[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.