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Atarsamain
Atarsamain (also spelled Attar-shamayin, Attarshamayin,Retso, Jan. The Arabs in Antiquity: Their history from the Assyrians to the Umayyads. Routledge, 2013, p. 168 Attarsame (ʿAttarsamē);Ahmad al-Jallad, "On the origins of the god Ruḍ aw and some remarks on the pre-Islamic North Arabian pantheon," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (2021) "morning star of heaven") () was an astral deity of uncertain gender, worshipped in the pre-Islamic northern and central Arabian Peninsula. Worshipped widely by Arab tribes, Atarsamain is known from around 800 BC and is identified in letters of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal.Hoyland, 2001, p. 68. Atarsamain may be identical with Allāt, whose cult was centred on Palmyra and also with Attar. According to Dierk Lange, Atarsamain was the main deity in a trinity of gods worshipped by what he calls the Yumu'il Confederation, which he describes as a northern Arab tribal confederation of Ishmaelite ancestry headed by the " ...
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Qedarite
The Qedarites ( ar, قيدار, Qaydār) were a largely nomadic ancient Arab tribal confederation centred in the Wādī Sirḥān in the Syrian Desert. Attested from the 8th century BC, the Qedarites formed a powerful polity which expanded its territory over the course of the 8th to 5th centuries BC to cover a large area in northern Arabia stretching from the western borders of Babylonia to the eastern borders of Egypt.Stearns and Langer, 2001, p. 41. The Qedarites played an important role in the history of the Levant and of North Arabia, where they enjoyed close relations with the nearby Canaanite and Aramaean states, and became important participants in the trade of spices and aromatics imported into the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean world from South Arabia. Having engaged in both friendly ties and hostilities with the Mesopotamian powers such as the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires, the Qedarites eventually became integrated within the structure of the Per ...
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Nuha (deity)
Nuha is a deity that was worshipped among the Northern Arabian tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia. Associated with the sun, she formed part of a trinity of gods, along with Ruda and Atarsamain. In Southern Arabia, Shams was her equivalent. Meaning Nuha, from the triconsonantal Semitic root N-H-Y, may mean "the ultimate".Retsö, 2003, p. 602. An early Akkadian inscription from the annals of the kings of Assyria mention Nuha with the epithet "the elevated sun". While this reference can be read literally to mean that Nuha was associated with the sun, it can also be read metaphorically as a reference to special kind of wisdom. Worship Dierk Lange writes that Nuha formed part of a trinity of gods worshipped by what he calls the Yumu'il confederation, which he describes as a northern Arab tribal confederation of Ishmaelite ancestry headed by the "clan of Kedar" (Qedarites).Lange, 2004, pp. 268-269. According to Lange, Nuha was the sun deity, Ruda the moon deity, and Atarsamain th ...
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Ruda (deity)
Ruda is a deity that was of paramount importance in the Arab pantheon of gods worshipped by the North Arabian tribes of pre-Islamic Arabia.Lipinski, 2000, pp. 618-619. He is first mentioned in the annals of Esarhaddon in the early 7th century BCE. He served as a protective deity. According to modern scholarly interpretations, Ruda was a moon deity. Etymology The etymology of his name gives the meaning "well disposed" an indication of his function as a protective deity. Attestations Pre-Islamic era The oldest reference to Ruda is found in the annals of Esarhaddon who ruled over the Assyrian empire from 681 to 669 BC. The name is transliterated into Latin script from the original Akkadian as ''Ru-ul-da-a-a-ú'' and he is mentioned among the gods of the Arabs. Known as Arsu among the Palmyrenes, in a later Aramaic inscription, Arsu/Ruda is paired with the Syrian god Resheph, a protective deity for his worshippers from the 3rd millennium BC. Inscriptions in a North ...
