From Women's Dictionary of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker

Springtime sacrificial festival named for the Sacon Goddess Eostre, or Ostara, a northern form of Astarte. Her sacred month was Eastre-monath, the Moon of Eostre.

Astarte, the Lady of Babylon, is one of the oldest forms of the Great Goddess in the Middle East, identified with Egypt's Hathor, Mycenae's Demeter, Cyprus' Aphrodite. She was the same creating-preserving-and-destroying Goddess worshipped by all the Indo-European cultures, and still typified by Kali as the symbol of Nature. Astarte was the "true sovereign of the world," tirelessly creating and destroying, eliminating the old and generating the new. Sidonian kinds could not rule without her permission. Each king styled himself first and foremost "Priest of Astarte."

Saxon poets apparently knew Eostre was the same Goddess as India's Great Mother Kali. Beowulf spoke of "ganger' waters, whose flood waves ride down into an unknown sea near Eostre's far home.

The Easter Bunny was older than Christianity; it was the Moon-hare sacred to the Goddess in both eastern and western nations. Recalling the myths of Hathor-Astarte who laid the Golden Egg of the sun, Germans used to say the hare would lay eggs for good children on Easter Eve.

I would note also the further influence of Astarte/Eostre/Estre in that the female hormone associated with fertility is Estrogen – a term that comes from the fertility Goddess Eostre.

Take Care – Be Well – Blessed Be,

Carl