. It is, in fact, a Maya whistle dated to the Late Classic Period (lasted c. 550 – c. 830 AD) depicting the Maya moon goddess with her rabbit. The Maya believed that the moon looked like it had a rabbit on it, so they associated rabbits with their moon goddess.
In other words, the whistle has nothing to do with Ishtar, nothing to do with Mesopotamia, nothing to do with Christianity, and certainly nothing to do with Easter; it just happens to depict a goddess with a rabbit.
ABOVE: Photograph of a Maya whistle dated to the Late Classic Period (lasted c. 550 – c. 830 AD) showing the Maya moon goddess with a giant rabbit. This artifact has absolutely nothing to do with Ishtar, Mesopotamia, Christianity, or Easter.
The association between Easter and rabbits is actually a very recent phenomenon. The earliest known reference to the Easter bunny comes from the treatise De Ovis Paschalibus, written by the German physician and botanist Georg Franck von Franckenau (lived 1643 – 1704) and published in 1682. In this treatise, von Franckenau briefly mentions the “Osterhase,” or “Easter Hare,” who, according to German folklore, was said to hide Easter eggs for children to find.
Ishtar, however, was never worshipped in Germany. Also, this reference comes from over a thousand years after Ishtar had ceased to be widely worshipped. There may have been a few people in some remote parts of Upper Mesopotamia who were still worshipping Ishtar in some form in von Franckenau’s day, but those people certainly were not known in Germany.
Furthermore, there were many other animals that were said to bring eggs to children around Eastertime during the Early Modern Period, including and Easter Fox and an Easter Stork. It has only been over the course of the past two centuries that the animal that brings eggs to children on Easter has become standardized as a rabbit.
ABOVE: Postcard from 1907 showing a rabbit with the words “Loving Easter Greeting”
Ishtar and Easter eggs?
Ishtar was not normally associated with eggs in ancient Mesopotamia. There is one notable myth in which Ishtar is associated with an egg, but it is extremely obscure and only attested in a single very late Roman source.
The ancient Romans identified their goddess Venus with Ishtar. In around the second century AD or thereabouts—at a time when the Christian holiday of Pascha was already being celebrated—an anonymous Roman author known to scholars as “Pseudo-Hyginus” wrote a mythographic composition in Latin known as the Fabulae, which preserves a large number of unusual and obscure myths not attested in other sources. One of these myths is an alternative Syrian version of the story of the birth of “Venus.” Pseudo-Hyginus’s Fabulae 197 reads as follows, as translated by R. Scott Smith:
“It is said that an egg of remarkable size once fell from the sky into the Euphrates River and that the fish pushed it out onto the bank. Doves came and alighted upon the egg, and after it grew warm, it hatched. Out came Venus [i.e. Ishtar], who afterward was called the Syrian Goddess. Since she was far more just and upright than the rest of the gods, Jupiter gave her choice, and she had the fish raised into the stars. Because of this the Syrians consider fish and doves to be gods and do not eat them.”
The story told here by Pseudo-Hyginus is fascinating, but there are serious problems with any attempt to argue that this is the source of our modern Easter egg tradition. For one thing, this brief passage from Pseudo-Hyginus’s Fabulae is the only place in all of ancient literature in which this highly unusual myth is ever attested. This strongly suggests that this story was probably not very widely known in the ancient world.
For another thing, apart from the fact that this story involves eggs, there is absolutely nothing in the text to tie it to Easter or to the modern tradition of painting Easter eggs. In this passage, Pseudo-Hyginus mentions nothing about any springtime festival, nor does he say anything at all about any tradition of painting eggs; all he says is that some people thought the Syrian form of Venus had been born from an egg.
ABOVE: First-century AD Roman fresco from the House of Venus in Pompeii, showing a fairly conventional version of the story of the birth of Venus from the sea. Pseudo-Hyginus records a more anomalous Syrian version of the story in which Venus is born from a giant egg that fell in the river Euphrates.