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Astral Deity
Astrotheology, astral mysticism, astral religion, astral or stellar theology (also referred to as astral or star worship) is the worship of the stars (individually or together as the night sky), the planets, and other heavenly bodies as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies. In anthropological literature these systems of practice may be referred to as astral cults. The most common instances of this are sun gods and moon gods in polytheistic systems worldwide. Also notable is the association of the planets with deities in Babylonian, and hence in Greco- Roman religion, viz. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Gods, goddesses, and demons may also be considered personifications of astronomical phenomena such as lunar eclipses, planetary alignments, and apparent interactions of planetary bodies with stars. The Sabians of Harran, a poorly understood pagan religion that existed in Harran during the early Islamic period (7th–10th century), were known f ...
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Wadd
Wadd ( ar, وَدّ) ( Ancient South Arabian script: 𐩥𐩵) is a pre-Islamic Arabian god. He was the national god of the Minaeans of South Arabia, and the snake was associated with him. It is also called Waddum and Wadd'ab. In Islamic tradition, Wadd was worshipped by the Banu Kalb tribe and his idol was located in the city of Dumat al-Jandal. The idol was said to be destroyed by Khalid ibn al-Walid. He is also mentioned in the Quran as a false god of the people of Noah. Attestations Pre-Islamic era Wadd was the national god of Ma'in, or the Minaeans; the magic formula ''Wd'b'' or "Wadd is y?father" was written on amulets and buildings. These writings were often accompanied with a symbol; a crescent moon with the small disc of Venus. An altar dedicated to him was erected by Minaeans living on the Greek island of Delos. The altar contains two inscriptions, one of which is in Minaean language and the other in Greek. Minaean inscription on the altar begins with sym ...
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Hadhramawt
Hadhramaut ( ar, حَضْرَمَوْتُ \ حَضْرَمُوتُ, Ḥaḍramawt / Ḥaḍramūt; Hadramautic: 𐩢𐩳𐩧𐩣𐩩, ''Ḥḍrmt'') is a region in South Arabia, comprising eastern Yemen, parts of western Oman and southern Saudi Arabia. The name is of ancient origin, and is retained in the name of the Yemeni Governorate of Hadhramaut. The people of Hadhramaut are called Hadhrami. They formerly spoke Hadramautic, an old South Arabian language, but they now predominantly speak Hadhrami Arabic, which has much influence from Hadramautic. Etymology The origin of the name of ''Ḥaḍramawt'' is not exactly known, and there are numerous competing hypotheses about its meaning. The most common folk etymology is that the region's name means "death has come," from ar, حَضَر, ḥaḍara, lit=he came and ar, مَوْت, mawt, lit=death, though there are multiple explanations for how it came to be known as such. One explanation is that this is a nickname of ...
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Astarte
Astarte (; , ) is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern goddess Ashtart or Athtart (Northwest Semitic), a deity closely related to Ishtar (East Semitic), who was worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity. The name is particularly associated with her worship in the ancient Levant among the Canaanites and Phoenicians, though she was originally associated with Amorite cities like Ugarit and Emar, as well as Mari and Ebla. She was also celebrated in Egypt, especially during the reign of the Ramessides, following the importation of foreign cults there. Phoenicians introduced her cult in their colonies on the Iberian Peninsula. Name Astarte was a goddess of both the Canaanite and the Phoenician pantheon, derived from an earlier Syrian deity. She is recorded in Akkadian as (), the feminine form of Ishtar.K. van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible', p. 109-10. The name appears in Ugaritic a ...
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Yam (god)
Yam (also ''Yamm''; Semitic: ) is the god of the sea in the Canaanite pantheon. He takes the role of the adversary of Baal in the Ugaritic ''Baal Cycle''. The deity's name derives from the Canaanite word for "Sea", and is one name of the Ugaritic god of Rivers and Sea. Also titled ''ṯpṭ nhr'' (" the Judge of the River"), he is also one of the '' 'ilhm'', or sons of El, the name given to the Levantine pantheon. Of all the gods, despite being the champion of El, Yam holds special hostility against Baal Hadad, son of Dagon. He is a deity of the sea and his palace is in the abyss associated with the depths, or Biblical tehom, of the oceans. Yam is the deity of the primordial chaos and represents the power of the sea, untamed and raging; he is seen as ruling storms and the disasters they wreak, and was an important divinity to the maritime Phoenicians. The gods cast out Yam from the heavenly mountain Sappan (modern Jebel Aqra; ''Sappan'' is cognate to '' Tsephon''). The ...
