Atargatis (known as Derceto by the Greeks) was the chief goddess of northern Syria in classical antiquity. 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.
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 [Christian] 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". 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.
The original Aramaic name of the goddess was (), with its other forms including (), (), (), and the apocope form (). The name was composed of:
- (, from earlier ), which during the Iron Age had evolved from being the name of the goddess ʿAṯtart to become used to mean "goddess" in general, and was used in the name in the sense of "goddess";
- and (), which is the Aramaic variant of the name of the Semitic goddess ʿAnat.
The Greek name of the goddess, attested in the forms (), (), (), and (), was derived from the non-apocope forms of its original Aramaic name, while her Greek name () was derived from ().
Classical period
Various Greek and Latin writers have written about the goddess Atargatis or Derketo.
<!--start-->Atargatis generally appears as the wife of Hadad. They are the protecting deities of the community. Atargatis, wearing a mural crown, is the ancestor the royal house, the founder of social and religious life, the goddess of generation and fertility (hence the prevalence of phallic emblems), and the inventor of useful appliances.<!--end, of copy&paste from:-->
thumb|Derceto, from [[Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 1652.]]
Derceto was venerated in mermaid form, i.e., with "a face of a woman, and otherwise the entire body of a fish" in a shrine by Ashkelon, Syria, according to Diodorus (1st century BCE), drawing on Ctesias (5th century BCE); the attached myth explaining that Derceto transformed into a fish, after drowning herself in a nearby lake.