Lots of sources online, including the Wikipedia article on Easter eggs, incorrectly claim that the tradition of painting Easter eggs originated among Christians in ancient Mesopotamia. This notion is ultimately based on a single passage from the book De Ludis Orientalibus (“On Eastern Games“) by Thomas Hyde, published in 1694. In the book, Hyde describes how there was a custom among Christians in Mesopotamia that involved painting eggs red during the time around Easter in commemoration of the blood shed by Jesus on the cross.
Because Hyde uses the name “Mesopotamia,” which many people today associate with ancient Mesopotamia, many people have mistakenly come to believe that Hyde was describing an extremely ancient custom. In reality, Hyde was just using the name “Mesopotamia” to refer to the region of Iraq. The custom Hyde describes is not an ancient one, but rather a contemporary one that was practiced in his own time. Hyde never suggests that this practice existed in Mesopotamia in antiquity.
Most scholars believe that the association of eggs with Easter actually arose in western Europe during the High Middle Ages (lasted c. 800 – c. 1250 AD) as a result of the fact that, at the time, Catholic Christians were forbidden from eating eggs during Lent. Thus, Easter was the first time after Lent when Catholics were allowed to eat eggs.
On account of this fact, Catholics in western Europe came to associate eggs with Easter. Later on, the custom arose of painting eggs red during Lent to commemorate the blood of Christ shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a traditional Greek Orthodox Paschal egg, painted red and decorated with the sign of the cross
“After Constantine decided to Christianize the Empire, Easter was changed to represent Jesus.”
Easter was always about Jesus; it was never about Ishtar.
Furthermore, Constantine I’s role in converting the Roman Empire to Christianity is actually often wildly overstated. Constantine legalized Christianity in February 313 AD with the so-called “Edict of Milan.” He subsequently promoted many Christians to important positions in the government and included Christians among his advisors. He built churches to the Christian God and tried to appeal to Christians for support.
Constantine I’s support for Christianity is rightly seen as having played a very important role in facilitating the Roman Empire’s conversion to Christianity. There were a lot of things Constantine I did not do, though. For one thing, he never made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, he never tried to outlaw traditional Greco-Roman religious practices, and he never forced anyone to convert to Christianity. As a matter of fact, Constantine I himself never even officially converted to Christianity until he was literally on his deathbed.
There is a popular misconception that Constantine I was the one who decided which books would be included in the New Testament canon. In reality, as I discuss in this article I wrote in August 2019, most of the New Testament canon had already been decided by the late second century AD. The so-called “Muratorian canon,” a list from the late second century AD of the books that were included in the New Testament, includes nearly all the books that are still considered part of the canonical New Testament by Christians today and only includes two works that are no longer considered canonical.
ABOVE: Photograph of the text of the Muratorian canon
Also, the surviving writings of the Church Father Origenes of Alexandria (lived c. 184 – c. 253 AD), who was an extraordinarily prolific writer, reveal that, for the most part, he was working with basically the same New Testament canon that Christians today are working with. Origenes died before Constantine I was even born, so, clearly, Origenes’s conception of the canon couldn’t have been influenced by Constantine.
Now, there were still some lingering questions about the canonicity of certain works in Constantine I’s lifetime. For instance, in the fourth century, there was still considerable debate over the canonicity of the Book of Revelation, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas. These questions were not resolved until long after Constantine I’s death.
Constantine I had virtually no direct role in shaping the New Testament canon or Christian doctrine. Constantine I did convene the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, but he did not personally take part in the discussion and was only present at the council as an observer. The actual decision-making of the council was left up to the bishops.
Also, the First Council of Nicaea primarily dealt with the dispute between Arianism and Trinitarianism, not the question of which books would be included in the New Testament. As far as we know, there was no substantial discussion of which books would be included in the New Testament at the First Council of Nicaea at all.
The idea, then, that Constantine I is personally responsible for transforming a pagan holiday in honor of the goddess Ishtar into the most important holiday in Christianity doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.
