Dagon

Dagon was a major northwest Semitic god, reportedly a god of grain and agriculture, worshipped by the early Amorites, by the people of Ebla and Ugarit, and a major god, perhaps the chief god, of the Biblical Philistines, demonized by ancient Israelites.

His name appears in Hebrew as דגון (in modern transcription Dagon, Tiberian Hebrew Dāḡôn), in Ugaritic as dgn (probably vocalized as Dagnu), and in Akkadian as Dagana, Daguna usually rendered in English translations as Dagan.

Etymology

In Ugaritic, the word dgn also means grain. Similarly, in Hebrew dāgān, Samaritan dīgan, is an archaic word for grain, perhaps related to the Middle Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic word dgnʾ 'be cut open' or to Arabic dagn 'rain-(cloud). The Phoenecian author Sanchuniathon also says Dagon means Siton, that being the Greek word for grain. The ancient Greek writer Sanchuniathon further explains: "And Dagon, after he discovered grain and the plough, was called Zeus Arotrios." The word Arotrios means "ploughman," "pertaining to agriculture".

However, the Hebrew word dāg/dâg, means "small fish." This has led some scholars to the opinion that Dagon was a fish-god, as this is consistent with the his worship by the s-called Sea Peoples, such as the Phlistines and Phoenicians. (See Fish-god tradition below.)

Non-Biblical sources

The god Dagon first appears in extant records about 2500 BC in the Mari texts and in personal Amorite names in which the gods Ilu (Ēl), Dagan, and Adad are especially common.

At Ebla (Tell Mardikh), from at least 2300 BCE, Dagan was the head of the city pantheon comprising some 200 deities and bore the titles BE-DINGIR-DINGIR, "Lord of the gods" and Bekalam, "Lord of the land". His consort was known only as Belatu, "Lady". Both were worshipped in a large temple complex called E-Mul, "House of the Star". One entire quarter of Ebla and one of its gates were named after Dagan. Dagan is called ti-lu ma-tim, "dew of the land" and Be-ka-na-na, possibly "Lord of Canaan". He was called lord of many cities: of Tuttul, Irim, Ma-Ne, Zarad, Uguash, Siwad, and Sipishu.

An interesting early reference to Dagan occurs in a letter to King Zimri-Lim of Mari, 18th century BCE, written by Itur-Asduu an official in the court of Mari and governor of Nahur (the Biblical city of Nahor) (ANET, p. 623). It relates a dream of a "man from Shaka" in which Dagan appeared. In the dream, Dagan blamed Zimri-Lim's failure to subdue the King of the Yaminites upon Zimri-Lim's failure to bring a report of his deeds to Dagan in Terqa. Dagan promises that when Zimri-Lim has done so: "I will have the kings of the Yaminites [coo]ked on a fisherman's spit, and I will lay them before you."

In Ugarit around 1300 BCE, Dagon had a large temple and was listed third in the pantheon following a father-god and Ēl, and preceding Baīl Ṣapān (that is the god Haddu or Hadad/Adad). But in the Ugaritic mythological texts, Dagon is mentioned solely in passing as the father of the god Hadad. According to Sanchuniathon, Dagon, the brother of Ēl/Cronus and like him son of Sky/Uranus and Earth, was not truly Hadad's father. Hadad was begotten by "Sky" on a concubine before Sky was castrated by his son Ēl, whereupon the pregnant concubine was given to Dagon. Accordingly, Dagon in this version is Hadad's half-brother and stepfather. Otherwise Dagon has practically no surviving mythology.

Dagan is mentioned occasionally in early Sumerian texts but becomes prominent only in later Akkadian inscriptions as a powerful and warlike protector, sometimes equated with Enlil. Dagan's wife was in some sources the goddess Shala (also named as wife of Adad and sometimes identified with Ninlil). In other texts, his wife is Ishara. In the preface to his famous law code, King Hammurabi calls himself "the subduer of the settlements along the Euphrates with the help of Dagan, his creator". An inscription about an expedition of Naram-Sin to the Cedar Mountain relates (ANET, p. 268): "Naram-Sin slew Arman and Ibla with the 'weapon' of the god Dagan who aggrandizes his kingdom." The stele of Ashurnasirpal II (ANET, p. 558) refers to Ashurnasirpal as the favorite of Anu and of Dagan. In an Assyrian poem, Dagan appears beside Nergal and Misharu as a judge of the dead. A late Babylonian text makes him the underworld prison warder of the seven children of the god Emmesharra.

