Kotharat (, ''kṯrt'') were a group of seven goddesses associated with conception, pregnancy, birth and marriage, worshiped chiefly in the northern part of modern

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

in the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

. They are attested in texts from Mari,

Ugarit Ugarit (; , ''ủgrt'' /ʾUgarītu/) was an ancient port city in northern Syria about 10 kilometers north of modern Latakia. At its height it ruled an area roughly equivalent to the modern Latakia Governorate. It was discovered by accident in 19 ...

and

Emar Emar (, ), is an archaeological site at Tell Meskene in the Aleppo Governorate of northern Syria. It sits in the great bend of the mid-Euphrates, now on the shoreline of the man-made Lake Assad near the town of Maskanah. It has been the sourc ...

. There is no agreement among translators over whether they had individual names in Ugaritic tradition. They were considered analogous to the

Mesopotamian Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary o ...

Šassūrātu, a collective term referring to assistants of the goddess Ninmah, and to

Hurrian The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...

Hutena and Hutellura Hutena and Hutellura (also spelled Hudena and Hudellura; ''ḫdn ḫdlr'' in alphabetic Ugaritic texts) were goddesses of fate and divine midwives in Hurrian mythology. Number An unresolved problem in scholarship is the number of goddesses r ...

. It has been suggested that the latter were at least in part patterned after the Kotharat.

Name

The name Kotharat (Kôṯarātu) is a conventional vocalization of

Ugaritic Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycl ...

''kṯrt''. Spellings such as Kathiratu and Katiratu is also used in modern literature. Other forms of the name of the Kotharat are attested in texts from Mari: the older Kawašurātum (''^dkà-ma-šu-ra-tum'') and more recent Kûšarātum (''^dku-ša-ra-tum''). In

, they were known as "Ilū kašarāti" (DINGIR^MEŠ ''ka-ša-ra-ti''). All of these names are most likely derived from the Semitic

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

''kšr'', "to be skilled" or "to achieve," which is attested in

West Semitic languages The West Semitic languages are a proposed major sub-grouping of Semitic languages. The term was first coined in 1883 by Fritz Hommel.Akkadian. Its other derivatives include the name of the god Kothar, the Ugaritic word ''kṯr'', "wise" or "cunning," and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

''kôšārāh'', "luck" or "prosperity." Possible

cognates In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the soun ...

, ''ku-ša-ri'' and ''ku-šar'', have also been identified among

theophoric A theophoric name (from Greek: , ''theophoros'', literally "bearing or carrying a god") embeds the word equivalent of 'god' or a god's name in a person's name, reflecting something about the character of the person so named in relation to that de ...

elements known from Akkadian personal names.

Ugaritic texts The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient cuneiform texts discovered in 1928 in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria, and written in Ugaritic language, Ugaritic, an otherwise unknown Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic langua ...

indicate that the word Kotharat is plural, and it is conventionally assumed that it refers to a group of seven goddesses. However, occasionally smaller number, either four or six, is postulated as an alternative.

Possible individual names

Individual names of the Kotharat might be attested in the Ugaritic myth ''Marriage of

Nikkal Nikkal (logographically dNIN.GAL, alphabetically 𐎐𐎋𐎍 ''nkl'') or Nikkal-wa-Ib (''nkl wib'') was a goddess worshiped in various areas of the ancient Near East west of Mesopotamia. She was derived from the Mesopotamian goddess Ningal, and ...

and

Yarikh Yarikh (Ugaritic: , , "moon"), or Yaraḫum, was a moon god worshiped in the Ancient Near East. He is best attested in sources from the Amorite city of Ugarit in the north of modern Syria, where he was one of the principal deities. His primary cul ...

''. Gabriele Theuer restores them as follows: ''ṯlḫh'', ''mlgh'', ''yṯtqt'', ''bq’t'', ''tq’t'', ''prbḫṯ'', ''dmqt''. Wilfred G. E. Watson gives a similar list, but excludes ''yṯtqt''. However, not all experts agree that these words are given names. Theuer, who accepts that each of these words is the name of a single goddess, considers ''ṯlḫh'' either a cognate of Hebrew ''šillûḥîm'', which might refer to

dowry A dowry is a payment such as land, property, money, livestock, or a commercial asset that is paid by the bride's (woman's) family to the groom (man) or his family at the time of marriage. Dowry contrasts with the related concepts of bride price ...

