26:46 · This is one of the ideograms for Ishtar, queen of the Heavens; heavenly mother of all borne by women; sister of the highest of the Babylonian gods, the sun god Shamash; the goddess of sexual pleasures and the only real woman god in Babylon and Assyria (all other female gods were but shadows of their male god consorts).
    Ishtar is also the goddess of childbirth and as such often depicted with a child in her arms. Being the only real female god in the Near East for a couple of millennia, up to the time when the new ideology of Christianity expanded over the coastal areas of the eastern Mediterranean region, she is Virgin Mary or, rather, the Holy Virgin is what is left of Ishtar (Astarte, Aphrodite) after Christianity's totally dominant ideological takeover.
    Astarte was the Greek form of the Semitic name Astar (Hebrew Astoret) for the queen of the heavens. In the temples of Ishtar, she being the goddess of fertility and thus also of sexual pleasures, girls and women served the believers under surveillance by eunuchs.
    Ishtar was, however, also the goddess of hunting and warfare. Since in the skies she was symbolized by Venus she was both the fertility goddess of the Evening star and the war goddess of the Morning star.
    This graphic representation of Venus is from Babylonia and the time around 2000 B.C. The two sets of four arms or points of the star sign, one behind the the other, refer to the exactly eight years it takes for either of Venus' two appearances (the Morning and the Evening star) to return to the same sign of the zodiac and the same place in that sign.
    See for a synonymous sign.