CHAPTER XXXIII 
FISH-GODS—DAGON 
I FIND no trace in Assyria of Ichthyolatry, or of certain fish 
being accounted sacred, or forbidden as food. The nearest 
approach to abstention occurs in the warning that on the 
gth day of Iyyar to partake of fish was almost certain to bring 
on an attack of sickness, just as in Syria ichthyophagy was 
held to entail ulcers and wasting diseases.! 
Despite the Dagon or Oannes traditions, I am not con- 
vinced that in the crowded pantheon of Babylon or Assyria 
there can be found a fish-god proper, or god of fishing, 7.e. a 
deity similar to those of Greece and Rome with a temple and 
established priesthood, to whom fishermen made prayer and 
offerings either for boons received or favours to come. 
If the word, fish-god, is limited strictly to those images, 
half-man, half-fish, which are to be found on seal Cylinders,? 
or sculptured or depicted in the outer halls or walls of some 
deity’s temple, there is certainly—even if the images at Nineveh 
were importations from the Mediterranean coast and not 
indigenous—considerable proof of their existence. But if 
the word connotes the attributes of a special temple, a priest- 
hood, and sacrifices, such as we find in connection with the 
Philistinian Dagon at Ashdod, I suggest there is no proof 
whatever. The fact seems to be that in early Sumeria the 
fish-god or man-fish was a symbol of Ea, the god of water, and 
probably derived from Aquarius.? 
The Assyrian colonists carried north with them the pantheon 
1 See antea, p. 99, 0D. I. 
2 See W. Hayes Ward, Seal Cylinders of Western Asia (Washington, 1910), 
Pp: 217, figs. 658, 659, 660, 661. 
8 Ward, op, cit., p. 214, in fig. 249, gives apparent confirmation. 
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