1,5 🌟

I was expecting an archaeological journey of the cult of Aphrodite/Venus with a more scholarly approach... Well. It wasn't that.

The fact that there were no references or sources, only a vague "select bibliography" should have been warning enough. After 10 pages, I got worried of the terms and vocabulary employed to the point where I checked if it was self published by some obscure self-proclaimed scholar. After 130 pages I skimmed through to the end.

The writing was unbearable. It wasn't scholarly, it didn't refer to anything, it was meaninglessly flowery, it was written like a series of anecdotes related to Aphrodite and Venus rather than actual facts and research on the topic of her cult. I don't know much about Aphrodite herself, but I know enough about archaeology and cults to know that, if not entirely wrong, 70% of what was written was lacking depth and accuracy. I feel like I've learned nothing of Aphrodite's temples and cults, in Greece, and then for her Roman equivalent, for Venus.

Talking of equivalents... I was extremely uncomfortable and, later on, annoyed by her talking of the goddesses Inanna, Astarte and Ishtar as "grandmothers" of Aphrodite. They were deities in their own rights, from their own Mesopotamian civilisations and cultures (which were not prehistoric!!!). Although associated to one anothers, these deities weren't part of a "family tree" or "descendants" as Bettany Hughes tried to confusedly explain, they were worshipped individually and side by side by several people in the antic world.

It's a shame that this book wasn't handled from a scholar and more archaeological angle because the topic is very interesting.