ABOVE: Greek Orthodox icon from the Megalo Meteoron Monastery in Greece, showing the artist’s imagining of Constantine I at the First Council of Nicaea
“But at its roots, Easter (which is how you pronounce Ishtar) is all about celebrating fertility and sex.”
Again, I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this, but the name Ishtar is not pronounced “Easter”; it is pronounced exactly how it is spelled: Ishtar.
At its roots, Easter is not really “about celebrating fertility and sex.” You can make the holiday be about whatever you personally want to make it about, but, historically, the holiday has always been a celebration of Jesus’s alleged resurrection from the dead. If you personally want to celebrate Easter with sex, that’s fine, but don’t go around claiming that that is what the holiday was originally about because you’ll make a fool of yourself.
It is also worth noting that even the actual goddess Ishtar herself was not exclusively a goddess of fertility and sex, since, as I pointed out earlier in this article, she had a lot of other important associations as well. Thus, even if Easter were a celebration of Ishtar, it wouldn’t necessarily be about “fertility and sex” because there was a lot more to Ishtar’s cult than just “fertility and sex.”
The true origin of the idea that Easter was originally a holiday for Ishtar
The greatest irony in all of this is the fact that, while atheists champion the idea that Easter was originally a festival of Ishtar because they want to “go back” to the way they think it was originally celebrated (i.e. as a sex festival), this whole idea that atheists keep promoting actually originated as a conspiracy theory among extreme fundamentalist Protestants who were ardently opposed to the celebration of Easter because they believed it was “pagan” and “Popish.”
The whole idea the Easter was originally a holiday in honor of Ishtar was first proposed in the anti-Catholic religious pamphlet The Two Babylons: Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife, written by Alexander Hislop (lived 1807 – 1865), a minister for the Free Church of Scotland, and originally published in 1853. (My regular readers may recognize the name Alexander Hislop, since I mentioned him in my article from December 2019 debunking the idea that modern Christmas traditions are of ancient pagan origin.)
Hislop basically started out with the assumption that Roman Catholicism was really a continuation of ancient Babylonian paganism and that all the holidays associated with it—especially Christmas and Easter—were therefore originally ancient Babylonian holidays. He then sought to “prove” his own assumption by providing a wildly inaccurate description of ancient Babylonian religion that was intentionally modeled on Roman Catholicism.
Hislop noticed that the Babylonian name Ishtar sounded vaguely similar to the English word Easter and therefore concluded that the names had to be related. Hislop himself writes:
“What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Ninevah, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. This name as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar.”
As I discussed in this article I published just yesterday, it is always dangerous to assume that two words must be related based solely on a perceived phonological similar in English, since it is extremely common for words that are not etymologically related to each other to sound similar by pure coincidence.
One famous example of this comes from the language of the indigenous Mbabaram people of Australia. In their language, the word for “dog” is dog. The word is exactly identical to the English word dog in both meaning and pronunciation—yet the word has no etymological relationship to the English word dog at all and simply sounds the same by pure coincidence. The same thing is true for the words Easter and Ishtar; the words sound similar merely by coincidence and they are not etymologically related.
ABOVE: Title page of the seventh edition of the book The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop. Hislop was one of many influential Protestant fundamentalist writers who helped popularize the idea that holidays like Christmas and Easter are really pagan.
Great article! I have a question about this topic though. I remember watching a documentary about Yazidis in Iraq at some point and the presenter was visiting a Yazidi community during a holiday and he showed that they had a tradition of painting eggs in bright colors as part of the celebration (I think I was a new year holiday). The presenter said it was a possible origin of the western tradition of painting eggs on Easter and at the time I just took his word for it. But now that I’ve read yours and Tim O’Neill’s articles about this topic I think he was probably wrong. Anyways, do you know anything about the origin of that tradition among Yazidis and if there’s any possible connection to Easter or even ancient Mesopotamia? (Maybe this comment attempt will get through?)
