Dagon
Dagon was a northwest Semitic god worshipped by the early Amorites, by the people of Ebla and Ugarit. Dagon was a major god, perhaps the chief god, of the Biblical Philistines. The prevailing view today is that he was a fertility deity related to grain and agriculture. However, some older authorities regarded him as a type of merman or fish-deity of the the Sea Peoples, such as the Philistines and Phoenicians. In the biblical story of Samson, it is a temple of Dagon which the Hebrew hero pulls down in the final act of his drama. It is also likely that Dagon was among the dieties invoked by the giant Philistine warrior Goliath in his taunts against Israel and David.
His name appears in Hebrew as דגון (in modern transcription Dagon (or sometimes "Dagan," in Ugaritic as dgn (probably vocalized as Dagnu), and in Akkadian as Dagana, Daguna.
Etymology
In Ugaritic, the word dgn means "grain." Similarly, in Hebrew dāgān {Samaritan dīgan) is an archaic word for grain, related to Arabic dagn ("rain" or "rain-cloud"). The Phoenecian writerSanchuniathon translated Dagon into Greek as Siton, again meaning "grain." He further explains: "And Dagon, after he discovered grain and the plough, was called Zeus Arotrios." The word Arotrios means both "ploughman" and "pertaining to agriculture."
However, the fact that the Hebrew word dāg/dâg means "small fish" led to a tradition that that Dagon was a fish-god, as this is consistent with the his worship by the s-called Sea Peoples. He is thus represented as a type of merman or Neptune-like deity in artistic representations. (See Fish-god tradition below.)
Non-Biblical sources
The god Dagon first appears in archaelogical records about 2500 B.C.E.]] in the Mari documents and in personal Amorite names in which the gods Ilu (Ēl), Dagan, and Hadad/Adad are especially common.
At Ebla (Tell Mardikh), from at least 2300 B.C.E.]], Dagan was the head of the city pantheon, which included some 200 deities. He bore such titles as BE-DINGIR-DINGIR (Lord-God of gods) and Bekalam (Lord of the land). His consort was known only as Belatu, "The Lady." Both were worshipped in a large temple complex called E-Mul, the "House of the Star." One entire quarter of Ebla and one of its gates were named after Dagan. Dagan is also called ti-lu ma-tim ("dew of the land) and Be-ka-na-na (possibly "Lord of Canaan). He was the patron god of several towns or cities, including Tuttul, Irim, Ma-Ne, Zarad, Uguash, Siwad, and Sipishu.
An interesting early reference to Dagan occurs in a clay tablet letter written to King Zimri-Lim of Mari, [[18th century B.C.E.]], written by the governor of Nahur [biblical Nahor] (ANET, p. 623). It relates a dream in which Dagan appeared. In the dream, Dagan blamed Zimri-Lim's inability to subdue the king of the Yaminites Zimri-Lim's failure to bring a report of his deeds to Dagan. 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 (also called Hadad). Howeger, in the known Ugaritic mythological texts, Dagon is mentioned solely in passing, as the father of the Hadad. According to Sanchuniathon, Dagon was the brother of El/Cronus and not Hadad's father. Few other mythological references to Dagon have survived.
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 Hadad and sometimes identified with Ninlil). In other texts, his wife is called 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 "Naram-Sin slew Arman and Ibla with the 'weapon' of the god Dagan who aggrandizes his kingdom." (ANET, p. 268) The stele of Ashurnasirpal II refers to Ashurnasirpal as the favorite of Anu and of Dagan. (ANET, p. 558) 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.
The Phoenician inscription on the sarcophagus of King Eshmunʿazar of Sidon (5th century B.C.E.) relates: "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." (ANET, p. 662)
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.
ReferencesISBN 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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