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]

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—

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]

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]