>>14551885

(Please read from the start)

And this brings me to Atargatis. I’ve been very troubled by a mysterious female deity which cult had the current Syrian/Turkish border region as a starting point (on the map). This specific deity was known as the “mysterious Northern Syrian Goddess”. She was known later on as “Dea Syria”. She mutated as well and had many names, including Allat. I think she is a mutation or a form of the Evil Lady (maybe closer than Inanna’s). The closest we probably have to the original form of the Evil Lady is in the Taurus mountain chain. I looked a lot, searched for a long time, read loads of archives and excavation data, including many artifacts. I’ve managed to zoom in on Atargatis after many years. Let’s take a look at her shall we? = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atargatis

“Atargatis /əˈtɑːrɡətɪs/ or Ataratheh (/əˈtærəθə/; Aramaic: 'Atar'atheh or Tar'atheh) was the chief goddess of northern Syria in Classical antiquity. Ctesias also used the name Derketo (Ancient Greek: Δερκετὼ) for her, and the Romans called her Dea Syria, or in one word Deasura. 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, northeast of Aleppo, Syria.

Michael Rostovtzeff called her "the great mistress of the North Syrian lands". 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.”

>> Anons, Atargatis (including the name) is the mutated form of the Evil lady starting with the Greeks then all the way to the Romans, passing by the Seleucids. What you are about to read is how she was seen from the Greeks era onward. But I have dug for information and searched for artifacts about her and I have found out that the name might give a Greek connotation to it and some mutation did happen, but the cult of this specific goddess is incredibly old in (mostly) northern Syria. There is no written information what-so-ever about that ancient northern Syrian goddess, not as ancient as the artifacts I’ve came across. The cult is incredibly old, but the name and the documentation about her are mostly around the Greek influence period in the region. Notice the similarities with her name (=Ataratheh) and Astarte = a mutation of her name. We are still talking about the Evil Lady here, but under a mutated form.

“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.”

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.”

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>>14557916

(Please read from the start)

>> Amazing! The Cult of Atargatis, a mutated form of the cult of Inanna/The Evil Lady, still persisted in Israel during the Seleucide time and beyond. Yet they tell you it was not the Jews. It was the pagans…then….aren’t there “a few” Jews there and too many pagans? You have 2 possibilities here in front of you:

1 – Either the Jews practiced the cult of Atargatis, a mutated form from Anat (we just saw her); herself a mutated form of Inanna = the Evil Lady.

2 – Or there were too little Jews in the area to be able to “ban” or stop the cult of Atargatis. This is why it was widespread in Israel back then.

So which do you think it is? Have a pick because both are correct.

“Origin and name

Atargatis is seen as a continuation of Bronze Age goddesses. At Ugarit, cuneiform tablets attest multiple Canaanite goddesses, among them three are considered as relevant to theories about the origin of Atargatis:

• ʾAṭirat, described as "Lady of the Sea" (rabbatu ʾatiratu yammi) and "mother of the gods"

• ʿAnat, a war goddess

• ʿAțtart, a goddess of the hunt also sharing Anat's warlike role, regarded as analogous to Ishtar and Ishara in Ugaritic god lists and as such possibly connected to love.”

>> Read carefully the characteristics of the 3 deities mentioned just now. They are all the characteristics of the Evil Lady. We are seeing the mutated forms of her. Multiple ones and with each form of hers taking a specific aspect of her. It’s amazing isn’t it how younger generations made spaghetti out of the truth. The younger generations messed up things big times. Their confusion confused us and is still misleading us.

“John Day asserts that all three shared many traits with each other and may have been worshipped in conjunction or separately during 1500 years of cultural history. While the worship of Ashtart and Anat as a pair is well attested, Steve A. Wiggins found no evidence Ashtart was ever conflated with Athirat. He also pointed out that the concept of Athirat, Anat and Ashtart as a trinity of sorts (popularized by authors like Tikva Frymer-Kensky), is modern and ignores the role of other deities in Ugarit - for example Shapash; as well as the importance of the connection between Athirat and El.”

>> All of these deities have one origin = the Evil Lady whom came out of the Ark, settled somewhere in the Taurus Mountain Chain at first. When the Flood water receded, she came down the Euphrates and stayed for some time somewhere in Mesopotamia. During all of this time, her cult was spreading in northern Syria, Israel, Mesopotamia and Anatolia, as well as the Armenian Plateau and Persia.

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>>14557917

(Please read from the start)

But for some reason, the Evil Lady attacked herself the Phoenician City-States. Neith came to the “rescue” and confronted her, many battles must have occurred between the 2 sides for some time. All of this time the cult was still spreading and by then, it had reached Phoenicia and Greece. Her cult is a later addition in Phoenicia because the Lebanese mountain range acted as a natural barrier making it difficult to cross with the caravans etc. Her cult showed up earlier in Ugarit than the other Phoenician City-States because it was located beyond the barrier of the Lebanese mountains (to their North) = easy access for migrating waves or caravans. As well as, it showed up earlier in Jordan and Israel because both are outside of the Lebanese mountains. These mountains acted as a fortification walls and they slowed down the spread into heartland Phoenicia of her cult. That cult spread easier and faster on the North and South of Phoenicia heartland where there was no natural barrier to slow it down.

“The name Atargatis derives from the Aramaic form ʿAtarʿatheh, which comes in several variants. At Hierapolis Bambyce (modern day Manbij) on coins of about the 4th century BCE, the legend ʿtrʿth appears, for ʿAtarʿate, and ʿtrʿth mnbgyb in a Nabataean inscription; at Kafr Yassif near Akko an altar is inscribed "to Adado and Atargatis, the gods who listen to prayer"; and the full name ʿtrʿth appears on a bilingual inscription found in Palmyra.”

>> See what I was explaining in the paragraph just above? Locate the cities mentioned here on a map and see how they are on the North and South of the Lebanese mountains. It’s like her cult spread like a crescent around the mountains and slowly got its way into Phoenicia with time. It didn’t originate in Phoenicia. This is also applied to the cult of Ishtar and Astarte. They all followed the same “road” = pattern into Phoenicia; because of the geography of the area, just like it was with Euphrates coming down from Armenia. The key role = the main role is the Geography of the area. It’s the major element dictating the flow of things.

There are many coins from the Seleucides, I’m going to put a sample for anons and I’m going to talk a bit about the iconography of Atargatis on the back side of the coin = the reverse.

Atargatis is depicted standing in the middle of the reverse side of the coins. There are inscriptions on each side of her which anons can find (along with translation) in online numismatic catalogues. The deity is standing facing us. She is wearing a veil which we see as thin line all around her – making a little arch like turn on top of her head. Both of her hands are in the same position as we saw in earlier iconography of the Evil lady = lifting the skirt position. But here, her arms are not held that high, they are depicted lower. She is definitely holding something in each arm. We know from her standard sculptures that she is depicted holding wheat, which we can see here depicted on each side of her head – remember anons, this is a tiny coin we are examining here, so don’t fuss too much on the quality of the art.

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