ÿAṯtar is a deity whose role, name, and even gender varied across ancient Semitic religion. In both genders, ÿAṯtar is identified with the planet Venus, the morning and evening star. ÿAṯtar is a prominent character in the Baal Cycle. It has been suggested that ÿAṯtar as a masculine Venus god was syncretized into the depiction of feminine Venus goddess Inanna in her depiction as having a masculine beard.
The name appears in various Semitic languages as:
========== The Ugaritic masculine variant of ÿAṯtar, (), appears in the Baÿal Cycle.
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The Northwest Semitic feminine form of ÿAṯtar, the Great Goddess (), is often mentioned in Ugaritic ritual texts, but played a minor role in mythological texts.
Among the Aramaeans, ÿAṯtar appears in a masculine form as the god (), in which capacity he was identified with the baetyl as (, ).
Within the ancient Aramaean religion, the deceased ancestors of the clans, called , were worshipped as idealised figures who could become assimilated to ÿAttar, as evidenced by personal names such as (, ), and and (, ).
The use of the name of the god ÿAttar as a theophoric element is attested in the name (, ), which is attested on an 8th-century BC stamp seal and was also the name of the earliest known ruler of LaqÃÂ, as well as (, ), which was the name of two rulers of the kingdom of BÃÂt-Gà «à ¡. The name of this god always appears in the masculine form even in women's names, such as ÿAttar-ramat and ÿAttar-á¹Âabat, thus attesting that the Aramaean ÿAttar was a distinctly masculine deity.
==== ==== One of the hypostases of the Aramaean ÿAttar was (), that is the ÿAttar of the Heavens: in this role, ÿAttar was the incarnation of the sky's procreative power in the form of the moisture provided by rain, which made fertile his consort, the goddess of the Earth which has been dried up by the summer heat. Due to ÿAttar's role as a provider of rain, his epithet "of the Heavens" refers to his manifestation as lightning and thunder in the skies.
The name of the goddess who was the consort of ÿAttar is itself not attested in Aramaic, but is recorded in Sabaic as () or (), which was derived from the South Semitic root (), itself a declension of the Semitic root , meaning "to be dry." The position of Hà «bis/Huwbis as the consort of ÿAttar-à  amayin is attested by the depiction of a goddess in front of a standing worshipper on an 8th-century Aramaean cylinder seal, with the image of a vulva, the symbol of Hà «bis/Huwbis, being present behind the goddess and over a recumbent gazelle - the sacred animal of ÿAttar - over which was also inscribed the name of the god himself.
The earliest record of ÿAttar-à  amayin is from an Aramaic inscription on the 8th-century BC cylinder seal belonging to an individual named , who is described in the inscription as a (. ); Barruq's own name, which means "thunder," was a reference to ÿAttar-à  amayin in his role as a god associated with thunder and lightning.
In the Kingdom of Aksum situated in the Horn of Africa, ÿAttar was worshiped: as the god of the sun and moon and as the father of the other members of the Axumite pantheon: Maher and Beher, the former of which they shared with the Himyarite Kingdom. He was associated with the god Zeus.
Among the ancient South Arabians, () was a masculine deity who had retained the prominence of his role as the deity of the planet Venus as the Morning Star, and was a god presiding over thunderstorms and who provided natural irrigation as rain. ÿAṯtar thus held a very important place within the ancient South Arabian pantheon, in which he replaced the old Semitic high god þIl as the supreme deity.
The name of ÿAṯtar was suffixed with a mimation in the South Arabian kingdom of Ḥaá¸Âramawt, thus giving the Ḥaá¸Âramitic form ().
Within South Arabian polytheism, ÿAṯtar held a supreme position within the cosmology of the ancient South Arabians as the god presiding over the whole world, always appeared first in lists, and had various manifestations with their own epithets. The rulers of the ancient South Arabian states would offer ritual banquets in honour of ÿAṯtar, with the banquet being paid for from the tithe offered to the god by the populace.
The patron deity of the QatabÃÂnians, however, was the Moon-god, variously called (, in QatabÃÂn) or (, in Ḥaá¸Âramawt), who was seen as being closer to the people compared to the more distant figure of ÿAṯtar, and the people of these states consequently called themselves the children of their respective Moon-god.
The South Arabian ÿAṯtar was a hunter god, and the ancient South Arabians performed ritual hunts in his honour as fertility rites with the goal of making the rain fall. The chosen prey during these hunts were probably gazelles, which were sacred to ÿAṯtar.
This hunter aspect of ÿAṯtar is also present in his Northwest Semitic feminine variant, who is called (, ) in one passage of an Ugaritic text. The Sabaic hallowed phrase (, ) itself had a parallel in a reference to (, ) in a text from Emar.
==== ==== One of the hypostases of the South Arabian ÿAṯtar was (), whose name, which was a -pattern Semitic word formation meaning "rainfall," was related to Geýez (), Amharic (), Tigrà(), and Eastern Gurage (), all meaning "rainy season." Kirrà «m was thus a form of ÿAṯtar who provided fertility in the form of the rain he dispensed.
