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 9th 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.[917]
Despite the Dagon or Oannes traditions, I am not convinced that in the
crowded pantheon of Babylon or Assyria there can be found a fish-god
proper, or god of fishing, _i.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,[918] 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 priesthood, 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.[919]
The Assyrian colonists carried north with them the pantheon 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.[920]
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 Dagān 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,[921] Layard is
able, although all three vary somewhat in details, to describe this
so-called fish-god, be it Oannes or Dagon,[922] as “combining the
human shape with that of the fish. The head of the fish formed a mitre
above that of the man, whilst its scaly limbs, back, and fan-like tail
fell as a cloak behind, leaving the human limbs and feet exposed.” But
in identifying this mythic form with Oannes, he terms it merely “the
sacred man-fish,” not deity.[923]
There were to be seen in the temple of Belus, according to Berosus,
sculptured representations of men with two wings, or two faces, with
the legs and horns of goats,[924] or the hoofs of horses; also bulls
with the heads of men, and horses with the heads of dogs.[925]
[Illustration: FISH-GOD.
From Layard’s _Nineveh and Babylon_.]
I venture to suggest that the mystic fish-form of Dagon or Oannes is of
the same nature and in the same category as the man with the legs and
horns of goats, or with the hoofs of horses: but these mythic goat or
horse forms were not elevated into goat-gods 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 (I 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.”[926]
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.D.[927]—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.[928]
This Dagon has been mistakenly connected with Odacon, the last of the
five sea-monsters who arose from the Erythræan 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 especially
in the building of temples, but at night he plunged again into the
sea.[929]
[Illustration: GILGAMESH CARRYING FISH.
From _La Revue d’Assyriologie_, VI. 57.]
Authorities disagree whether Dagon derives his name from the
Hebrew _Dāg_, signifying fish, or _dāgān_, sheaf or agriculture.
Sanchouniathon early held, as do most modern writers, the latter view.
Reichardt errs in his conjecture that the representation in De Sarzec
(p. 189) shows the deity holding in his hand ears of corn, instead of
what really is a palm branch of the conventional type.[930]
Cylinder seals depict[931] river gods, some with streams rising
from their shoulders, or flowing from their laps, or from vases in
their laps, and containing fish, and others half men and half fish.
Mythological beings with fish head-dress occur not only on seals but on
the Ninevite reliefs, etc., where it has been suggested that they do
represent Dagan.
The delineation of fish on vases, etc.,[932] and of a fish in a stream
of water on a small fragment from Telloh, are of early Sumerian art.
The representation of Gilgamesh carrying fish dates from at least 2800
B.C., or some thirteen hundred years previous to the Phylokapi Vase
(the most ancient Greek representation of men similarly engaged) and
so furnishes a comparison, and from the differences in delineation of
face, arms, and eyes a contrast of singular interest.[933]
FOOTNOTES:
[917] See _antea_, p. 99, n. 1.
[918] See W. Hayes Ward, _Seal Cylinders of Western Asia_ (Washington,
1910), p. 217, figs. 658, 659, 660, 661.
[919] Ward, _op. cit._, p. 214, in fig. 249, gives apparent
confirmation.
[920] In noting the attributes ascribed to various gods, we are
confronted by the problem as to what suggested to the Babylonian his
precise differentiation in their characters. These betray their origin:
they are the personification 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):—
“If 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.”
[921] 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.”
[922] 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.
[923] _Nineveh and Babylon_, _op. cit._, pp. 343, 350. See also _Le
Mythe de Dagon_, by Ménant; _Revue de l’Hist. des Religions_ (Paris,
1885), vol. II. p. 295 ff., where a great variety of Assyrian fish-men
may be found. Forlong (_op. cit._, I. 231) instances a cornelian
cylinder in the Ouseley collection depicting Oannes or the Babylonian
god or demi-god, attended by two gods of fecundity, on whom the Sun-god
with a fish tail looks down benignantly. Forlong’s obsession detects
in every representation, Indian or Irish, Assyrian or Australasian,
some emblem of fecundity, while his ever-present “King Charles’s head”
is some phallic symbol. We are almost reminded of the witty quatrain
current some years back:
“Diodorus Siculus
Made himself ridiculous
By insisting that thimbles
Were all phallic symbols!”
[924] The goat-fish god dates as far back as Gudea, _c._ 2700 B.C. He
was like the man-fish or fish-god, a symbol of Ea, the god of water,
and probably derives from Capricorn. See Ward, p. 214, fig. 649; and p.
249, figs. 745, 747.
[925] Cf. Ezekiel, VIII. 10, “Every form of creeping things and
abominable beasts pourtrayed upon the wall round about.”
[926] _Paradise Lost_, I., 462.
[927] 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.
[928] For Derceto, see _antea_, p. 124, and for Atargatis, _antea_, pp.
127-8.
[929] Oannes of Berosus is identified with Enki (otherwise Ea) by
Langdon, _Poème Sumérien, etc._ (Paris, 1919), p. 17. Tradition
generally makes the earliest founders or teachers of civilisation come
from the sea. Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, the children of the sun god,
rose, however, not from the sea, but from _Lake_ Titicaca, when they
brought to the ancient Peruvians government, law, a moral code, art,
and science. Their descendants styled themselves Incas.
[930] See G. F. Hill, _Some Palestinian Cults in the Greek and Roman
Age_, in _Proceedings of the British Academy_ (London, 1911-12), vol.
V. p. 9.
[931] Cf. Heuzey, _Sceau de Goudéa_ (Paris, 1909), p. 6; also W.
Hayes Ward, _Seal Cylinders of Western Asia_ (Washington, 1910),
figs. 288-289; see also figs. 199, 661. The large number of seals,
almost entirely cylinder, which have been found in the excavations
is probably owing to every Assyrian of any means always carrying one
hung on him. The use to which they were put was precisely similar to
that of our signet ring. An Assyrian, instead of signing a document,
ran his cylinder over the damp clay tablet on which the deed he was
attesting had been inscribed. No two cylinder seals were absolutely
alike, and thus this method of signature worked very well. The work on
the cylinders is always intaglio; the subjects represented are very
various, including emblems of the gods, animals, fish, etc.
[932] _Récherches Archéologiques_, vol. XIII. of _Délégation en Perse_,
by Pottier, Paris, 1912, figs. 117, 204, etc.
[933] L. Heuzey, _Revue d’Assyriologie_, VI. 57, and Hayes Ward, _op.
cit._, p. 74, fig. 199.