I’ve been seeing this blurb on Easter floating around the inter webs as of late:

Ishtar pronounced Easter was the goddess of love and war and sex, as well as protection, fate, childbirth, marriage, and storms—there’s some fertility in there, too. Ishtar’s symbols were the the lion, the morning star, and eight or sixteen pointed stars—again, symbols of power.

Then this to rebuff:

The word Easter does not appear to be derived from Ishtar, but from the German Eostre, the goddess of the dawn—a bringer of light. English and German are in the minority of languages that use a form of the word Easter to mark the holiday. Elsewhere, the observance is framed in Latin pascha, which in turn is derived from the Hebrew pesach, meaning of or associated with Passover. Ishtar and Easter appear to be homophones: they may be pronounced similarly, but have different meanings.

Our helpful meme places the egg in Ishtar’s domain, but Ishtar doesn’t seem to be connected to eggs in any explicit way. However, there are plenty of other older traditions that involve the egg as a symbol of rebirth and feature it prominently in creation mythologies:

Ancient Egyptians believed in a primeval egg from which the sun god hatched. Alternatively, the sun was sometimes discussed as an egg itself, laid daily by the celestial goose, Seb, the god of the earth. The Phoenix is said to have emerged from this egg. The egg is also discussed in terms of a world egg, molded by Khnum from a lump of clay on his potter’s wheel (1).

Hinduism makes a connection between the content of the egg and the structure of the universe: for example, the shell represents the heavens, the white the air, and the yolk the earth. The Chandogya Upanishads describes the act of creation in terms of the breaking of an egg:

The Sun is Brahma—this is the teaching. A further explanation thereof (is as follows). In the beginning this world was merely non-being. It was existent. It developed. It turned into an egg. It lay for the period of a year. It was split asunder. One of the two egg-shell parts became silver, one gold. That which was of silver is this earth. That which was of gold is the sky … Now what was born therefrom is yonder sun (1).

Look. I can’t, in all honesty, keep any of this straight.

In Truth, who knows? NO one because none of us were there to recall how the facts went down.

I think the important thing to celebrate here is:

Easter is all about renewal. Of self; of life.

Giving ourselves — and each other — another chance.

And that is cause enough for some egg hunts and good food. Enjoy.