Yazidism itself only first began to develop in around the twelfth century AD and it only fully emerged in around the fifteenth century AD. It is possible that the Yazidi custom you describe may be derived from older western customs. The tradition of painting eggs red for Lent to symbolize the blood of Christ shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins seems to have originated in western Europe, but it has been traditional in many Eastern Orthodox cultures for many centuries. This tradition certainly spread eastward, eventually reaching the Near East. Since Yazidism is fairly syncretic, it is possible that Yazidis may have adapted the practice from Christians.
On the other hand, decorating eggs is a fairly common tradition across many cultures and it is possible that the Yazidi custom has an entirely separate origin, unrelated to our custom of painting eggs for Easter. I would have to do more research on this subject in order to find out the exact relationship.
No, no, no… It has nothing to do with later syncretism. It has to do with the Persian new year. It’s not exclusive to the Yazidis, it’s part of Nowruz, the painted eggs are called Tokhmeh Morgh and are part of the Haft Sin. This isn’t really hard to know. This predates Christianity, probably by a few centuries. And they are indeed a celebration of fertility in this case. Egg painting is a common tradition elsewhere in Eurasia.
Hmm… Interesting… Well I found that the Wikipedia article on Easter eggs says that “According to many sources”* the colored Easter egg tradition originated among early Christians in Mesopotamia (who apparently got the idea from Persia). They colored the eggs red to symbolize the blood of Christ. The article further states that this ancient Easter egg tradition was imported in the west from the east, not vice versa. I suppose it’s possible there could be two separate independent traditions that arose between different groups of Christians in different times and places. Also if the Easter egg tradition really did originate among early Christians in Mesopotamia (for the eastern Easter egg tradition at least) than it seems obvious to me that the Yazidis probably got the tradition from Christians living in the same region as them, a.k.a. Mesopotamia. Anyways, do you think that the article is wrong and should be updated? Or do you think that there is a serious debate among scholars and historians about this?
*It seems the main source for all this came from a Sociology professor named Kenneth Thompson just FYI
I actually debunk Wikipedia’s claim about Easter eggs originating in Mesopotamian in my article above. You seem to have missed that part. Basically, the idea that Easter eggs originated in Mesopotamia comes from a single passage from the book ”De Ludis Orientalibus” (“On Eastern Games”) by Thomas Hyde, which was originally published in 1694. In the passage, Hyde describes a custom that existed in the region of Mesopotamia in his own time in the seventeenth century. Hyde never said anything at all about the custom having originated in ancient times, but, because people have a tendency to associate the word Mesopotamia with ancient Mesopotamia, people assumed that he was talking about an ancient custom.
I actually tried to correct the Wikipedia article on 28 November 2019 by removing the claim that Easter eggs originated in ancient Mesopotamia from the article and providing sources to support that they actually originated in western Europe in the High Middle Ages. I even left a message on the talk page explaining things. On 14 January 2020, however, another Wikipedian reverted my edit and left a response on the talk page saying that, because the claim that Easter eggs originated in ancient Mesopotamia is repeated in some academic sources, it therefore needed to be included in the article as an equally valid theory.
Ohh yes, you’re right I somehow missed that part of your article. I think I may read part of it and then came back and started reading again at the wrong place. Sorry about that.
It’s ok. I understand that sometimes people miss things. There’s nothing to feel sorry about!
Fascinating article, Spencer. You can thank Tom Holland for leading me here.
What I find most puzzling is, given the enormous linguistic influence of the Normans on the English language (a large percentage of current vocabulary coming from Old French), why was it that a name deriving from Latin source didn’t end up dislodging “Easter”. How did it hold on? And can this Ēostre/Pascha discrepancy be described as an Etymological fallacy?
Well done on your Wikipedia articles. I read that site a lot, and I feel indebted to frequent contributors like you who must surely be carrying the bulk of the workload. Does it ever feel like a thankless job?
It is indeed a terrible shame that these New Atheist types (as Tim O’Neill would call them) are appropriating Ancient Mesopotamia in their quarrels with their Christian adversaries. The idea of using some form of pagan belief to undermine modern Christianity has become a tired trope at this point. There are only so many solar event days, only a handful of ubiquitous animals, and in the more extreme form – as you outline with the word ‘dog’ – so many speech patterns, that coincidences can and will occur. One from a scientific background need only look at the parallel development of their own Calculus!