, or alternatively of Akkadian ''šalāḫu'', "to tear out," which she assumes might indirectly refer to removing the infant from mother's womb. She points out the similarity between ''mlgh'' and Akkadian ''mulugu'', a term referring to the property a bride brought from her father's house. The word ''yṯtqt'' might be derived from the root ''ṯtq'', possibly "to split off," "to separate," and as such designate the goddess as a responsible for cutting the

umbilical cord In Placentalia, placental mammals, the umbilical cord (also called the navel string, birth cord or ''funiculus umbilicalis'') is a conduit between the developing embryo or fetus and the placenta. During prenatal development, the umbilical cord i ...

. Similarly, the root ''bq’'', from which ''bq’t'' might be derived, refers to splitting, and possibly refers specifically to splitting the womb in this context. The term ''tq’t'' is most likely derived from ''tq’'', "to hit with a hand," presumably referring to enthusiastically clapping hands to celebrate the birth of a child or possibly indirectly alluding to determination of a favorable fate. The compound ''prbḫṯ'' according to Theuer is presently impossible to translate and might be a

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

in Ugaritic. Finally ''dmqt'', seemingly designated as the youngest of the Kotharat, might mean "the good" or "the kind" and like ''tq’t'' refer to the ability to determine a positive fate for the infant. Aicha Rahmouni assumes that ''dmqt'' might instead refer to the whole group, not necessarily to a single goddess, and translates it as either "fairest ones" or "fairest one." Another translator, David Marcus, does not assume that the passage refers to individual goddesses: He argues that ''prbḫṯ'' is the name of a mortal woman, presumably a bride, poetically compared to one of the Kotharat. This interpretation is also supported by John Gibson, who presumes the Kotharat are invoked to bless her in her marriage. He considers it possible that the text was recited during wedding ceremonies in Ugarit and the name ''prbht'' is simply a placeholder.

Character

The Kotharat were chiefly associated with conception, pregnancy and birth. They were believed to be responsible for forming human children during pregnancy. Additionally, literary texts indicate that they blessed marriages. They are also sometimes characterized as divine

midwives A midwife (: midwives) is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialisation known as midwifery. The education and training for a midwife concentrates extensively on the care of women throughout their ...

in modern literature. However, Dennis Pardee objects to this description, arguing that in known myths the Kotharat appear to only intervene before pregnancy. One of the Ugaritic texts describes them with the term ''snnt''. Especially in older literature, it is often assumed to be a cognate of Akkadian ''sinuntu'', "

swallow The swallows, martins, and saw-wings, or Hirundinidae are a family of passerine songbirds found around the world on all continents, including occasionally in Antarctica. Highly adapted to aerial feeding, they have a distinctive appearance. The ...

." However, many researchers, for example Dennis Pardee and Aicha Rahmouni, favor the explanation "shining" or "brilliant," based on similarity to

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

''sanā'', "to shine," "to gleam" or "to be exalted" (used to refer to stars), as well as its

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

cognate referring to refining metal or glittering. The proponents of the latter theory point out that there is no precedent for

Ancient Near East The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Nea ...

ern deities being referred to as "swallows," while various epithets highlighting luminosity are attested in Mesopotamian and

Eblaite Eblaite (, also known as Eblan ISO 639-3), or Palaeosyrian, is an extinct East Semitic language used during the 3rd millennium BC in Northern Syria. It was named after the ancient city of Ebla, in modern western Syria. Variants of the language ...

texts, as well as in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' crescent moon", has been pointed out. Based on this possible relation he is often considered an astral deity, possibly a lunar god specifically associated with the crescent phase. Another proposed translation of his name is "star." Dennis Pardee instead suggests the name might mean "purity," while Wilfred G. E. Watson favors "brightness." Yet another theory connects ''hll'' with the senior Mesopotamian god

Enlil Enlil, later known as Elil and Ellil, is an List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms. He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon, but he was later worshipped by t ...

