Louise M. Pryke is a Lecturer for the Languages and Literature of Ancient Israel at Macquarie University, Australia, and holds a PhD in Ancient Near Eastern History from the University of Sydney

"Ishtar is, without doubt, one of the most complex and baffling of the many gods of antiquity. Yet Louise Pryke has achieved something quite remarkable here in synthesising the multivalence of the goddess’s deeds and personas into a coherent and manageable whole. Full of good sense, yet written with flair, this study of the goddess of all goddesses is an important and infinitely useful contribution to the study of ancient myth and religion. The many sources in translation bring alive the world of Mesopotamian thought and forefront Ishtar as the most supreme of deities."- Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Cardiff University, UK"The style is certainly scholarly, but it is not overly technical, and a reader without much background in the area will be able to follow most of the text [...] Pryke does a lot to help the reader [...] It will be appropriate for scholars in the field, but also those who have some familiarity with the area and want to know more."- Christian Perring, Metapsychology Online Reviews

• List of figures Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Love and Intimacy Chapter 3: Sexuality and Order Chapter 4: Ishtar and the Pantheon Chapter 5: Kingship and Battle Chapter 6: Ishtar and Gilgamesh Chapter 7: Vengeance and Death Chapter 8: Ishtar Afterwards Bibliography Further reading