The end result of this bad history is tragic:
1) Dissuades Christians from studying the great civillisations of the Fertile Crescent, when it should be open to everyone.
2) Dissuades Christians in power, or of wealth, from funding research projects on said civillisations.
3) Ordinary people seeking out knowledge of ancient history on the internet end up buying up the bad faith arguments of historically-illiterate New Atheists (appeal to dubious authority). The process then snowballs via memes.
Of course it’s also lamentable when today’s inhabitants of the Mesopotamia, Muslim Iraqis, are discouraged, but that arises from different actors, so I won’t open that can of worms.
Very interesting summation of Hislop “an extremely die-hard fundamentalist Protestant pamphleteer in the nineteenth century.” 🙂
After 15 years of studying the etymologies of the texts of J.R.R Tolkien, I have good reason to believe that Shelob (‘Her Ladyship, ‘She-lob’) in his The Lord of The Rings is intended to be The Whore of Babylon, Ishtar, and Salome. I’m not saying that those three figures are the same figure and neither was Tolkien, but they have been compounded with ‘artistic license’ to convey a symbolism of the inversion of the Virgin Mary, who Tolkien casts as ‘the Queen of Heaven’. Shelob symbolizes ‘She That is Fallen’ from the Downfall at the end of the Silmarillion which leads to the world of ‘The Lord of the Rings’. ‘She’ is the Virgin Mary and Womankind generally. The Lady Galadriel (‘She’) her opposite, symbolizes the Virgin Mary. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and a philologist of course.
I believe that Tolkien must have encountered Hislop’s ‘The Two Babylons’ through his Catholic mentor and guardian Friar Francis or his mother who had converted to Catholicism but was disowned by her Protestant family. She died ‘of diabetes’. Tolkien felt she was abandoned. He was very bitter about this and of course it had a very profound effect on his life and his works. Tolkien went on to become a world expert in philology and in his earlier years he wrote a poem called ‘Lit and Lang’ in ‘Songs for the Philologists’. In that he speaks of ‘homophemes’ – words which sound the same but which require the written form (or more information) to be fully understood. He characterizes people who cannot understand the difference between them as ‘Lit, literature’- those belonging to the world of non-philology, while those who can distinguish the difference as belonging to the world of ‘lang’ language, that being philology. Lit was ‘the Enemy’, the devil. He later went on to include this idea in his works in the two homophemes ‘taur’ and ‘tower’ which are the symbolism of ‘The Two Towers’. The two towers are the Tree and the Mountain, one living language, the other dead stone. The Taur is ‘Lang’, the birch. The Tower is ‘lit’, the oak. In the two homophemes of taur and tower, it’s my theory that he is, at root, making reference to Hislop’s claims about ‘Easter and ‘Ishtar’. The two homophemes form a fundamental dichotomy within his works.
You say:
Hislop noticed that the Babylonian name Ishtar sounded vaguely similar to the English word Easter and therefore concluded that the names had to be related. Hislop himself writes:
…
it is always dangerous to assume that two words must be related based solely on a perceived phonological similar in English, since it is extremely common for words that are not etymologically related to each other to sound similar by pure coincidence.
Tolkien discussed such coincidences in his letters and obviously it is of interest to the philologist.
Taur and tower sound the same since we know the pronunciation of ‘au’ from ‘Sauron’.
Tolkien also had personal and literary encounters with another scholar who made claims about the Moon Goddess, Robert Graves in his book ‘The White Goddess’. Again, as with Hislop, Graves’ philological evidence was later debunked and discredited.
I believe that the orc Ufthak in the lair of Shelob, is intended to symbolize Hislop.
