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,? Layard is able, although all three vary somewhat 
in details, to describe this so-called fish-god, be it Oannes or 
Dagon,? as “ combining the human shape with that of the 
1 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) :— 
“' Tf 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.” 
° 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, Spicilegium Solesmense, III., pp. 500, 501, 
503. 
