Astarte (Astar`te) , or Ashtoreth, or Ist`ar, the female divinity of the Phoenicians, as Baal was the male, these two being representative respectively of the conceptive and generative powers of nature, and symbolised, the latter, like Apollo, by the sun, and the former, like Artemis or Diana, by the moon; sometimes identified with Urania and sometimes with Venus; the rites connected with her worship were of a lascivious nature.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Assyriology * Aster