#dea syria

[atargatiscorona]

[dea-syria]

It is certain that the first worshipers of the Syrian goddess in the Latin world were slaves. During the wars against Antiochus the Great a number of prisoners were sent to Italy to be sold at public auction, as was the custom, and the first appearance in Italy of the Chaldaei has been connected with that event. The Chaldaei were Oriental fortune-tellers who asserted that their predictions were based on the Chaldean astrology. They found credulous clients among the farm laborers, and Cato gravely exhorts the good landlord to oust them from his estate. Beginning with the second century before Christ, merchants began to import Syrian slaves. At that time Delos was the great trade center in this human commodity, and in that island especially Atargatis was worshiped by citizens of Athens and Rome. Trade spread her worship in the Occident. We know that the great slave revolution that devastated Sicily in 134 B. C. was started by a slave from Apamea, a votary of the Syrian goddess. Simulating divine madness, he called his companions to arms, pretending to act in accordance with orders from heaven.This detail, which we know by chance, shows how considerable a proportion of Semites there was in the gangs working the fields, and how much authority Atargatis enjoyed in the rural centers.

--Franz Cumont, "The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism", 1911

Atargatis, the Romans' "Dea Syria" or Syrian Goddess, was worshiped by Syrian slaves, and inspired a slave revolt.

An example of the goddess's role as liberator and instigator of divine madness.

[hearthglow]

Imminet Leoni Virgo caeles- ti situ spicifera iusti in- ventrix urbium conditrix ex quis muneribus nosse con- tigit deos: ergo eadem mater divum Pax Virtus Ceres dea Syria lance vitam et iura pensitans. in caelo visum Syria sidus edi- dit Libyae colendum: inde cuncti didicimus. ita intellexit numine inductus tuo Marcus Caecilius Do- natianus militans tribunus in praefecto dono principis                        

The Virgin in her heavenly place rides upon the Lion; bearer of corn, inventor of law, founder of cities, by whose gifts it is man's good lot to know the gods: therefore she is the Mother of the gods, Peace, Virtue, Ceres, the Syrian Goddess, weighing life and laws in her balance. Syria has sent the constellation seen in the heavens to Libya to be worshiped: thence have we all learned. Thus has Marcus Caecilius Donatianus understood, led by thy godhead, while serving as tribune in the post of prefect by the Emperor's gift.

- RIB 1791

[atargatiscorona]

[dea-syria]

The primitive statue of the goddess of Pessinus, a black stone or baetyl dignified by the name of the Mother of the Gods, was transported to Rome in the stress of the Second Punic War and there became the centre of a ritual served by eunuch priests supported by the State; while, later, her analogue, the Syrian goddess, whose temple at Hierapolis, according to Lucian, required a personnel of over three hundred ministrants, became the object of the special devotion of the Emperor Nero.

--Francis Legge, "Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity"

[dea-syria]

Queen Of Heaven

There are clear, historically attested links between the goddesses Inanna (of Sumer), Ishtar (of Akkad), Astarte (of Phoenicia and Canaan), Atargatis/Derceto/Dea Syria (of Hierapolis in Syria), Anahita (of Persia), Anahit/Anaitis (of Armenia), and Aphrodite (of Greece, esp. Cyprus).

There are weaker connections between this Mediterranean/Near Eastern goddess and Al-Lat (of Palmyra in Syria), Argimpasa (of Scythia), Cybele (of Phrygia), the Minoan dove-goddess (of Crete), Hathor and Isis (of Egypt) and perhaps even Saraswati in India.

What do we know about this goddess? What do her different forms have in common?

She is reliably identified with the planet Venus and the morning star.

She is frequently called the “queen of heaven” or “heavenly”.

She is a goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality.

This includes not only heterosexual love but lesbianism (Aphrodite was Sappho’s patron), gay sexuality (see the references to ”Aphrodite Ourania” in the Symposium), and transgender sexual identity (see the trans priestesses of Ishtar, Atargatis, Cybele, and Argimpasa).

It also includes sex workers -- both ritual prostitutes and ordinary/secular courtesans.

She is a patron of art, song, poetry, dance, and divination. She provides divine inspiration and altered states of madness, frenzy, or prophecy.  She liberates slaves.

There are many myths in which she takes a mortal lover, who dies (sometimes at her hand), and she mourns for him; sometimes he is raised from the dead.

Inanna and Dumuzi

Ishtar and Tammuz

Venus and Adonis

Cybele and Attis

She is a universal goddess of nature and life, deemed responsible for heaven and earth and sea, presiding over the entire natural order.

she is often associated with the sea (Atargatis, Aphrodite) or with rivers (Anahita) -- water being the source of life and birth.

she is eternal, primordial, timeless; she renews her virginity despite giving birth.

she is a lawgiver, judge, and patron of oaths

she is both a goddess of peace and of war

Her most frequent symbols:

the rose

the dove

the lion

the star

sea creatures (seashells, fish) and seaside plants (palm trees, myrtle)

[dea-syria]

The goddess whom the Syrians invoked, beside the sun-god, had various names. According to the fragments of Philo, El had handed over the government of the city of Byblus to Baaltis, _i.e._ to Bilit, the “mistress.” At Ascalon she was known as Derceto, at Hierapolis  as Atargatis; the Hebrews call her Ashera. Herodotus calls the goddess of Ascalon Aphrodite Urania; he also denotes her as the goddess of the sexual impulse and of procreation, and mentions the temple at Ascalon, as the oldest temple of this goddess which he knew… Cinyras, the first king of Byblus, is said to have erected shrines to Aphrodite at Byblus and in Cyprus, and his daughters are said to have paid service to the goddess with their persons. The maidens of Byblus waited for strangers in the market-places, just as the maidens of Babylon waited in the temple, and the price of compliance was paid, as in Babylon, to Aphrodite. Of the maidens of Cyprus we are told that they went down to the sea shore in order to sell themselves to the sailors on landing. We also find that sacred servants, male and female, who dedicated themselves to this form of worship, were always to be found in the temples of the Syrian goddess, and even married women entered their ranks at certain times…. Beside the rich and ancient temple of Derceto at Ascalon was a lake abounding in fish. At Hierapolis the image of Atargatis, which had a dove on the head, was carried down to the lake near the temple. This image of “the Assyrian Urania” was also carried down to the sea, amid a great crowd collected from Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia.[513] The image of Derceto at Ascalon, on the shore of the sea, in that temple which was the oldest of Urania, known to Herodotus, was a woman as far as the waist, but from the thighs downwards she had the body of a fish.From the custom of carrying the image of the goddess to pools of water, and the form of the goddess at Ascalon, has arisen the legend of the Greeks, that at Ascalon or Hierapolis she threw herself into the water, and was changed into a fish. The colonies of the Phenicians worshipped a Venus Marina, and the goddess of Berytus is said to have come from the sea; with the Greeks the goddess of Cyprus and Cythera is said to have risen from the sea. Appian remarks that the goddess of Hierapolis was regarded by some as Aphrodite, by others as Hera, and by others again as the source and spring of all that came out of moisture. Hence the Bilit (Baaltis) of Byblus, the Derceto of Ascalon, the Atargatis of Hierapolis, the Ashera of the Hebrews, was a deity favourable to birth and fertility, the power of nature which creates from moisture and water.

Max Duncker, History of Antiquity

Recurrent themes:

sexuality, fertility, birth

sacred prostitution

the sea

mermaids

sailors

doves

[dea-syria]

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 [Aphrodite], who was later called the Syrian goddess.

Pseudo-Hyginus