Sin, Šamaš, and Ištar (1)

Text
Some very peculiar beliefs of the sidereal religion of Babylon crept into the doctrines of the Greek philosophers. It is a well-known fact that this religion formed a triad, Sin, Šamaš, and Ištar. To the god of the Moon, regarded as the most powerful of the three, and to the Sun had been added Venus, the most brilliant of the planets. These are the three great rulers of the zodiac, and their symbols - crescents, discs, containing a star of four or six points - appear on the top of the boundary stones (kudurru) from the fourteenth century BCE. The same association is found in an extract from Democritus, where the Sun, the Moon, and Venus are distinguished from the other planets (FdV 366, 22). The echo of the same theory extended even to the Romans. Pliny (NH 2.6 (8)), in a passage which owes its erudition to some Chaldean author of the Hellenistic period, remarks that Venus is “the rival of the Sun and Moon,” and he adds that “alone among the stars she shines with such brilliance that her rays cast a shadow,” - a statement which would be absurd in the climate of Rome, but which is strictly correct under the clear sky of Syria.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Pliny the Elder, Naturalia Historia 2.6 (8)

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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