Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—364 FISH-GODS—DAGONof the Babylonians, composed in part of the local deities ofSumeria, and in part of their own translated from their originalhabitat ; but from the start they modified the hierarchy andchanged 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 elephantscaught alive, or had slain in the desert, which included " fourwild oxen mighty and terrible, ten elephants, one hundredand twenty lions on foot, and eight hundred speared from hischariot," ascribing his success to the help of the gods Ninurtaand Nergal.These gods were closely associated with battle and sport,but to both other characteristics were attributed at variousepochs of their godhood. It has been suggested that theevolution of the fish-god Dagon from the Babylonian deityDagan followed on such lines, but sufficient data for anidentification of the two do not survive.From the sculptures discovered at Kouyunjik and atNimroud (now in the British Museum), and from an Assyriancylinder, 2 Layard is able, although all three vary somewhatin details, to describe this so-called fish-god, be it Cannes orDagon, 3 as " combining the human shape with that of the* In noting the attributes ascribed to various gods, we are confrontedby the problem as to what suggested to the Babylonian his precise differentiationin their characters. These betray their origin : they are the personificationof natural forces : in other words, the gods and many of the stories toldof them are the only explanation the Babylonian could give, after centuriesof observation, of the forces and changes in the natural world. In companywith other primitive peoples he explained them as the work of beings verysimilar but superior to himself. See King, Babylonian Religion (London,1889). This inevitable tendency of anthropomorphism was tersely expressedby Xenophanes of Colophon (frag. 15):" If oxen, horses, lions had but handsTo paint withal or carve, as men can do,Then horses like to horses, kine to kine,Had painted shapes of gods and made their bodiesSuch as the frame that they themselves possessed."2 For the Nimroud sculpture, see Monuments of Nineveh, op. cit., 2ndSeries, 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 thiscylinder the all-seeing eye takes the place of the winged human figure and theglobe in the emblem above the sacred tree."3 For the data and authorities available in 1855 and examination intoOannes and Dagon, see J. B. Pitra, Spicilegiuni Solesmense, III., pp. 500, 501,503.