. Lists of deities from Ugarit and Mari indicate that the Kotharat were understood as analogous to the

Lower Mesopotamia Lower Mesopotamia is a historical region of Mesopotamia. It is located in the alluvial plain of Iraq from the Hamrin Mountains to the Faw Peninsula near the Persian Gulf. In the Middle Ages it was also known as the '' Sawad'' and al-Jazira al-s ...

n Šassūrātu. The sources from the former site additionally attest an equivalence between them and Hurrian

. The term ''Šassūrātu'' refers to goddesses regarded as helpers of Ninmah. Both they and the Kotharat appear in offering lists from Mari. Their name is derived from the Akkadian word ''šassūru'', a direct loan from Sumerian meaning "womb" or "midwife." They appear in the myth ''

Enki Enki ( ) is the Sumerian god of water, knowledge ('' gestú''), crafts (''gašam''), and creation (''nudimmud''), and one of the Anunnaki. He was later known as Ea () or Ae p. 324, note 27. in Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) religion, and ...

and Ninmah'', where the members of this group are

Ninimma Ninimma was a Mesopotamian goddess best known as a courtier of Enlil. She is well attested as a deity associated with scribal arts, and is variously described as a divine scholar, scribe or librarian by modern Assyriologists. She could also serv ...

Shuzianna Shuzianna (Šuzianna; 𒀭𒋗𒍣𒀭𒈾 '' dŠu-zi-an-na'') was a Mesopotamian goddess. She was chiefly worshiped in Nippur, where she was regarded as a secondary spouse of Enlil. She is also known from the enumerations of children of Enmesha ...

, Ninmada, Ninšar, Ninmug and Ninnigina. They are collectively characterized as "wise and knowing." The latter names refer to a group of Hurrian deities believed to be responsible for determining the fate of humans, also associated with birth and midwifery. Alfonso Archi considers it possible that the Hurrians living in Syria patterned them on the Kotharat and their Mesopotamian counterparts. He assumes that they were a heptad of deities, much like the Kotharat, which is a position also supported by

Volkert Haas Volkert Haas (1 November 1936 – 13 May 2019) was a German Assyrologist and Hittitologist. __NOTOC__ Life Volkert Haas studied Assyrology and Near Eastern archaeology at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Marburg from 1963 to ...

. However, Piotr Taracha remarks that while both "Hutena" and "Hutellura" are grammatically plural, on the

Yazılıkaya :'' Yazılıkaya, Eskişehir, also called Midas City, is a village with Phrygian ruins.'' Yazılıkaya () was a sanctuary of Hattusa, the capital city of the Hittite Empire, today in the Çorum Province, Turkey. Rock reliefs are a prominent aspec ...

reliefs only two figures are identified by them. He also points out that in some cases Hutellura was seemingly treated as a singular goddess analogous to Ninmah. Wilfred G. E. Watson argues that in the myth ''Marriage of

and

'' ( KTU 1.24), the Kotharat function as handmaidens of the eponymous goddess. Despite their names being cognates, there is no direct indication in any known sources that the Kotharat were ever associated with the god Kothar.

Worship

The Kotharat originated in inland

. They were worshiped by

Amorites The Amorites () were an ancient Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic-speaking Bronze Age people from the Levant. Initially appearing in Sumerian records c. 2500 BC, they expanded and ruled most of the Levant, Mesopotamia and parts of Eg ...

in various cities located in the north of this region. According to Alfonso Archi, they spread through the Middle

Euphrates The Euphrates ( ; see #Etymology, below) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of West Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (). Originati ...

area in the early second millennium BCE. They are attested in offering lists from Mari. They were also worshiped in

, though there is no indication that they had a temple there and they are absent from known

theophoric name A theophoric name (from Greek: , ''theophoros'', literally "bearing or carrying a god") embeds the word equivalent of 'god' or a god's name in a person's name, reflecting something about the character of the person so named in relation to that d ...

s. Marten Stol also tentatively suggests that a relief from

Tell Chuera Tell Chuera (also Tell Ḫuera and Tall Ḥuwaira and Tall Chuera and Tell Khuera) is an ancient Near Eastern Tell (archaeology), tell site in Raqqa Governorate, northern Syria. It lies between the Balikh River, Balikh and Khabur (Euphrates), Khab ...

depicting seven goddesses might be an indication that the Kotharat or a similar group of birth goddesses were worshiped in this location. The

also mention the Kotharat. Wilfred G. E. Watson counts them among the principal goddesses of this city of local origin alongside

Anat Anat (, ), Anatu, classically Anath (; ''ʿnt''; ''ʿĂnāṯ''; ; ; Egyptian language, Egyptian: ''wikt:ꜥntjt, ꜥntjt'') was a goddess associated with warfare and hunting, best known from the Ugaritic texts. Most researchers assume tha ...

