ʿAṯtar

ʿAṯtar is a deity whose role, name, and even gender varied across ancient Semitic religion. In both genders, ʿAṯtar is identified with the planet Venus, the morning and evening star. ʿAṯtar is a prominent character in the Baal Cycle.

Name

The name appears in various Semitic languages as:

• the feminine form () in Akkadian;
• the masculine form (, ) in Arabic;
• and the masculine form () in Ethiosemitic.

Attestations

Among Amorites

At Ugarit

The Ugaritic masculine variant of ʿAṯtar, (), appears in the Baʿal Cycle.Template:Sfn

The Northwest Semitic feminine form of ʿAṯtar, the Great Goddess (), is often mentioned in Ugaritic ritual texts, but played a minor role in mythological texts.Template:Sfn

Among Aramaeans

Among the Aramaeans, ʿAṯtar appears in a masculine form as the god (), in which capacity he was identified with the baetyl as (, Template:Lit).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Within the ancient Aramaean religion, the deceased ancestors of the clans, called , were worshipped as idealised figures who could become assimilated to ʿAttar, as evidenced by personal names such as (, Template:Lit), and and (, Template:Lit).Template:Sfn

The use of the name of the god ʿAttar as a theophoric element is attested in the name (, Template:Lit), which is attested on an 8th-century BC stamp seal and was also the name of the earliest known ruler of Laqē, as well as (, Template:Lit), which was the name of two rulers of the kingdom of Bēt-Gūš. The name of this god always appears in the masculine form even in women's names, such as ʿAttar-ramat and ʿAttar-ṭabat, thus attesting that the Aramaean ʿAttar was a distinctly masculine deity.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

One of the hypostases of the Aramaean ʿAttar was (), that is the ʿAttar of the Heavens: in this role, ʿAttar was the incarnation of the sky's procreative power in the form of the moisture provided by rain, which made fertile his consort, the goddess of the Earth which has been dried up by the summer heat. Due to ʿAttar's role as a provider of rain, his epithet "of the Heavens" refers to his manifestation as lightning and thunder in the skies.Template:Sfn

The name of the goddess who was the consort of ʿAttar is itself not attested in Aramaic, but is recorded in Sabaic as () or (), which was derived from the South Semitic root (), itself a declension of the Semitic root , meaning "to be dry." The position of Hūbis/Huwbis as the consort of ʿAttar-Šamayin is attested by the depiction of a goddess in front of a standing worshipper on an 8th-century Aramaean cylinder seal, with the image of a vulva, the symbol of Hūbis/Huwbis, being present behind the goddess and over a recumbent gazelle - the sacred animal of ʿAttar - over which was also inscribed the name of the god himself.Template:Sfn

The earliest record of ʿAttar-Šamayin is from an Aramaic inscription on the 8th-century BC cylinder seal belonging to an individual named , who is described in the inscription as a (. Template:Lit); Barruq's own name, which means "thunder," was a reference to ʿAttar-Šamayin in his role as a god associated with thunder and lightning.Template:Sfn

In Africa

In the Kingdom of Aksum situated in the Horn of Africa, ʿAttar was worshiped: as the god of the sun and moon and as the father of the other members of the Axumite pantheon: Maher and Beher, the former of which they shared with the Himyarite Kingdom. He was associated with the god Zeus.

In South Arabia

Among the ancient South Arabians, () was a masculine deity who had retained the prominence of his role as the deity of the planet Venus as the Morning Star, and was a god presiding over thunderstorms and who provided natural irrigation as rain.Template:Sfn ʿAṯtar thus held a very important place within the ancient South Arabian pantheon, in which he replaced the old Semitic high god ʾIl as the supreme deity.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The name of ʿAṯtar was suffixed with a mimation in the South Arabian kingdom of Ḥaḍramawt, thus giving the Ḥaḑramitic form ().Template:Sfn

Within South Arabian polytheism, ʿAṯtar held a supreme position within the cosmology of the ancient South Arabians as the god presiding over the whole world, always appeared first in lists, and had various manifestations with their own epithets.Template:Sfn The rulers of the ancient South Arabian states would offer ritual banquets in honour of ʿAṯtar, with the banquet being paid for from the tithe offered to the god by the populace.Template:Sfn

The patron deity of the Qatabānians, however, was the Moon-god, variously called (, in Qatabān) or (, in Ḥaḍramawt), who was seen as being closer to the people compared to the more distant figure of ʿAṯtar, and the people of these states consequently called themselves the children of their respective Moon-god.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The hunter god

The South Arabian ʿAṯtar was a hunter god, and the ancient South Arabians performed ritual hunts in his honour as fertility rites with the goal of making the rain fall. The chosen prey during these hunts were probably gazelles, which were sacred to ʿAṯtar.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

This hunter aspect of ʿAṯtar is also present in his Northwest Semitic feminine variant, who is called (, Template:Lit) in one passage of an Ugaritic text. The Sabaic hallowed phrase (, Template:Lit) itself had a parallel in a reference to (, Template:Lit) in a text from Emar.Template:Sfn