The Phoenician inscription on the sarcophagus of King Eshmunʿazar of Sidon (5th century BCE) relates (ANET, p. 662): "Furthermore, the Lord of Kings gave us Dor and Joppa, the mighty lands of Dagon, which are in the Plain of Sharon, in accordance with the important deeds which I did."

Dagan was sometimes used in royal names. Two kings of the Dynasty of Isin were Iddin-Dagan (c. 1974–1954 BCE) and Ishme-Dagan (c. 1953–1935 BCE). The latter name was later used by two Assyrian kings: Ishme-Dagan I (c. 1782–1742 BCE) and Ishme-Dagan II (c. 1610–1594 BCE).

In Biblical texts and commentaries

In the Tanakh, Dagon is particularly the god of the Philistines with temples at Beth-dagon in the tribe of Asher (Joshua 19.27), in Gaza (Judges 16.23, which tells soon after how the temple is destroyed by Samson as his last act). Another temple was in Ashdod (1 Samuel 5.2–7, 1 Maccabees 10.83;11.4). There was also a second place known as Beth-Dagon in the Judah (Joshua 15.41). Josephus (Antiquities 12.8.1; War 1.2.3) mentions a place named Dagon above Jericho. Jerome mentions Caferdago between Diospolis and Jamnia. There is also a modern Beit Dejan south-east of Nablus. Some of these names may have to do with grain rather than the god.

The account in 1 Samuel 5.2–7 relates how the ark of Yahweh is captured by the Philistines and taken to Dagon's temple in Ashdod. The following morning they found the image of Dagon lying prostrate before the ark. They set the image upright, but again on the morning of the following day they found it prostrate before the ark, but this time with head and hands severed, lying on the miptān translated as "threshold" or "podium". The account continues with the puzzling words raq dāgôn nišʾar ʿālāyw, which means literally "only Dagon was left to him." (The Septuagint, Peshitta, and Targums render "Dagon" here as "trunk of Dagon" or "body of Dagon", presumably referring to the lower part of his image.) Thereafter we are told that neither the priests or anyone ever steps on the miptān of Dagon in Ashdod "unto this day". This story is depicted on the frescoes of the Dura-Europos synagogue as the opposite to a depiction of the High Priest Aaron and the Temple of Solomon.

Marnas

Marcus Diaconus, in the Life of Porphyry of Gaza, writes of the great god of Gaza, then known as Marnas (Aramaic Marnā the " Lord"), who was regarded as the god of rain and grain and invoked against famine. He was identified at Gaza with Cretan Zeus, Zeus Krêtagenês. It's likely that Marnas was the Hellenistic expression of Dagon. His temple, the Marneion, was burned by order of the Roman emperor in 402, the last surviving great cult center of paganism.

Fish-god tradition

Rashi records a tradition that the name Dāgôn is related to Hebrew dāg/dâg 'fish' and that Dagon was imagined in the shape of a fish. David Kimchi (13th century) interpreted the odd sentence that only Dagon was left to him to mean "only the form of a fish was left", adding: "It is said that Dagon, from his navel down, had the form of a fish (whence his name, Dagon), and from his navel up, the form of a man, as it is said, his two hands were cut off."

John Milton uses this tradition in his Paradise Lost Book 1:

                                      ... Next came one

Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off,
In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge,
Where he fell flat and shamed his worshippers:
Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man
And downward fish; yet had his temple high
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,

And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds.

Various 19th century scholars, such as Julius Wellhausen and William Robertson Smith, believed this tradition to have been validated from the occasional occurrence of a merman motif found in Assyrian and Phoenician art, including coins from Ashdod and Arvad.