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Amm (god)
ʿAmm ( xsa, 𐩲𐩣, translit=ʿm; ar, عمْ) was a moon god worshipped in ancient Qataban, which was a kingdom in ancient Yemen. 'Amm's name stems from the Arabic word for paternal uncle. The inhabitants of the kingdom referred to themselves as the ''Banu Amm'', or the "Children of Amm". He was also revered as a weather god, as his attributes included lightning bolts. His consort is the goddess Asherah, and he was served by the oracle-judge Anbay. According to French archaeologist and biblical scholar Daniel E. Fleming, one possible origin for the title 'Amm or "Children of 'Amm" is speculated to have stemmed from a designation of an earlier group of people who worshiped 'Amm as a central god, with the name 'Amm simply being the title for a forgotten deity whose true designation was not known. Though 'Amm was worshipped into the time of the Qataban Qataban ( Qatabanian: , romanized: , ) was an ancient South Semitic-speaking kingdom of South Arabia ( ancient Yemen) which ...
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Minaeans
The Minaean people were the inhabitants of the kingdom of Ma'in ( Minaean: ''Maʿīn''; modern Arabic ''Maʿīn'') in modern-day Yemen, dating back to the 10th century BCE-150 BCE. It was located along the strip of desert called Ṣayhad by medieval Arab geographers, which is now known as Ramlat Dehem. The Minaean people were one of four ancient Yemeni groups mentioned by Eratosthenes. The others were the Sabaeans, Ḥaḑramites and Qatabānians. Each of these had regional kingdoms in ancient Yemen, with the Minaeans in the north-west (in Wādī al-Jawf), the Sabaeans to the south-east of them, the Qatabānians to the south-east of the Sabaeans, and the Ḥaḑramites further east still. History Nothing is known about the early history of this north Yemeni kingdom. The region later to be known as Ma’īn first enters history at the time of the Sabaean mukarrib Karib’il Watar I, and at that time consisted of a number of small city-states, which were under very str ...
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Sin (mythology)
Nanna, Sīn or Suen ( akk, ), and in Aramaic ''syn'', ''syn’'', or even ''shr'' 'moon', or Nannar ( sux, ) was the god of the moon in the Mesopotamian religions of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia and Aram. He was also associated with cattle, perhaps due to the perceived similarity between bull horns and the crescent moon. He was always described as a major deity, though only a few sources, mostly these from the reign of Nabonidus, consider him to be the head of the Mesopotamian pantheon. The two chief seats of his worship were Ur in the south of Mesopotamia and Harran in the north, though he was also worshiped in numerous other cities, especially in the proximity of Ur and in the Diyala area. In Ur, he was connected to royal power, and many Mesopotamian kings visited his temple in this city. According to Mesopotamian mythology, his parents were Enlil and Ninlil, while his wife was Ningal, worshiped with him in his major cult centers. Their children included ...
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Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning "Ashur is the creator of the heir") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 669 BCE to his death in 631. He is generally remembered as the last great king of Assyria. Inheriting the throne as the favored heir of his father Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal's 38-year reign was among the longest of any Assyrian king. Though sometimes regarded as the apogee of ancient Assyria, his reign also marked the last time Assyrian armies waged war throughout the ancient Near East and the beginning of the end of Assyrian dominion over the region. Esarhaddon selected Ashurbanipal as heir 673. The selection of Ashurbanipal bypassed the elder son Shamash-shum-ukin. Perhaps in order to avoid future rivalry, Esarhaddon designated Shamash-shum-ukin as the heir to Babylonia. The two brothers jointly acceded to their respective thrones after Esarhaddon's death in 669, though Shamash-shum-ukin was relegated to being Ashurbanipal's closely monitored vass ...
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