ATARGATIS- Syrian Mermaid Goddess of the early 3rd century, with a great temple at Hierapolis, She was a protector of community . The water surrounding her typifies the protection of water in producing life, as in the water sack that surrounds the developing fetus.

Atargatis is the founder of social and religious life, the goddess of generation and fertility, and the inventor of useful appliances. A great Nature-goddess, She holds the power of destiny. Myths include a woman who became preganant, flung herself into the lake, and emerged as half fish, having been saved by water nymphs. Her child became a Syrian Queen.

In his Fasti (2.459-74) Ovid instead relates how Venus/Aphrodite fleeing from Typhon with her child Cupid/Eros came to the river Euphrates in Syria. Hearing the wind suddenly rise and fearing that it was Typhon, the goddess begged aid from the river nymphs and leapt into the river with her son. Two fish bore them up and were rewarded by being transformed into the constellation Pisces.

A famous statue of Atargatis shows her as a woman from the waist up and a fish below. Sea goddesses inherit the sea's qualities of gentle nurturance, and also violent and deadly rage. Atargatis is naturally, a nature Goddess.

Atargatis' fish-bodied appearance was worshipped at the ancient middle eastern city of Ascalon (or Ashkelon) in southwest Palestine on the Mediterranean Sea. Inhabited as early as the third millennium B.C., the city was also a seat of worship for the goddess Astarte.

In Rome she was called Dea Syria.