I’m going to be honest; this whole theory strikes me as thoroughly unconvincing. I see no evidence that J. R. R. Tolkien was even familiar with Alexander Hislop’s writings—unless you can direct me to a specific passage in Tolkien’s writings in which he mentions Alexander Hislop by name. Furthermore, Tolkien was famously opposed to allegory, so I remain even less convinced of your claim that the orc Ufthak is somehow supposed to represent Hislop.
Hi, I am still in the process of writing my analysis. I am going to point you to 76 predictions I have made about Tolkien’s works. You can find an introduction to those predictions and Tolkien’s geometry, on my home page. I have made no less than 18 predictions regarding Shelob and Galadriel from this understanding of Tolkien’s system of geometry. Here:-
http://www.thewindrose.net/predictions/
The ones pertaining specifically to Shelob:-
Prediction #4
Prediction #24
Prediction #25
Prediction #26
Prediction #36
Prediction #43
Prediction #53
Prediction #61
Prediction #62
Prediction #63
Prediction #64
Prediction #65
Prediction #71
Prediction #72
Prediction #73
Prediction #74
Prediction #75
Prediction #76
Regarding the compound symbolism of the Whore of Babylon, Salome, etc. I should also mention that Shelob is also the ‘Loathly Lady’ from medieval literature, such as The Wife of Bath. Prediction #71 was that Tolkien would use the word loath to describe Shelob because of my identification of Shelob with the Loathly Lady and The Whore of Babylon etc. He actually went one better and specifically used the word ‘loathly’. Galadriel seeks equality. Her opposite Shelob is the end result of not giving that equality and the woman seizing sovereignty herself.
Regarding allegory. Is it allegory? I said that Shelob is a composite of multiple ideas.
There is a long running argument about Tolkien’s use of allegory. Shippey (Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century) is of the opinion that Tolkien did use allegory. Leaf By Niggle is clearly autobiographical allegory and of Smith of Wooten Major- ‘The great Hall is evidently an “allegory” of the village church’, according to Tolkien, Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century
“He was perfectly capable of using allegory himself, and did so several times in his academic works, usually with devastating effect. In his 1936 lecture on Beowulf, for instance, Tolkien offered his British Academy audience ‘yet another allegory’ (it (it was not the first in the lecture), about a man who built a tower…There is no doubt that this is an allegory, for Tolkien says so himself.” ibid
Have you read Clive Kilby’s book ‘Tolkien and the Silmarillion’? Kilby also agrees with that. He spent some time personally with Tolkien and he came away from the experience and stated that Tolkien enjoyed playing with people, dropping hints, and making contradictory statements on purpose, and enjoying it. His statements about allegory would fall into that category. Tolkien offered to reveal some big secrets about his works to Kilby, but drew back in the end. Kilby even coined a word for him: – “contrasistency”. Consistently contradictory. I appreciate that this is not your area of expertise so if you don’t have time to read the book, you can read a summary here: http://www.thewindrose.net/blogs/tolkiens-contrasistency/
Given those 18 predictions, 15 years of forensic study of the etymologies of the words in his texts, and the current 58 other predictions regarding other areas of his writings, I think it is extremely remotely unlikely that my understanding is faulty on the subject. I appreciate there is a lot of reading here and you have other things to do! 🙂
You might find Prediction #61 to be especially interesting. Tolkien has incorporated the Dance of the 7 veils into The Lord of the Rings. I predicted it was there from my research. Many of the earlier predictions in that list point towards that. It’s still a work in progress.
http://www.thewindrose.net/predictions/prediction-63/
Regarding Tolkien’s secrecy, hinting and riddles, if you rearrange the letters of all of the names given to Bombadil you get the following anagram:
TOM BOMBADIL IARWAIN BEN-ADAR FORN ORALD
WARN FRODO AND BILBO I BE A MAIA – MR RONALD T
You can read Priya Seth’s very intriguing Book ‘Breaking the Tolkien code’ on Amazon. She found that anagram along with others.
