Ishtar

The Babylonian High-Mother-Goddess.  Goddess of Love, Fertility, Nature, Sex and War. Queen of Heaven

The most important Goddess of the Near-East and Western Asia.
Her symbols were the Star and Lion.

The Ancient  city of Babylon stood on the banks of the river Euphrates.  In Mesopotamia, today's Middle East.

Ishtar is a pretty fascinating all round Goddess.    Women prostituted themselves at her temple for her. 
  She turned a lover into a frog and sent another person on a quest for immortality. 
  The gate is a symbol of her journey to the underworld where she went through a ritual, and was killed by her sister, who was queen of the underworld.  Ishtar's Husband Tammuz had to take her place for her to leave the under world. That was one version we read about, another was she went to the underground to look for her husband Tammuz she smashed the gates down to be let in, to find him, she had to go through the ritual of being slowly stripped naked until she was aloud to have him return.
  Rituals were sexual and sacred, for spring fertility and winter the return of her son the return of light and longer days, such as Yule.  Full moon time was considered her bleeding time, so every one rested.

Ishtar was life itself, which leads to death and to a new birth.  And who denies sex denies life, who denies death denies life, and such a one will find neither life joyful, nor death easy. 

 - From the Book of Goddesses & Heroines by Patricia Monaghan

This is a list of sites about and dedicated to the Goddess Ishtar:

• The shrine of Ishtar
• Ishtar - History of sex.
• The mystica.com - Ishtar
• In praise of Ishtar
• The Decent of Ishtar