Dagon is sometimes identified with Matsya, the fish avatar of Krishna. A statue in Keshava Temple in Somnathpur, India depicts this.

In fiction

• Dagon appears in Milton's epic poem Samson Agonistes as one of the deities the Philistines worship.

• Dagon has also been used as a figure in the fictional Cthulhu Mythos, one of the hidden powers known as the Great Old Ones. The traditional fishy Dagon seems to have inspired H. P. Lovecraft in creating his story "Dagon", first published in 1919. The story of a victim of a World War I German merchant raider attack is cast up on a mysterious land mass, seemingly emerged from the bottom of the ocean, where he finds first inhuman ruins and then a gigantic humanoid sea monster:

Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds.

On his escape to civilization, he inquires about the connection between this creature and the historical Dagon:

Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.

• A reference to Dagon appears again in Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1936), one of Lovecraft's best-known stories. The tale concerns a Massachusetts town that has been taken over by the Deep Ones, a race of water-breathing humanoids. A center of the Deep Ones' power in Innsmouth is the Esoteric Order of Dagon, ostensibly a Masonic-style fraternal order. Other Cthulhu Mythos stories refer to the creature as Father Dagon, depicting him as having a similar being, Mother Hydra, as a mate.

• Fred Chappell, considered a literary writer, wrote a novel called Dagon, which attempted to tell a Cthulhu Mythos story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic novel. The novel was awarded the Best Foreign Novel Prize by the French Academy in 1972.

• In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, a recurring joke involves an allusion to the vague but unpleasant fate of a "Mr. Hong", who "opened The Three Jolly Luck Takeaway Fish Bar on the site of an old temple to a fish god on Dagon Street at the time of the full moon."

• Director Stuart Gordon and screenwriter Dennis Paoli, who worked together on Re-Animator, made a movie called Dagon in 2001. Though the film credits both Lovecraft's "Dagon" and his "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," much more of the plot is (loosely) adapted from the latter story.

• In the movie Blade Trinity, the third of a trilogy of vampire films, a character asserts that Dracula was once known as Dagon.

• In the White Wolf RPG game Demon: the Fallen, Dagon is depicted as an Earthbound obsessed with transforming all of humanity into soulless, mindless clockwork beings, an ambition similar to that of the Technocracy (World of Darkness).

• In Mahou Sentai Magiranger, Dagon is the name of the Creature From the Black Lagoon-based leader of The Infershia Pantheon Gods: Wise Hades God Dagon. His Power Rangers: Mystic Force counterpart is Sculpin of the Ten Terrors.

• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Dagon Sphere was an orb that weakened the god Glory.

• In The Elder Scrolls series, a daedric prince is named "Mehrunes Dagon".

• In the Warcraft III modification DOTA, a Dagon is a fusable item. It takes the form of a staff that allows the user to cast an "Energy Burst" spell.

• In the game Lost Magic, the Dagon is the greater form of the Hydra, a nautilus-like monster, only fire-type.

• In the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, Dagon is the name shared by both a demon prince of the Abyss and an outcast devil. The former is an ancient obryith lord that hails from before the advent of life in the material plane, and maintains a similar flavor to the Lovecraftian version. His stats appear in the Fiendish Codex I.

• In Conan The Destroyer, Dagon or Dagoth is the dream god that comes to life when a jewel encrusted horn is placed on the forehead of his statue.

• The Digimon Dragomon was originally named Dagomon, a reference to Dagon.

• In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, the character Daegon may be a reference to Dagon.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• ANET = Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 3rd ed. with Supplement (1969). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03503-2.
• Dagon in Etana: Encyclopædia Bibilica Volume I A–D: Dabarah - David (PDF).
• Feliu, Lluis (2003). The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria, trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-13158-2
• Fleming, D. (1993). "Baal and Dagan in Ancient Syria", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 83, pp. 88–98.
• Matthiae, Paolo (1977). Ebla: An Empire Rediscovered. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-22974-8.
• Pettinato, Giovanni (1981). The Archives of Ebla. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-13152-6

Some parts of the above derive from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

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