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 Philistines 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 (1 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.p.? 
—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 Erythrean 
Sea. His body (according to Berosus) was like 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 
1 Paradise Lost, 1., 462. 
2 There was a Babylonian god Dagan whose name appears in conjunction 
with Anu and often with Ninurta (Ninib). Whether the Philistine Dagon is 
the same as the Babylonian Dagan cannot with our present knowledge be 
determined. The long and profound influence of Babylonia in 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. 
3 For Derceto, see antea, p. 124, and for Atargatis, antea, pp. 127-8. 