One of the hypostases of the South Arabian ʿAṯtar was (), whose name, which was a -pattern Semitic word formation meaning "rainfall," was related to Geʽez (), Amharic (), Tigrē (), and Eastern Gurage (), all meaning "rainy season." Kirrūm was thus a form of ʿAṯtar who provided fertility in the form of the rain he dispensed.Template:Sfn

The Babylonians identified Kirrūm, under the name (), with their own goddess (), who was herself the goddess of the planet Venus as well as the Mesopotamian feminine form of ʿAṯtar.Template:Sfn

Another hypostasis of the South Arabian ʿAṯtar was (), that is ʿAṯtar of the East, who was invoked especially in curses as an avenger god against enemies.Template:Sfn

Among Arabs

ʿAṯtar was worshipped as a masculine deity among the ancient Arabs, who during the Iron Age were located principally in the Syrian Desert and North Arabia.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Similarly to the link between ʿAttar and the ancestral cult of the among the Aramaeans, there also existed a connection between ʿAttar and the cult of the ancestors among Arabs which is attested from as early as the 7th century BC in the form of a personal name recorded in Akkadian as (), from an original Ancient North Arabian form , in which the divine patron of a clan or tribe, the (, of which is the -type broken plural), is assimilated to ʿAttar.Template:Sfn

One 8th century BC Aramaic inscription found in a tomb in a region of the Zagros Mountains close to a Mannaean royal tomb mentions ʿAttar as (), that is a variant of ʿAttar whose epithet was the Old Arabic plural form of (), Template:Lit, with ʿAttar-Muṣurūn thus being ʿAttar of the Marches. The name "the Marches" itself was the designation assigned by the Mesopotamians to the northern Ḥijāz and the Negev. The name of the deity is followed by the title (), corresponding to Ancient North Arabian () and Ethiosemitic (), and meaning "the ruler."Template:Sfn

ʿAttar-Muṣurūn was thus the main deity of North Arabia, and the tomb in which his name was found inscribed likely belonged to an Arab who had been deported by the Assyrians to their northeastern border regions.Template:Sfn

In Qedar

The Qedarite Arabs worshipped ʿAṯtar in his form of , whose name is attested in Ancient North Arabian as (). Assyrian records mention this god, referred to in Akkadian as (, reflecting the Aramaic form rather than the Ancient North Arabian ), as one of the Qedarite deities whose idols were captured as war booty by the Neo-Assyrian king Sîn-ahhī-erība and was returned to the Qedarites by his son and successor Aššur-aḫa-iddina.Template:Sfn

The worship of ʿAṯtar in his form of was also practised by the Qedarites, as attested by an inscription of the Neo-Assyrian king Aššur-aḫa-iddina mentioning this deity in Akkadian as (), with the dissimilation of the epithet into reflecting the influence of Akkadian () and Aramaic (), meaning "priest."Template:Sfn

In Palmyra

At Palmyra, where lived a large Arab population, the Arab ʿAṯtar was assimilated with the Arameo-Canaanite great god, Baʿal, in the form of , later (), that is Baʿal-ʿAṯtar.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

In Canaan

The masculine form () existed among the Canaanite peoples as an astral deity, which is attested by his mention along with the Moon-God Šaggar in the 9th or 7th century BC Dayr ʿAllā inscription, the subject of which is largely the Sun-goddess Šamāš, thus forming a triad of the Sun, Moon, and Venus similarly to the one attested in South Arabia, and suggesting a South Arabian religious influence in Moab. The hypostases of ʿAṯtar who appear among the various Canaanite peoples might have been an indigenous Transjordanian variation of his or local adaptations of the North Arabian variant of the god.Template:Sfn

In Phoenicia

A possible Phoenician variant of might be attested as a theophoric element () in a personal name from Byblos, ().Template:Sfn

In the 5th century BC, under the Achaemenid Empire, a shrine dedicated to existed in the Sharon Plain in Canaan, at a location corresponding to the present-day Israeli town of Elyakhin, where he was worshipped by Phoenicians, Aramaeans, and Arabs.Template:Sfn

Arabian units of the Achaemenid army stationed in Canaan during the 5th century BC who participated in the cult of have left inscriptions recording his name, suffixed with a mimation to differentiate him from the Canaanite feminine form of ʿAṯtar, (), in the Phoenician and Aramaic scripts as and (). This form of the god's name was distinctly North Arabian, showing that the worshippers who had left these inscriptions were originally from North Arabia, possibly from Taymāʿ or Dadān.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

File:Warrior Moab Louvre AO5055.jpg

The Moabite deity Kamōš

In Moab

ʿAštar was attested among the Canaanite people of the Moabites during the 9th century BC, when he was identified with the patron god of Moab, (), in the form of ().Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

According to the inscription of the Moabite king Mōšaʿ on the victory stele commemorating his triumph in a war against the Israelites, he had sacrificed the whole population of the town of Nebo to ʿAštar-Kamōš. This was likely due to the influence of the South Arabian ʿAṯtar-Šariqān, that is of ʿAštar's hypostasis as an avenger deity who was invoked in curses against enemies.Template:Sfn

Legacy

In popular culture

ʿAštar appears as the demon Ashtar in the video game Shin Megami Tensei II.

See also

• Asherah
• Venus in culture
• Lucifer

Sources

• .