Events

Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider was participating at the OMEGA conference (OMNIPOTENS MANUFACTURING AND EMPOWERING GODS IN GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY 1. THE POWER OF THE ONE AND OF THE MANY International Conference) in Madrid. She brought a topic Girls’ Power! Portrait of Atargatis, Allat and Nannaya from the Perspective of Their Worshippers at the Beginning of the Common Era.  

Many pieces of the scholar literature were written on the male deities, who are presented in the ancient written sources as the greatest, highest, etc. It is only enough to mention the phenomenon of the multiple dedications to Zeus Hypsistos or Iovis Optimus Maximus. The evidence of the Aramaic inscriptions from the times of the High Empire (1^st-3^rd century CE expresses this preeminence in the less direct means. Many gods can be great (rb), their excellence is marked by the titles (mr-lord, rhmn’-merciful, etc.), no non-Judaic or non-Christian Aramaic text speak about one. Less of the complex attention however was set on the Eastern female deities (excluding Isis and Ishtar), their rank, representation in the god-dome, and the relations of the individual worshippers. The survey through the epigraphic material concerning these female deities provide an insight how different people sensed their goddesses and which rank they provided to the female divine power, which come into view through the complex analysis not less important than the masculine authority. What is more it was attractive to both men and women, according to the material. By the means of the divine onomastics (titles, epithets) as well as of the anthroponymy we can trace the notion of the uniqueness and excellence of the goddesses.

Atargatis, the only one (from many others) Dea Syria named this way in both literary and epigraphic sources and represented, e.g., in the famous relief from Dura-Europos, presents herself as higher than the thunder god Hadad. Is this only a choice of an attached devotee? Or she had a much more distinctive position than her divine husband? Finally, was she only an amalgam of different goddesses as the researchers want to interpret her?

Second goddess, Allat, was worshipped by many different people. Her name is translated as “The Goddess”, what points out her uniqueness. Furthermore, in the Nabatean and Northern Arabic texts the term ‘lt is used as generic title attached to the female deities (similar interplay to the Aramaic ‘str’ – Ishtar who became the model of a goddess). She bears the title of the divine patron of the kings in Hatra and in Nabatea, in Palmyra she is called the Lady of the House/Temple.

Third goddess, Nannaya, presented in the inscription from the surroundings of Hatra as the great one and the king (mlk – intentionally used in masculine grammar gender, what makes the goddess very particular and unique). Both with Allat pretend to be identified with Our Lady (mrtn) from Hatra, while in Palmyra her cult is not so much vivid in the epigraphic sources. Furthermore, theophoric anthroponyms with the component with Nannaya and Allat present the devotion to these goddesses, also presenting them as the great ones, praised and exceptional.

Analyzing these three goddesses as case studies we can arrive to the same conclusions that the henotheistic attitudes are not only reserved to the male deities or to Isis or Cybele-the most famous figures in the divine map of ancient deities.