Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

3—366 FISH-GODS—DAGONor horse-gods. The idea of the deification of the fish-forms,whether that of a man issuing from a fish or of a man whoseupper half was human but lower piscine, may, perhaps, havesprung from the undoubted worship by the PhiHstines atAshdod and elsewhere of the god called Dagon, and partly tothe original description ofhim in the A.V., but now correctedin the R.V.Dagon, it will be remembered (i Samuel v. 4), after beingconfronted with the ark of the Lord in the morning, was foundfallen :" the head of Dagon and both the palms of his handslay cut upon the threshold, only the fishy part (A.V.) or stump(R.V.) of Dagon was left unto him." From this passageMilton undoubtedly drew his conception of" Dagon his name ; sea-monster, upward manAnd downward fish." ^It is possible that the theory of his having from his naveldown the form of a fish, and from his navel up the form of aman—a theory which is unknown to the Targum, Josephus, orthe Talmud, and perhaps is as late as the twelfth century a.d.^—merely transfers by the help of etymology the descriptiongiven by Lucian of the goddess Derceto, worshipped on thesame coast-line by the Syrians, who were more partial to fishdeities than the Assyrians.This Dagon has been mistakenly connected withOdacon,the last of the five sea-monsters who arose from the ErythraeanSea, His body (according to Berosus) was like that of a fish,but under the head of the fish was that of a man, to whosetail were added women's feet, whose voice was human, andwhose language was articulate. During the day he instructedthe Sumerians in letters and in all arts and sciences, more^ Paradise Lost, I., 462.' There was a Babylonian god Dagan whose name appears in conjunctionwith Anu and often with Ninurta (Ninib). Whether the PhiHstine Dagon isthe same as the Babylonian Dagan cannot with our present knowledge bedetermined. The long and profound influence of Babylonia in Palestine inearly times makes it quite possible that Dagon, like Anath, came thence.Ency. Bihl., p. 984. No evidence suggests Dagan as a Babylonian fish-god.Some authorities now hold that Dagan came to Babylonia with the Amoriticinvasion towards the latter half of the third millennium.3 For Derceto, see antea, p. 124, and for Atargatis, aniea, pp. 127-8,