12/10/2023 0 Comments QuotatargatisTwo well preserved temples in Niha, Lebanon are dedicated to her and to Hadad. In the temples of Atargatis at Palmyra and at Dura-Europos she appeared repeatedly with her consort, Hadad, and in the richly syncretic religious culture at Dura-Europos, was worshipped as Artemis Azzanathkona. 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. There is reference in 2 Maccabees 12.26 and 1 Maccabees 5:43 to an Atargateion or Atergateion, a temple of Atargatis, at Carnion in Gilead, but the home of the goddess was unquestionably not Israelor Canaan, but Syria itself at Hierapolis Bambyce she had a temple in her name. The two deities were probably of common origin and have many features in common, but their cults are historically distinct. And from that day to the present no one in Urhâi emasculates himself anymore.Īs a consequence of the first half of the name, Atargatis has frequently, though wrongly, been identified as ‘Ashtart. But when King Abgar became a believer, he commanded that anyone who emasculated himself should have a hand cut off. Īccording to a third-century Syriac source, "In Syria and in Urhâi the men used to castrate themselves in honor of Taratha. 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. Michael Rostovtzeff called her "the great mistress of the North Syrian lands". However, there is no evidence that Atargatis was worshipped at Ascalon, and all iconographic evidence shows her as anthropomorphic. She is sometimes described as a mermaid-goddess, due to identification of her with a fish-bodied goddess at Ascalon. Her chief sanctuary was at Hierapolis, modern Manbij, northeast of Aleppo, Syria. 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. Ctesias also used the name Derceto for her, and the Romans called her Dea Syriae ("Syrian goddess"). Atargatis /əˈtɑːrɡətɪs/ or Ataratheh (/əˈtærəθə/ Aramaic: ‘Atar‘atheh or Tar‘atheh) was the chief goddess of northern Syria in Classical Antiquity.
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