364 FISH-GODS—DAGON 



of the Babylonians, composed in part of the local deities of 

 Sumeria, and in part of their own translated from their original 

 habitat ; but from the start they modified the hierarchy and 

 changed materially the individual attributes of the gods.^ 



Thus we find that mighty Assyrian hunter, Tiglath-Pileser I., 

 in his record of the beasts he had taken, e.g. four elephants 

 caught alive, or had slain in the desert, which included " four 

 wild oxen mighty and terrible, ten elephants, one hundred 

 and twenty lions on foot, and eight hundred speared from his 

 chariot," ascribing his success to the help of the gods Ninurta 

 and Nergal. 



These gods were closely associated with battle and sport, 

 but to both other characteristics were attributed at various 

 epochs of their godhood. It has been suggested that the 

 evolution of the fish-god Dagon from the Babylonian deity 

 Dagan followed on such lines, but sufficient data for an 

 identification of the two do not survive. 



From the sculptures discovered at Kouyunjik and at 

 Nimroud (now in the British Museum), and from an Assyrian 

 cylinder, 2 Layard is able, although all three vary somewhat 

 in details, to describe this so-called fish-god, be it Cannes or 

 Dagon, 3 as " combining the human shape with that of the 



* In noting the attributes ascribed to various gods, we are confronted 

 by the problem as to what suggested to the Babylonian his precise differentia- 

 tion in their characters. These betray their origin : they are the personifica- 

 tion of natural forces : in other words, the gods and many of the stories told 

 of them are the only explanation the Babylonian could give, after centuries 

 of observation, of the forces and changes in the natural world. In company 

 with other primitive peoples he explained them as the work of beings very 

 similar but superior to himself. See King, Babylonian Religion (London, 

 1889). This inevitable tendency of anthropomorphism was tersely expressed 

 by Xenophanes of Colophon (frag. 15) : — 



" If oxen, horses, lions had but hands 

 To paint withal or carve, as men can do, 

 Then horses like to horses, kine to kine, 

 Had painted shapes of gods and made their bodies 

 Such as the frame that they themselves possessed." 



2 For the Nimroud sculpture, see Monuments of Nineveh, op. cit., 2nd 

 Series, Plate 6, while for the agate cylinder, see Nineveh and Babylon (London, 

 1853), p. 343, where in a note Layard writes, " It is remarkable that on this 

 cylinder the all-seeing eye takes the place of the winged human figure and the 

 globe in the emblem above the sacred tree." 



3 For the data and authorities available in 1855 and examination into 

 Oannes and Dagon, see J. B. Pitra, Spicilegiuni Solesmense, III., pp. 500, 501, 

 503. 



