Al-Lat (, ), also spelled Allat, Allatu, and Alilat, is a pre-Islamic Arabian goddess, at one time worshipped under various associations throughout the entire Arabian Peninsula, including Mecca, where she was worshipped alongside Al-Uzza and Manat. She was depicted as the feminine counterpart, consort, or daughter of Allah. The word Allat or Elat has been used to refer to various goddesses in the ancient Near East, including the goddess Asherah-Athirat. She also is associated with the Great Goddess.
The worship of al-Lat is attested in South Arabian inscriptions as Lat and Latan, but she had more prominence in north Arabia and the Hejaz, and her cult reached as far as Syria. The writers of the Safaitic script frequently invoked al-Lat in their inscriptions. She was also worshipped by the Nabataeans and was associated with al-'Uzza. The presence of her cult was attested in both Palmyra and Hatra. Under Greco-Roman influence, her iconography began to show the attributes of Athena, the Greek goddess of war, as well as Athena's Roman equivalent Minerva. According to Islamic sources, the tribe of Banu Thaqif in Ta'if especially held reverence to her.
In Islamic tradition, her worship ended in the seventh century when her temple in Ta'if was demolished on the orders of Muhammad.
Etymology
The etymology of "al-Lat" is ultimately uncertain, with two sometimes competing theories, one based on Arabic traditions, the other on similarities with other Semitic religions. In the first, "al-Lat" is derived from a word meaning "to knead"; in the second, her name is akin to the feminine form of "Allah". Due to the association between the two names, debate over these derivations have been influenced by the belief among some Muslims that the word "Allah", referred to as Lafẓ al-Jalālah (The Word of Majesty), is a proper name, one that God chose for Himself, and not a title or derived from a title. Consequently, by making the word "Allat" a feminine form of "Allah" and a name itself derived from a title, is in conflict with such a non-derivation belief about the word "Allah".
Medieval Arab lexicographers derived the name from the verb latta (to mix or knead barley-meal). It has also been associated with the "idol of jealousy" erected in the temple of Jerusalem according to the Book of Ezekiel, which was offered an oblation of barley-meal by the husband who suspected his wife of infidelity. It can be inferred from al-Kalbi's Book of Idols that a similar ritual was practiced in the vicinity of the image of al-Lat.
The second etymology takes al-Lat to be a feminine form akin to the name Allah.. A similar theory is held for the ending of "ˀil+āh" to "ˀil" which is elsewhere only sporadically attested in Arabic but has left its trace in the -ā vocatives of (, 'father'), (, 'brother'), (, 'father-in-law'). It should be noted, many gods and goddesses were referred to by the titles "al-ˀilāh" and "al-ˀilāt", and so it is not certain that the goddess referenced by Herodotus is one and the same.
More recent to both these theories, epigraphic evidence has revealed Old North Arabian languages (such as Safaitic and Hismaic), with forms lacking any definite article, leaving the form lt attested. al-Jallad (often considered the expert on these specific languages) groups the names ˀlh, lh, ˀlt, and lt together as variations, as Safaitic proper nouns lack definite articles (while Hismaic has suffixed definite articles instead of prefixed). MacDonald his mentor and leader of the OCIANA (Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of North Arabia) on the other hand considers this mistaken. He views that references to ˀlt and lt are different with ˀlt being a generic term for goddess and lt being a proper name. This does not however tell us much about the history of the word prior to becoming a proper name, only however potentially explains the wider conflation with the word and the Arabic root ( to bruise or bray, esp. barely wheat; grind, crumble, or making of flour and by ext. bread).
The goddess Asherah or Athirat was sometimes titled ˀlt "Elat" a word akin to the feminine equivalent/consort of the deity El. The Chaldean "Allat" is seen as a title for the Mesopotamian goddess Ereshkigal, the goddess of death (although the title is more likely to be derived from instead of Semitic, but perhaps influenced by phono-semantic matching). A western Semitic goddess modeled on the Mesopotamian goddess was known accordingly as Allatum, and she was recognized in Carthage as Allatu.. Despite having been examined by some scholars, the connections however to the Arabian goddess 'Al-Lat' has not yet been established and the issue remains unsettled.
The goddess Allat's name is recorded as:
- () in Imperial Aramaic;
- () in Nabataean Arabic;
- () in Palmyrene Aramaic;
- (), (), and () in Safaitic;
- () in Dadanitic;
- () in Thamudic;
- () in Ancient Greek;
- () and () in Sabaean;
- in Classical Arabic.
Attestations
Pre-Islamic era
Al-Lat was mentioned as Alilat by the Greek historian Herodotus in his fifth-century BC work Histories, and she was considered the equivalent of Aphrodite (Aphrodite Urania):
According to Herodotus, the ancient Arabians believed in only two deities:
Al-Lat was widely worshipped in north Arabia, but in South Arabia she was not popular and was not the object of an organized cult, with two amulets (inscribed "Lat" on one, "Latan" on the other) being the only indication that this goddess received worship in the area. However, she seems to have been popular among the Arab tribes bordering Yemen.
thumb|200x200px|Remains of the [[Temple of Al-Lat|temple of al-Lat, Palmyra, Syria|alt=]]
A temple was built for al-Lat in Iram of the Pillars, by the tribe of ʿĀd. Al-Lat was referred to as "the goddess who is in Iram" in a Nabataean inscription. She was also referred to as "the goddess who is in Bosra". Perhaps a local Hijazi form of her attested in Hegra alongside Dushara and Manat was "Allat of 'Amnad".
Al-Lat was closely related to al-'Uzza, and in some regions of the Nabataean kingdom, both al-Lat and al-'Uzza were said to be the same goddess. John F. Healey believes that al-Lat and al-'Uzza originated as a single goddess, which parted ways in the pre-Islamic Meccan tradition. Susan Krone suggests that both al-Lat and al-'Uzza were uniquely fused in central Arabia.
thumb|Statue of an enthroned Arabian goddess or idol, probably Al-Lat, from Hatra, Iraq. second to third century CE. Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraq
Al-Lat was also venerated in Palmyra, where she was known as the "Lady of the temple". According to an inscription, she was brought into the Arab quarter of the city by a member of the Bene Ma'zin tribe, who were probably an Arab tribe.