Mylitta

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The Babylonian goddess of love and fertility, whom Herodotus identified with the Greek Aphrodite and later writers linked to Ishtar
2. An ancient Babylonian deity of love and fertility, the name Herodotus gave to the goddess Ishtar in Mesopotamian worship
3. A Mesopotamian goddess of sexual love and motherhood, worshipped in Babylon under a name recorded by the Greek historian Herodotus

Etymology: Mylitta was the Babylonian goddess of love and fertility, whom Herodotus identified with Aphrodite. In his Histories (c. 430 BCE) he describes a custom at her temple in Babylon, where every woman had once to sit in the sanctuary and give herself to a stranger in exchange for a coin, which was dedicated to the goddess. The name is the Greek rendering of a local title, and scholars generally link it to the Akkadian and Assyrian term for a goddess, "Mylitta" being usually derived from Akkadian "malittu" (or a related form), though the exact Semitic source remains debated. In English the word is a learned borrowing used mainly in historical and scholarly writing about ancient Near Eastern religion. It appears in discussions of Herodotus and of Mesopotamian cult, where it names the goddess directly rather than a generic concept of love.