Assyro-Babylonical Temple of Atargatis, the mermaid goddess. Dark room where common mortals too fearful of water can see the mermaid goddess manifest, while the cool night skies become alive with auroras.

Atargatis is a goddess of Assyrian origin whose worship spread to Greece (who called her Derketo). Doves and fish are sacred to her: doves as an emblem of the love-goddess (like Aphrodite), and fish as symbolic of the fertility and life of the waters. She is so closely identified with the fish that sometimes she was represented in the form of a mermaid—her upper half that of a human female, her lower a fish-tail—though she could also be represented in simple woman-form. She had a temple in Ephesus, where the priestesses were so numerous they supposedly gave rise to the Amazon legends. One Greek story says that Derketo was a nymph who loved a shepherd-boy; when she became pregnant by him she either killed him or threw herself in a pool in shame, where she was changed to a fish. Another story says that Derketo was hatched from an egg that fell from heaven; it landed in the Euphrates river, where some fish nudged it to shore. There it was found by a dove, who incubated it. Later, to show her gratitude, Derketo persuaded Zeus to put an image of the fish in the stars, which he did, creating the constellation Pisces.

Speaking of mermaids, here's the list of all the Childer of Atargatis (my collection of curvy mermaid outfits). There are AP versions of each of them in my catalog under the title of "Not-so-little Mermaid."