366 FISH-GODS— DAGON 



or horse-gods. The idea of the deification of the fish-forms, 

 whether that of a man issuing from a fish or of a man whose 

 upper half was human but lower piscine, may, perhaps, have 

 sprung from the undoubted worship by the PhiHstines at 

 Ashdod and elsewhere of the god called Dagon, and partly to 

 the original description of him in the A.V., but now corrected 

 in the R.V. 



Dagon, it will be remembered (i Samuel v. 4), after being 

 confronted with the ark of the Lord in the morning, was found 

 fallen : " the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands 

 lay cut upon the threshold, only the fishy part (A.V.) or stump 

 (R.V.) of Dagon was left unto him." From this passage 

 Milton undoubtedly drew his conception of — 



" Dagon his name ; sea-monster, upward man 

 And downward fish." ^ 



It is possible that the theory of his having from his navel 

 down the form of a fish, and from his navel up the form of a 

 man — a theory which is unknown to the Targum, Josephus, or 

 the Talmud, and perhaps is as late as the twelfth century a. d. 2 

 — merely transfers by the help of etymology the description 

 given by Lucian of the goddess Derceto, worshipped on the 

 same coast-line by the Syrians, who were more partial to fish 

 deities than the Assyrians. 3 



This Dagon has been mistakenly connected with Odacon, 

 the last of the five sea-monsters who arose from the Erythraean 

 Sea. His body (according to Berosus) was hke that of a fish, 

 but under the head of the fish was that of a man, to whose 

 tail were added women's feet, whose voice was human, and 

 whose language was articulate. During the day he instructed 

 the Sumerians in letters and in all arts and sciences, more 



• Paradise Lost, I., 462. 



* There was a Babylonian god Dagan whose name appears in conjunction 

 with Anu and often with Ninurta (Ninib). Whether the Phihstine Dagon is 

 the same as the Babylonian Dagan cannot with our present knowledge be 

 determined. The long and profound influence of Babylonia m Palestine in 

 early times makes it quite possible that Dagon, like Anath, came thence. 

 Ency. BibL, p. 984. No evidence suggests Dagan as a Babylonian fish-god. 



Some authorities now hold that Dagan came to Babylonia with the Amoritic 

 invasion towards the latter half of the third millennium. 



' For Derceto, see antea, p. 124, and for Atargatis, antea, pp. 127-8. 



