patriarchal societies; however, their respective characters present them as much more ancient female figures, who had adapted masculine ideas of women’s loyalties. Both goddesses, however, beside being in charge of war, kept the main function of both fertility and wisdom belonging to ancient female divinities.
F. Another War goddess who was a Great Mother was the Babylonian Ishtar (s. link below); like the other two, she was also given a “father” from among the gods. Ishtar was known from Canaanite myths as Atherath, or Ashera, Mother of the Gods, and she was also connected with the Sun through her title “The Lightbringer”, beside being a “Goddess of Fertility, Love and War”. She was considered the most important goddess of the Near-East and Western Asia, like Durga she rode a lion, and in the figure of Atherath she was married to the Chief god, El, and she had two divine sons, Baal and Mot, and a divine daughter, the goddess Anath.
G. Anath, whose name may have been an anagram of the names of the goddesses Athena and Neith (s. below), was the most prominent goddess in charge of the seasonal war in the Middle East (s. links below). She was deeply involved in the fertility cult of Baal (“Master”) and his twin brother Mot (“Death”) as their both sister and lover, for whose love and power they fought endlessly. Their endless seasonal battles took part twice a year, springtime and autumn, when there exists till today the eternal change of seasons between rainy and green, sunny and lifeless. Anath not only supervised this war but was happy to take active part in it as a known warrior, as she is described in the Canaanite poem of the 1400th cent. b.c. from Ras Shamra (the ancient site of the town of