Venus In Culture

Venus, as one of the brightest objects in the sky, has been known since prehistoric times and has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. As such, it has a prominent position in human culture, religion, and myth. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the ''morning star'' and ''evening star''.

Background and name

What is now known as the planet Venus has long been an object of fascination for cultures worldwide. It is the second brightest object in the night sky, and follows a synodic cycle by which it seems to disappear for several days due to its proximity to the Sun, then re-appear on the opposite side of the Sun and on the other horizon. Depending on the point in its cycle, Venus may appear before sunrise in the morning, or after sunset in the evening, but it never appears to reach the apex of the sky. Therefore, many cultures have recognized it with two names, even if their astronomers realized that it was really one object.

In old English, the planet was known as ''morgensteorra'' (morning star) and ''æfensteorra'' (evening star). It was not until the 13th century C.E. that the name "Venus" was adopted for the planet (in classical Latin, though the morning star was considered sacred to the goddess Venus, it was called Lucifer).

In Chinese the planet is called ''Jīn-xīng'' (金星), the golden planet of the metal element. It is known as "Kejora" in Indonesian and Malaysian Malay.
Modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures refer to the planet literally as the "metal star" (), based on the Five elements.

Ancient Near East

Mesopotamia

Because the movements of Venus appear to be discontinuous (it disappears due to its proximity to the Sun, for many days at a time, and then reappears on the other horizon), some cultures did not recognize Venus as single entity; instead, they assumed it to be two separate stars on each horizon: the morning and evening star. Nonetheless, a cylinder seal from the Jemdet Nasr period indicates that the ancient Sumerians already knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object. The Sumerians associated the planet with the goddess Inanna, who was known as Ishtar by the later Akkadians and Babylonians. She had a dual role as a goddess of both love and war, thereby representing a deity that presided over birth and death.

The discontinuous movements of Venus relate to both Inanna's mythology as well as her dual nature. Inanna's actions in several of her myths, including ''Inanna and Shukaletuda'' and '' Inanna's Descent into the Underworld'' appear to parallel the motion of the planet Venus as it progresses through its synodic cycle. For example, in ''Inanna's Descent to the Underworld'', Inanna is able to descend into the netherworld, where she is killed, and then resurrected three days later to return to the heavens. An interpretation of this myth by Clyde Hostetter holds that it is an allegory for the movements of the planet Venus, beginning with the spring equinox and concluding with a meteor shower near the end of one synodic period of Venus. The three-day disappearance of Inanna refers to the three-day planetary disappearance of Venus between its appearance as a morning and evening star. An introductory hymn to this myth describes Inanna leaving the heavens and heading for ''Kur'', what could be presumed to be the mountains, replicating the rising and setting of Inanna to the West. In the myth ''Inanna and Shukaletuda'', Shukaletuda is described as scanning the heavens in search of Inanna, possibly searching the eastern and western horizons. In the same myth, while searching for her attacker, Inanna herself makes several movements that correspond with the movements of Venus in the sky. Inanna-Ishtar's most common symbol was the eight-pointed star. The eight-pointed star seems to have originally borne a general association with the heavens, but, by the Old Babylonian Period ( 1830 – 1531 BC), it had come to be specifically associated with the planet Venus, with which Ishtar was identified.

In the Old Babylonian period, the planet Venus was known as Ninsi'anna, and later as Dilbat. " Ninsi'anna" translates to "divine lady, illumination of heaven", which refers to Venus as the brightest visible "star". Earlier spellings of the name were written with the cuneiform sign si4 (= SU, meaning "to be red"), and the original meaning may have been "divine lady of the redness of heaven", in reference to the color of the morning and evening sky. Venus is described in Babylonian cuneiform texts such as the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa, which relates observations that possibly date from 1600 BC. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa shows the Babylonians understood morning and evening star were a single object, referred to in the tablet as the "bright queen of the sky" or "bright Queen of Heaven", and could support this view with detailed observations.

Canaanite mythology

In ancient Canaanite religion, the morning star is personified as the god Attar, a masculine variant of the name of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. In myth, Attar attempted to occupy the throne of Ba'al and, finding he was unable to do so, descended and ruled the underworld. The original myth may have been about a lesser god, Helel, trying to dethrone the Canaanite high god El, who was believed to live on a mountain to the north. Hermann Gunkel's reconstruction of the myth told of a mighty warrior called Hêlal, whose ambition was to ascend higher than all the other stellar divinities, but who had to descend to the depths. It thus portrayed as a battle the process by which the bright morning star fails to reach the highest point in the sky before being faded out by the rising sun.

Similarities have been noted with the story of Inanna's descent into the underworld, Ishtar and Inanna being associated with the planet Venus. A connection has been seen also with the Babylonian myth of Etana. The '' Jewish Encyclopedia'' comments:

::"The brilliancy of the morning star, which eclipses all other stars, but is not seen during the night, may easily have given rise to a myth such as was told of Ethana and Zu: he was led by his pride to strive for the highest seat among the star-gods on the northern mountain of the gods ... but was hurled down by the supreme ruler of the Babylonian Olympus."

In the Hebrew language Book of Isaiah, chapter 14, the King of Babylon is condemned using imagery derived from Canaanite myth, and is called (, Hebrew for "shining one, son of the morning"). The title "''Helel ben Shahar''" may refer to the planet Venus as the morning star. The Hebrew word transliterated as ''Hêlêl'' or ''Heylel'' (pron. as ''Hay-LALE''),Strong's Concordance, H1966
/ref> occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases