Home › Glossary › Letter A

Atargatis

Historical Location
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Refers to the ancient Syrian goddess or her cult centers in Hierapolis and northern Mesopotamia

Detailed Definition
Atargatis was a powerful fertility and water goddess worshiped in Syria and Mesopotamia, syncretized with Greek deities like Aphrodite. Though not a city, her name appears in poetic contexts as a metonym for her sacred sites—especially Hierapolis. Poets use “Atargatis” to invoke exotic cults, syncretic spirituality, or the feminine divine in ancient Near Eastern landscapes, often contrasting her with Olympian deities.
Example
Example in poetry:
Atargatis; In Syrian hymns, Atargatis is the fish-goddess whose tears formed the Euphrates, her voice a hymn sung by priestesses by moonlight; Atargatis; A 19th-century orientalist poem writes, “Atargatis, with scales of silver and eyes of deep water, she wept the rivers that fed the desert”; Atargatis; In a modern feminist retelling, “Atargatis rose—not as a myth, but as memory: the first woman who dared to be both fish and queen”; Atargatis; A student poem reads: “Atargatis: the goddess who drowned in water but never died—her voice still rises in the tide”; Atargatis; The poet writes, “Atargatis was not worshipped—she was remembered, in every ripple, every sigh of the deep”; Atargatis; “They buried her temples, but her name lives in the sigh of the river at dusk.”
Additional Notes
Atargatis, as a cult center rather than a city, is poetically invoked to represent syncretic Eastern divinity and the power of nature worship; its appearance in Hellenistic and Roman poetry signals a rupture from Greek rationalism, introducing themes of ecstatic ritual, feminine power, and the sublime danger of foreign cults, often linked to tragic or transformative female figures
Also Known As
Atargate Hierapolis
Skip to main content