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Fertile Crescent
myth series
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Near Eastern Religions
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Atargatis /əˈtɑːrɡəts/ or Ataratheh (/əˈtærəθə/; Aramaic: ‘Atar‘atheh or Tar‘atheh‎‎) was the chief goddess of northern Syria in Classical Antiquity.[1][2] Ctesias also used the name Derceto for her,[3] and the Romans called her Dea Syriae ("Syrian goddess"). Primarily she was a goddess of fertility, but, as the baalat ("mistress") of her city and people, she was also responsible for their protection and well-being. Her chief sanctuary was at Hierapolis, modern Manbij,[4] northeast of Aleppo, Syria. She is sometimes described as a mermaid-goddess, due to identification of her with a fish-bodied goddess at Ascalon. However, there is no evidence that Atargatis was worshipped at Ascalon, and all iconographic evidence shows her as anthropomorphic.[5]

Michael Rostovtzeff called her "the great mistress of the North Syrian lands".[2] Her consort is usually Hadad. As Ataratheh, doves and fish were considered sacred to her: doves as an emblem of the Love-Goddess, and fish as symbolic of the fertility and life of the waters.[6]

According to a third-century Syriac source, "In Syria and in Urhâi [Edessa] the men used to castrate themselves in honor of Taratha. But when King Abgar became a believer, he commanded that anyone who emasculated himself should have a hand cut off. And from that day to the present no one in Urhâi emasculates himself anymore."[7]

Name and origin[edit]

The name Atargatis derives from the Aramaic form ‘Atar‘atheh, which comes in several variants. At Hierapolis Bambyce (Manbij) on coins of about the 4th century BCE, the legend tr‘th appears, for 'Atar'ate, and tr‘th mnbgyb in a Nabataean inscription; at Kafr Yassif near Akko an altar is inscribed "to Adado and Atargatis, the gods who listen to prayer";[8] and the full name ‘tr‘th appears on a bilingual inscription found in Palmyra.

‘Atar‘atheh is seen as a continuation of Bronze Age goddesses. At Ugarit, cuneiform tablets attest the three great Canaanite goddesses 'Aṭirat (Asherah) — described as a fecund "Lady Goddess of the Sea" (rabbatu at̪iratu yammi) — ‘Anat (Anat, Anath), and ‘Ațtart (Astarte), who shared many traits with each other and may have been worshiped in conjunction or separately during 1500 years of cultural history.[9][10] The name ‘Atar‘atheh is widely held to derive from a compound of the Aramaic form ‘Attar, which is a cognate of ‘Ațtart minus its feminine suffix -t, and ‘Attah or ‘Atā, a cognate of Anat.[11][12] (Cognates of Ugaritic ‘Ațtart include Phoenician ‘Aštart — Hellenized as AstarteOld Testament Hebrew ‘Aštoreth, and Himyaritic ‘Athtar. Compare the cognate Akkadian form Ištar.) Alternatively, the second half may be a Palmyrene divine name ‘Athe (i.e. tempus opportunum), which occurs as part of many compounds.[13] It has also been proposed that the element -gatis may relate to the Greek gados "fish".[14] (For example, the Greek name for "sea monster" or "whale" is the cognate term ketos). So Atar-Gatis may simply mean "the fish-goddess Atar".

Cult centers and images[edit]

The reverse of a coin of Demetrius III depicts fish-bodied Atargatis, veiled, holding the egg,[15] flanked by barley stalks
The reverse of a coin from Cyrrhestica depicts Atargatis riding a lion, wearing a mural crown, and holding a sceptre

As a consequence of the first half of the name, Atargatis has frequently, though wrongly, been identified as ‘Ashtart.[16] The two deities were probably of common origin and have many features in common, but their cults are historically distinct. There is reference in 2 Maccabees 12.26[17] and 1 Maccabees 5:43[18] to an Atargateion or Atergateion, a temple of Atargatis, at Carnion in Gilead, but the home of the goddess was unquestionably not Israel or Canaan, but Syria itself; at Hierapolis Bambyce she had a temple in her name. At Palmyra she appears on the coinage with a lion, or her presence is signalled with a lion and the crescent moon; an inscription mentions her. In the temples of Atargatis at Palmyra and at Dura-Europos[19] she appeared repeatedly with her consort, Hadad, and in the richly syncretic religious culture at Dura-Europos, was worshipped as Artemis Azzanathkona.[20] Two well preserved temples in Niha, Lebanon are dedicated to her and to Hadad. In the 1930s, numerous Nabatean bas-relief busts of Atargatis were identified by Nelson Glueck at Khirbet et-Tannûr, Jordan, in temple ruins of the early first century CE;[21] there the lightly veiled goddess's lips and eyes had once been painted red, and a pair of fish confronted one another above her head. Her wavy hair, suggesting water to Glueck, was parted in the middle. At Petra the goddess from the north was syncretised with a North Arabian goddess from the south al-Uzzah, worshipped in the one temple. At Dura-Europus among the attributes of Atargatis are the spindle and the sceptre or fish-spear.[22]

At her temples at Ascalon, Hierapolis Bambyce, and Edessa, there were fish ponds containing fish only her priests might touch.[23] Glueck noted in 1936 that "to this day there is a sacred fish-pond swarming with untouchable fish at Qubbet el-Baeddwī, a dervish monastery three kilometres east of Tripolis, Lebanon."[24]

The fishpond of fish sacred to Atargatis survives at Şanlıurfa, the ancient Edessa, its mythology transferred to Ibrahim




Atargatis mythology[edit]

Derceto, from Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 1652.






