Astaroth (I)

I. ASTAROTH, or Astaroth-Carnaïm, or simply Carnaïm, or Carnea, a City beyond Jordan, six miles or two leagues from Adraa, or Edraï, between this City and that of Abila. There were two places of the same name of Astaroth in the Batanæa, nine miles distant from each other between Abila and Adraa¹. There was besides a City called Carnaim, as Eusebius says², in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

The name of Astaroth-Carnaïm is supposed to come from the Goddess Astarte, who was adored there, and was painted with horns, or a crescent on her forehead³; for Carnaïm signifies Horns: and the Goddess Astarte was the most celebrated Deity of all that the Phœnicians worshipped. We have discoursed at length of her in our Dissertation concerning the Phœnician Gods, placed before the small Prophets, in pages lxi, lxii, lxiii. wherein we have shewn that Astarte was the Goddess of the Woods, the Moon, the Queen of Heaven, the celestial Goddess, or celestial Venus, or the Goddess of Syria, or Venus the Syrian, Wife of Adonis⁴. Lastly S. Austin assures us, that Juno is called Astarte by the Carthaginians⁵. This too in all probability was the same as Isis the Goddess of the Egyptians, who as well as Astarte⁶ is represented with the head of an ox, or with horns upon her head⁷. The Author 2 Macc. xii. 26.of the second book of Maccabees says, that there was a Temple of the Goddess Atargatis in Carnion. Now Atargatis was the same as Derceto adored at Askelon, and represented under the form of a Woman with the lower parts of a Fish⁸, and known by the Hebrews under the name of the God Dagon, or the God Fish.

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