My response to her book and my predictions regarding the upcoming contents of her book as I was scanning it can be found here: http://www.thewindrose.net/blogs/a-response-to-priya-seths-breaking-the-tolkien-code/
You might also be aware of the Alvismæl acrostic that Adam Roberts discovered in The Hobbit. I had previously stated that the riddles were to be taken as a whole as a”meta-riddle” some years before I discovered his book ‘The Riddles of the Hobbit’ He found the acrostic and said the same thing. Excellent book it is too.
I also discovered Tolkien’s use of alchemy in 2005 in the Adûnaic language. Some years later I stumbled upon Mahmoud Shelton’s ‘Alchemy in Middle-earth’. Another very insightful book.
All evidence of Tolkien hiding things just like Clive Kilby told us. Tolkien stated that Bombadil was explicitly set as an enigma.
And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally).
Letter #144 To Naomi Mitchison, 1954.
The etymology of ‘enigma’ gives us riddle from Latin aenigma “riddle,” from Greek ainigma (plural ainigmata) “a dark saying, riddle,” from ainissesthai “speak obscurely, speak in riddles,” from ainos “tale, story; saying, proverb;” (online etymology). And we later discover that Tolkien was invited to work in the Bletchley Park war effort to crack the “enigma” code. And then Seth finds the anagram about Bombadil. Coincidence? Tolkien could have just said ‘riddle’ given that he dealt in riddles all of his life- hence why he was invited to take part in Bletchley Park in the first place, but he chose to use the word ‘enigma’ as_a _hint.
And there is the Seven Rivers riddle. And yet Tolkien also stated that he didn’t like reductionist analysis. So how we were we supposed to solve these riddles? By using The Force? 🙂 All evidence pointing towards Clive Kilby’s impressions of Tolkien in his book being correct-“contrasistency”.
I’ve found your article on wiki very useful. I’ll be using it a lot in the analysis of my article. Keep up the great work. Peace.
Hi there,
it’s a very interesting article. I just came across it during a quick search on the backgrounds of Easter. Even though I cannot claim to have any knowledge of this field, I consider it very unlikely that Easter has always been Christian (just a personal guess based on logic). The thing that simply makes no sense is that the date jumps based on the moon phases. If Christianity came up with Easter, it would most likely be on a specific date and independent from the moon. Aren’t festivals based on moon phases usually related to hunting, harvest, or the change of seasons? And yes, this is an actual question!
As Christianity has proven to ‘steal’ festival dates and traditions from other religions, I consider it very likely that Easter was originally the festival of another god or goddess associated with harvest (and maybe fertility). Why else would Easter be on a moon-based and ever-changing date?
Sure, this still creates no link to Ishtar, but it is hard to believe that Christians came up with a “jumping” date for Jesus’ resurrection. With Christian history of stealing, copying, and changing stories, festivals, and traditions from other, older religions, the most likely explanation is that they placed Pasha over something that was celebrated at the time of Easter and had something to do with seasons or harvest/fertility.
However, thanks for the informative article. Even though I still don’t know why Easter is on a moon-based date, I learned a lot!
The reason why the date of Easter is correlated to the phases of the moon is because the ancient Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar that is partially based on the phases of the moon. Consequently, the date of the Jewish Passover is determined by the phases of the moon. Early Christianity arose as a sect of Second Temple Judaism and the holiday of Easter itself arose under the direct influence of the Jewish Passover.
Thus, as Christianity developed out of Judaism, Christians continued to calculate the date of Easter in a similar manner to how Jewish people had calculated the Passover for centuries. The popular assumption that any holiday whose date is tied to any kind of astronomical phenomenon must be pagan is entirely unsupported by evidence. Pagans don’t have any kind of monopoly on holidays whose dates are determined by astronomical events.
Also, Christianity’s reputation for “stealing” holidays is unwarranted. In genuine cases where traditions of pagan origin have come to be practiced by Christians, it didn’t happen because Christians “stole” the holidays from pagans. Instead, it happened because people who had been pagans converted to Christianity and continued to practice their own ancestral traditions even after their conversion.
