text: Within South Arabian polytheism, ʿAṯtar held a supreme position within the cosmology of the ancient South Arabians as the god presiding over the whole world, always appeared first in lists, and had various manifestations with their own epithets. The rulers of the ancient South Arabian states would offer ritual banquets in honour of ʿAṯtar, with the banquet being paid for from the tithe offered to the god by the populace.
  The patron deity of the Qatabānians, however, was the Moon-god, variously called  (, in Qatabān) or  (, in Ḥaḍramawt), who was seen as being closer to the people compared to the more distant figure of ʿAṯtar, and the people of these states consequently called themselves the children of their respective Moon-god.
  The hunter god
  The South Arabian ʿAṯtar was a hunter god, and the ancient South Arabians performed ritual hunts in his honour as fertility rites with the goal of making the rain fall. The chosen prey during these hunts were probably gazelles, which were sacred to ʿAṯtar.
  This hunter aspect of ʿAṯtar is also present in his Northwest Semitic feminine variant, who is called  (, ) in one passage of an Ugaritic text. The Sabaic hallowed phrase  (, ) itself had a parallel in a reference to  (, ) in a text from Emar.