The great goddess of the Levant was Astarte — ʿAshtart. In the Hebrew Bible she appears as Ashtoreth, and the widely-held explanation is that the scribes kept her consonants but lent her the vowels of bosheth, “shame” — so her own name reads as an insult. The same fingerprint marks Molech (the consonants of melek, “king,” pointed with “shame”) and the old names Ish-baal and Merib-baal, rewritten Ish-bosheth and Mephibosheth — “baal” traded for “shame.” Not erased, but renamed: the rival’s gods left standing in the text, spelled out as disgrace.