During the Roman era, eunuch priests worshipped Atargatis. Similar to the Galli priests of Cybele. At the shrine in Hieropolis founded by Semiramis, eunuch priests served the image of a fish-tailed woman. Rituals to the goddess were accompanied by flute playing and rattle shaking. In one rite, young males castrated themselves to become cross-dressing priests at the temple and thereafter performed tasks usually done by women. The obligatory lake or pond lay nearby, full of sacred fish which no one was allowed to eat; nor could anyone eat Atargatis’s sacred doves.[27] The priests were described by Apuleius as mendicants that traveled around with an image of the goddess dressed in a silken robe on the back of a donkey. When they arrived at village squares or a receptive estate they would perform an ecstatic rite, designed to attract a crowd and elicit their contributions. The priests were described as effeminate, wearing heavy makeup, turbans on their heads, and dressed in saffron colored robes of silk and linen; some in white tunics painted with purple stripes. They shouted and danced wildly to the music of flutes, whirling around with necks bent so that their long hair flew out; and in an ecstatic frenzy they would bite their own flesh and cut their arms with knives until they bled.[28]

According to a story retold by Lucian, the Assyrian queen Stratonice saw in a vision that she must build a temple at Hieropolis to the goddess and so the king sent her there with a young man named Combabus to execute the task. Knowing the queens reputation Combabus castrated himself and left his genitals, sealed in a box. When the queen fell in love with Combabus and tried to seduce him, he revealed his mutilation, but this didn't dissuade her from desiring his constant companionship. When Stratonice and Combabus returned home, she accused him of trying to seduce her, and Combabus was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. Combabus called for the sealed box to prove his innocence, where upon the king relented and rewarded Combabus for his loyalty. The temple was completed and a statue of Combabus was placed in it. This is said to be the origin of the practice of castration by the priests in the temple.

Another story ascribed to Combabus mentions that a certain foreign woman who had joined a sacred assembly, beholding a human form of extreme beauty and dressed in man's attire, became violently enamoured of him: after discovering that he was a eunuch, she committed suicide. Combabus accordingly in despair at his incapacity for love, donned woman's attire, so that no woman in future might be deceived in the same way.[29]


  1. ^ "Atargatis (Syrian deity) - Encyclopedia Britannica". 2013-08-13. Retrieved 2014-08-11. 
  2. ^ a b M. Rostovtseff, "Hadad and Atargatis at Palmyra", American Journal of Archeology 37 (January 1933), pp 58-63, examining Palmyrene stamped tesserae.
  3. ^ Strabo 16.785; Pliny, Natural History 5.81.
  4. ^ "Hierapolis, at". 2013-10-06. Retrieved 2014-08-11. 
  6. ^ "Atargatis, the Phoenician Great Goddess-Dea Syria Derketo Derceto mermaid goddess fish goddess water goddess canaanite goddess syrian goddess". Retrieved 2014-08-11. 
  7. ^ Walter Bauer; Robert A. Kraft; Gerhard Krodel (1996). Orthodoxy and heresy in earliest Christianity. Sigler Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-9623642-7-3. Retrieved 17 June 2012. 
  9. ^ John Day (1 December 2002). Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. Continuum. pp. 143–. ISBN 978-0-8264-6830-7. 
  11. ^ William Foxwell Albright (1968). Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: A Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths. Eisenbrauns. pp. 133–. ISBN 978-0-931464-01-0. 
  12. ^ Philo (of Byblos); Harold W. Attridge; Robert A. Oden (1981). The Phoenician history. Catholic Biblical Association of America. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-915170-08-1. 
  13. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica (1910; Hugh Chisholm, ed.), s.v. "Atargatis", page 823.
  14. ^ Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. "Atargatis" ( on-line text)
  15. ^ Hyginus, Fabula 197: "Into the Euphrates River an egg of wonderful size is said to have fallen, which the fish rolled to the bank. Doves sat on it, and when it was heated, it hatched out Venus, who was later called the Syrian goddess. Since she excelled the rest in justice and uprightness, by a favour granted by Jove, the fish were put among the number of the stars, and because of this the Syrians do not eat fish or doves, considering them as gods".
  17. ^ "on-line text". 2006-12-08. Retrieved 2014-08-11. 
  18. ^ Simply referring to "the temple that was in Carnaim" (on-line text).
  20. ^ Rostovtseff 1933:58-63; Dura-Europos III.
  23. ^ Lucian, De Dea Syria; Diodorus Siculus II.4.2.
  24. ^ Glueck 1936: p. 374, note 4
  25. ^ Lucian, De Dea Syria.
  26. ^ Macrobius. Saturnalia, 1.23.
  27. ^ Attridge and Oden 1976: 23, 37, 39, 55
  28. ^ Apuleius, The Golden Ass 8.26–28
  29. ^ Lucian, De Dea Syria 19–29


  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Atargatis". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

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