Bible Encyclopedias
Atergatis

Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature

Fig. 65—Syrian coin

Aterga´tis is the name of a Syrian goddess, whose temple is mentioned in 2 Maccabees 12:26. That temple appears, by comparing 1 Maccabees 5:43, to have been situated at Ashteroth-Karnaim. Her worship also flourished at Mabug (i.e. Bambyce), afterwards called Hierapolis according to Pliny.

There is little doubt that Atergatis is the same divinity as Derketo, which was worshipped in Phoenicia and at Ascalon under the form of a woman with a fish's tail, or with a woman's face only and the entire body of a fish; that fishes were sacred to her, and that the inhabitants abstained from eating them in honor of her.

Atergatis is thus a name under which the ancients worshipped some modification of the same power which was adored under that of Ashtoreth. The fish-form shows that Atergatis bears some relation, perhaps that of a female counterpart, to Dagon.