The Babylonians identified Kirrà «m, under the name (), with their own goddess (), who was herself the goddess of the planet Venus as well as the Mesopotamian feminine form of ÿAṯtar.
==== ==== Another hypostasis of the South Arabian ÿAṯtar was (), that is ÿAṯtar of the East, who was invoked especially in curses as an avenger god against enemies.
ÿAṯtar was worshipped as a masculine deity among the ancient Arabs, who during the Iron Age were located principally in the Syrian Desert and North Arabia.
==== ==== Similarly to the link between ÿAttar and the ancestral cult of the among the Aramaeans, there also existed a connection between ÿAttar and the cult of the ancestors among Arabs which is attested from as early as the 7th century BC in the form of a personal name recorded in Akkadian as (), from an original Ancient North Arabian form , in which the divine patron of a clan or tribe, the (, of which is the -type broken plural), is assimilated to ÿAttar.
==== ==== One 8th century BC Aramaic inscription found in a tomb in a region of the Zagros Mountains close to a Mannaean royal tomb mentions ÿAttar as (), that is a variant of ÿAttar whose epithet was the Old Arabic plural form of (), , with ÿAttar-Muá¹£urà «n thus being ÿAttar of the Marches. The name "the Marches" itself was the designation assigned by the Mesopotamians to the northern ḤijÃÂz and the Negev. The name of the deity is followed by the title (), corresponding to Ancient North Arabian () and Ethiosemitic (), and meaning "the ruler."
ÿAttar-Muá¹£urà «n was thus the main deity of North Arabia, and the tomb in which his name was found inscribed likely belonged to an Arab who had been deported by the Assyrians to their northeastern border regions.
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The Qedarite Arabs worshipped ÿAṯtar in his form of , whose name is attested in Ancient North Arabian as (). Assyrian records mention this god, referred to in Akkadian as (, reflecting the Aramaic form rather than the Ancient North Arabian ), as one of the Qedarite deities whose idols were captured as war booty by the Neo-Assyrian king Sîn-ahhë-erëba and was returned to the Qedarites by his son and successor Aà ¡à ¡ur-aḫa-iddina.
========== The worship of ÿAṯtar in his form of was also practised by the Qedarites, as attested by an inscription of the Neo-Assyrian king Aà ¡à ¡ur-aḫa-iddina mentioning this deity in Akkadian as (), with the dissimilation of the epithet into reflecting the influence of Akkadian () and Aramaic (), meaning "priest."
========== At Palmyra, where lived a large Arab population, the Arab ÿAṯtar was assimilated with the Arameo-Canaanite great god, Baÿal, in the form of , later (), that is Baÿal-ÿAṯtar.
The masculine form () existed among the Canaanite peoples as an astral deity, which is attested by his mention along with the Moon-God à  aggar in the 9th or 7th century BC Dayr ÿAllàinscription, the subject of which is largely the Sun-goddess à  amÃÂà ¡, thus forming a triad of the Sun, Moon, and Venus similarly to the one attested in South Arabia, and suggesting a South Arabian religious influence in Moab. The hypostases of ÿAṯtar who appear among the various Canaanite peoples might have been an indigenous Transjordanian variation of his or local adaptations of the North Arabian variant of the god.
========== A possible Phoenician variant of might be attested as a theophoric element () in a personal name from Byblos, ().
========== In the 5th century BC, under the Achaemenid Empire, a shrine dedicated to existed in the Sharon Plain in Canaan, at a location corresponding to the present-day Israeli town of Elyakhin, where he was worshipped by Phoenicians, Aramaeans, and Arabs.
Arabian units of the Achaemenid army stationed in Canaan during the 5th century BC who participated in the cult of have left inscriptions recording his name, suffixed with a mimation to differentiate him from the Canaanite feminine form of ÿAṯtar, (), in the Phoenician and Aramaic scripts as and (). This form of the god's name was distinctly North Arabian, showing that the worshippers who had left these inscriptions were originally from North Arabia, possibly from TaymÃÂÿ or DadÃÂn.
===== ===== ÿAà ¡tar was attested among the Canaanite people of the Moabites during the 9th century BC, when he was identified with the patron god of Moab, (), in the form of ().
According to the inscription of the Moabite king Mà Âà ¡aÿ on the victory stele commemorating his triumph in a war against the Israelites, he had sacrificed the whole population of the town of Nebo to ÿAà ¡tar-Kamà Âà ¡. This was likely due to the influence of the South Arabian ÿAṯtar-à  ariqÃÂn, that is of ÿAà ¡tar's hypostasis as an avenger deity who was invoked in curses against enemies.
The late Michael Heiser argued that the Canaanite tale of Athtar was being drawn upon in Isaiah 14. It was used as a symbolic parallel to the Babylonian ruler attempting to claim divine kingship, but being thrown down into Sheol.
ÿAà ¡tar appears as the demon Ashtar in the video game Shin Megami Tensei II.