sources: SRC_LUCIAN_DEA_SYRIA

The sources grounding every entity classification and relationship in the database (live count on the home page and in v_release_metrics). Primary texts include the Pyramid Texts (c. 2375 BCE), Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, the Masoretic Text, Nag Hammadi corpus, Avesta, Ginza Rba, the Chaldean Oracles, the Corpus Hermeticum, Quran, and more. Secondary scholarship covers standard academic monographs for each tradition.

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source_id title url source_type scope
SRC_LUCIAN_DEA_SYRIA Lucian of Samosata, De Dea Syria (On the Syrian Goddess), c. 150 CE; ed. and trans. Harold W. Attridge and Robert A. Oden Jr. (SBL Texts and Translations 9, Graeco-Roman Religion 1; Scholars Press / Society of Biblical Literature, Missoula, 1976)   primary text The most detailed ancient description of the cult of Atargatis at Hierapolis-Bambyce (modern Manbij, northern Syria). Written c. 150 CE by Lucian of Samosata (himself from nearby Samosata on the Euphrates) in mock-Herodotean style, De Dea Syria describes the great temple complex, its sacred fish-pools and sacred animals, the castrated galli priests and their self-mutilation in honor of the goddess, the annual pilgrimage festival, the sacred prostitution traditions, the mythological narratives (including traditions linking the cult foundation to Semiramis, Deucalion, and Dionysus), and the iconographic program of the temple. Lucian explicitly opens by noting that the Syrians call her "Hera" (i.e. equate her with the Greek Hera as queen of heaven) but that she also encompasses Athena, Aphrodite, Selene, Rhea, Artemis, Nemesis, and the Fates — a panthea (all-goddess) reading of the Syrian Goddess. De Dea Syria is the primary literary source for Atargatis and provides crucial evidence for the nature of Syrian religion in the Roman period. Cited for ENT_ARA_ATARGATIS.

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