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]
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]