Day 15: (not) Dagan

Dagan, or Oannes (though the two are not necessarily related) is a deity I do not know very much about.

The Oracc academy in the UK, which has access to many copies of the texts, makes a couple suggestions. One is that the name ‘Dagan’ could be an old word for grain, and therefore he was some sort of fertility god. Another is that he was a storm god, and was syncretized with El, another storm god. That being said, there is nothing that implies him being any sort of Fish man.

I’m not sure how he was linked to the “Fish Genie” creatures in Akkadian reliefs. Even his link with Oannes is suspect, as far as I can tell. If anybody has any info about this misterios boy, let me know!

All this being said was that I wanted to draw a fish man, and so I drew a fish man, and then did my best to intellectually distance myself from it.

“If anybody has any info about this mysterious boy, let me know!”

I think I’m the only person whose favorite ANE pantheon head is Dagan, so a summary of most of what I know (+sources) under the cut.

A peculiar feature of Dagan’s position was that neither of his major temples was ever a political power in its own right (unlike the main cult centers of major mesopotamian gods of the same period like Ningirsu, Inanna or Ninisina), but for as long as records exist, they were evidently treated as a huge deal. For example, the cities of Ebla and Nagar signed a pact in Dagan’s temple in Terqa because it was evidently perceived as neutral in some unique way.

From Mesopotamian perspective, Dagan was regarded as the ruler of the west, and kings like Sargon and Naram-sin seemingly made a huge show out of praying to him in Tuttul to legitimize their rule over the freshly conquered “frontier” area. In the Ur III period he had a few temples in Mesopotamia, often alongside other “imported” deities. While he wasn’t necessarily the most popular “foreign” god, he was evidently held in high regard because one document puts him and his “hometown” on the same level as the major Mesopotamian religious centers and their divine owners. He continued to have some degree of relevance through the rest of the 2nd millennium BCE, but declined later, though to my knowledge there is presently no detailed research on the matter.

Due to medieval exegesis relying entirely on the famous biblical namedrop an association between Dagan and the Hebrew word for fish arose. It’s not actually attested in antiquity and Dagan seemingly basically had no cult on the coast outside Ugarit (so pretty far north - no attestations come from Canaan in the biblical, or any other, sense), where he was regarded as a foreign god with limited interest in local affairs, with one text asking him specifically to arrive from Tuttul rather than from a local temple. Therefore not only is the translation of the name wrong, but it’s even highly dubious if Dagan was known in the locations present in the story of Samson.

The fishman motifs have nothing to do with him, and depict either the sages (apkallu; the name “Oannes” seems to be derived from one of them iirc) or apotropaic fish creatures present in exorcisms, not gods. It’s generally a rule that Mesopotamian - and related - major deities have no animal body parts; that was more the domain of underworld servants, lesser deities and apotropaic beings. The only exceptions might be the seemingly snakelike Tishpak and Ishtaran from the eastern frontier of Sumer.

The etymology of Dagan’s name isn’t actually known, and Alfonso Archi, who is to my knowledge the biggest modern authority on northern Syrian gods, concluded that it probably has its origin in some unknown linguistic substrate (similar to names of a few of the region’s other major deities like Ishara [you might know her from a namedrop in Epic of Gilgamesh], Kura or Astabi), and the association with words from grain was a scribal wordplay at best.

Further reading:

• Translation of Gods: Kumarpi, Enlil, Dagan/NISABA, Ḫalki by A. Archi
• Two brides for two gods. The case of Šala and Šalaš by L. Feliu
• Storm Gods of Ancient Near East part 1 and part 2 by D. Schwemer       
• For fish hybrids in Mesopotamian art see Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts by F. Wiggermann