Atargatis Diving - Amelia Island, Florida
N 30° 40.221 W 081° 27.770
17R E 455664 N 3393161
The great mistress of the North Syrian lands can be found in the court yard of the historic Florida House Inn.
Waymark Code: WM7PX8
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 11/20/2009
Views: 7
The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. 1000 BC. Atargatis, the mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, was a goddess who loved a mortal shepherd and in the process killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid — human above the waist, fish below — though the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as being a fish with a human head and legs, similar to the Babylonian Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo. Prior to 546 BC, the Milesian philosopher Anaximander proposed that mankind had sprung from an aquatic species of animal. He thought that humans, with their extended infancy, could not have survived early on. This idea reappeared as the aquatic ape hypothesis in the twentieth century.
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