Editing Mermaid (section)

==== Syrian mermaid goddess ====
{{main|Atargatis}}
[[File:DemetriusIIICoin.png|thumb|[[Atargatis]] depicted as a fish with a woman's head, on a coin of [[Demetrius III Eucaerus|Demetrius III]]]]<!--COMMENTING OUT SOURCE with NO MATCHING CONTENT:<ref>{{cite journal|last=Rostovtseff|first=M.|title=Hadad and Atargatis at Palmyra |journal=American Journal of Archaeology|volume=37|issue=1|date=January 1933|pages=58–63|jstor=498042|doi=10.2307/498042|s2cid=191373119}}</ref> (It discusses an Atargatis tessara token "figure of a fish standing on its tail" -- not mermaid)-->
A mermaid-like goddess, identified by Greek and Roman writers as Derceto or Atargatis, was worshipped at [[Ashkelon]].<sup><ref name="macalister" /><ref name="ringgren" /></sup> In a myth recounted by [[Diodorus Siculus]] in the first century BC, Derceto gave birth to a child from an affair. Ashamed, she abandoned the child in the desert and drowned herself in a lake, only to be transformed into a human-headed fish. The child, [[Semiramis]], was fed by doves and survived to become a queen.<ref name="grabbe" />

In the second century, [[Lucian]] described seeing a Phoenician statue of Derceto with the upper body of a woman and the tail of a fish. He noted the contrast with the grand statue located at her Holy City ([[Hierapolis Bambyce]]), which appeared entirely human.{{Refn|Lucian. ''De Dea Syria'' 14. Lightfoot ed., tr. (2003). Cited and translation quoted by {{harvp|Hasan-Rokem|2014|p=182}}.<ref name="hasan-rokem"/>}}<ref name="d-syra14-cowper">''De Dea Syra'', 14 ''apud'' {{harvp|Cowper|1865|pp=9–10}}</ref>

In the myth, Semiramis's first husband is named Onnes. Some scholars have compared this to the earlier Mesopotamian myth of [[Oannes (mythology)|Oannes]],{{sfnp|Smith, W. Robertson|1887|p=313–314}} one of the ''[[apkallu]]'' or seven sages described as fish-men in [[cuneiform]] texts.<ref name="breucker" />{{Refn|Oannes was later described by the Babylonian writer [[Berossus]] as having an extra human head beneath the head of its fish body.<ref name="goodman"/>{{sfnp|Waugh|1960|p=73}}}} While Oannes was a servant of the water deity [[Ea (mythology)|Ea]], having gained wisdom from the god,<ref name="breucker" /> English writer [[Arthur Waugh (author)|Arthur Waugh]] understood Oannes to be equivalent to Ea,<ref>{{harvp|Waugh|1960|p=73}}: "the first merman in recorded history is the sea-god Ea, or in Greek, Oannes",</ref> and proposed that surely "Oannes had a fish-tailed wife" and descendants,{{sfnp|Waugh|1960|pp=73–74}} with Atargatis being one deity thus descended, "through the mists of time".{{sfnp|Waugh|1960|pp=73–74}}

Diodorus's chronology of Queen Semiramis resembles the feats of [[Alexander the Great]] (campaigns to India, etc.), and Diodorus may have woven the Macedonian king's material via some unnamed source.<ref name="grabbe" /> There is a mermaid legend attached to Alexander the Great's sister, but this is of post-medieval vintage (see [[#Byzantine and Ottoman Greece|below]]).<ref name="russell" />