Ashtart Astarte (; , ) is the Greek language, Hellenized form of the Religions of the ancient Near East, Ancient Near Eastern goddess ʿAṯtart. ʿAṯtart was the Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic equivalent of the East Semitic language ...

Athirat Asherah (; ; ; ; Qatabanian: ') was a goddess in ancient Semitic religions. She also appears in Hittite writings as ''Ašerdu(š)'' or ''Ašertu(š)'' (), and as Athirat in Ugarit. Some scholars hold that Asherah was venerated as Yahweh's c ...

and

Shapash Shapshu (Ugaritic: 𐎌𐎔𐎌 ''špš'', "sun") or Shapsh, and also Shamshu, was a Canaanite sun goddess. She also served as the royal messenger of the high god El, her probable father. Her most common epithets in the Ugaritic corpus are ''nrt ...

. In two similar lists of deities (one fragmented), KTU² 1.47, 1.118 they appear between the pair Arṣu-wa-Šamuma ("Earth and Heaven") and the moon god Yarikh. A single possible theophoric name invoking the Kotharat, ''bn kṯrt'', has been identified as well.

Uncertain and disproved attestations

Dennis Pardee argues that the genealogy of deities presented by

Philo of Byblos Philo of Byblos (, ''Phílōn Býblios''; ; – 141), also known as Herennius Philon, was an antiquarian writer of grammatical, lexicon, lexical and historical works in Greek language, Greek. He is chiefly known for his Phoenician history ...

might reflect one of the Ugaritic deity list, in which the Kotharat appear after Ilib, Arṣu-wa-Šamuma ("Earth and Heaven") and El, before Dagan. The late

Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...

n author mentions seven daughters of Elos/ Kronos alongside Elyon, the pair Ge and

Ouranos In Greek mythology, Uranus ( , also ), sometimes written Ouranos (, ), is the personification of the sky and one of the Greek primordial deities. According to Hesiod, Uranus was the son and husband of Gaia (Earth), with whom he fathered the ...

, and Dagon. He additionally argues that the Ugaritic list might reflect a tradition in which their father was El. However, Lluís Feliu concludes that the presence of Kotharat in this document might be the result of a scribal mistake: ''kṯrt'' in place of ''aṯrt'' (Athirat), the wife of El. He points out that in an analogous list written in the syllabic

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

script, the deity occurring between El and Dagan is designated by the

logogram In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chine ...

^dNIN.MAH, which according to him never designated groups of deities such as Kotharat or Šassūrātu, and as such might refer to a singular deity, the wife of El, instead. Two purported attestations of the Kotharat postulated by

William F. Albright William Foxwell Albright (May 24, 1891 – September 19, 1971) was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and expert on ceramics. He is considered "one of the twentieth century's most influential American biblical scholars ...

, on a tablet from

Beth Shemesh Beth Shemesh (''House of the Sun'') is the name of three places in the Land of Israel and one location in Ancient Egypt mentioned in the Hebrew Bible: *a city in southwest Judah, remains excavated next to modern Beit Shemesh – see Tel Beit Shem ...

and in verse 7 of Psalm 68, are no longer accepted in modern scholarship.

Mythology

The Kotharat are among the deities appearing in the Ugaritic myth ''Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh'', sometimes referred to with the title ''Nikkal and the Kotharat'' instead. They apparently oversee the birth of a son of Nikkal and Yarikh, and might also be invoked to bless a mortal woman, ''prbḫṯ'' due to her own upcoming wedding, though it has also been proposed that the passage enumerates the individual names of the Kotharat. They also appear in the ''

Epic of Aqhat The Tale of Aqhat or Epic of Aqhat is a Canaanite myth from Ugarit, an ancient city in what is now Syria. It is one of the three longest texts to have been found at Ugarit, the other two being the Legend of Keret and the Baal Cycle. It dates ...

''. They visit the house of Danilu after

Baal Baal (), or Baʻal, was a title and honorific meaning 'owner' or 'lord Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The ...

intercedes on his behalf with El, and grants him a descendant, the hero of the narrative, Aqhat. Danilu holds a six day long feast in their honor. On the seventh day they leave. It is possible they later return to act as midwives during the birth of Aqhat, though this assumption is speculative as a section of the story presumed to describe these events is missing.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{refend Ugaritic deities West Semitic goddesses Mesopotamian goddesses Childhood goddesses Health goddesses Phoenician mythology Canaanite religion