This is the reason why, for instance, many early Christians in the Roman Empire celebrated the Roman holiday of Saturnalia; it was because they liked the holiday and didn’t want to give it up, so they adapted it to suit their new religious context. This is also the reason why, as I discuss in this article I published in July 2020, many Egyptian Christians even today in the twenty-first century continue to use the ankh as a religious symbol.
Well, that’s interesting to know. Thanks for all the information! Things finally start to make more sense to me.
Because its a Pagan holiday. This writer is obviously Christian and biased…study Paganism instead of what your Christian scholars tell you…there you will find your answers. Good luck 😘
I am not a Christian; I’m an agnostic.
Also, I have, in fact, studied the diverse ancient religions that are commonly lumped together under the label of “paganism” (which was originally coined by Christians as an insulting term for anyone who wasn’t Christian). I am a scholar of ancient history and ancient religions are one of my main areas of research.
I should also note that, nowadays, a substantial number of scholars who study ancient pre-Christian cultures—perhaps even the majority of us—are not Christians.
If you were chronicling the progression of iconography for what we call Virgo, from the ancient deity to Virgin Mary…This is a good start.
You are overlooking, or unaware of certain astronomical truths that are being conveyed in the reliefs, you have so graciously brought together. This just so happens to be important for calculating longitude!
I think, I might be able to prove it to you. Making it clear and concise without sounding like a incoherent ramble is going to take a minute. I will be quoting your precious Wikipedia, even though I have found it to be wrong in several areas.
I think, I can even explain how a rabbit lays eggs.
“Realizing that Atalanta could not be defeated in a fair race, Melanion prayed to Aphrodite for help. The goddess gave him three golden apples and told him to drop them one at a time to distract Atalanta. Sure enough, she quit running long enough to retrieve each golden apple.”
REGULUS(Leo), ANTARES(Scorpio), and Aldebaran(Taurus) are the Golden Apples. Atlanta is the MOON. SPICA(Aphrodite/Virgo)
We are talking about the moon occulting stars and timing it. Unless you want to wait around and predict the next lunar eclipse.
[The term occultation is most frequently used to describe those relatively frequent occasions when the Moon passes in front of a star during the course of its orbital motion around the Earth. Since the Moon, with an angular speed with respect to the stars of 0.55 arcsec/s or 2.7 μrad/s, has a very thin atmosphere and stars have an angular diameter of at most 0.057 arcseconds or 0.28 μrad, a star that is occulted by the Moon will disappear or reappear in 0.1 seconds or less on the Moon’s edge, or limb. Events that take place on the Moon’s dark limb are of particular interest to observers, because the lack of glare allows easier observation and timing.
The Moon’s orbit is inclined slightly with respect to the ecliptic (see orbit of the Moon) meaning any stars with an ecliptic latitude of less than about ± 6.5 degrees may be occulted by it. Three first magnitude stars appear well within that band – Regulus, Spica and Antares – meaning they may be occulted by the Moon or by planets.[1] Occultations of Aldebaran are in this epoch only possible by the Moon, because the planets pass Aldebaran to the north. Neither planetary nor lunar occultations of Pollux are currently possible, however in several thousand years this will be the case, as it was in the far past. Some notably close deep-sky objects, such as the Pleiades, can be occulted by the Moon.]
Thank you, Wikipedia.
Most people are aware of the moon being symbolized by a rabbit. If the moon has just occulted a star, when the star reappears, the rabbit has just laid an egg.
There is much more than this being conveyed in the reliefs you have provided. This is a good start.
I’m sorry, how is even the term Easter, which has a indoeuropean pagan origin, can have always been christian? If you want to call it for it’s original name, at least call it passover, like most other countries have a derivative from Pessach. Páscoa (PT), Pascua (ES), Pâques (FR, Pascoa (IT), Paskha (RU). All derive from Pascha (greek). YOu now what doens’t, Easter. Easter has completely pagan etimological origins. Indoeuropean in fact. SO, even if Ishtar isn’t a direct source for Easter, you better bet all the myths of seasonal change (which Inanna’s descent is one example), have much more to do with easter, than it being a christian holiday.