The Philistines, a community of Canaanites, were an Aegean people who settled on the southern coast of the area we now know as Israel during the 12th century B.C. Their pagan god Dagon, also referred to as Dagan, was a fertility deity who eventually morphed into an important Semitic god.
Dagon was represented by both grain and fish, symbols of fertility and multiplying. Often depicted with the torso of a man and the tail of a fish, he may very well be the first merman, predating even the merfolk (mermaids and mermen) of Greek mythological legends.
In the Hebrew Semitic dialect, the root of Dagon, dag, means fish, and Dagan or Dagon is an endearing term, meaning little fish. Some linguists interpret the name as meaning grain in the ancient language of the Canaanites.
Origin
The first known appearance of Dagon is in the records of Mari, Syria, in ancient Mesopotamia from 2500 B.C. Later, he was mentioned in the inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia as a protector and warrior god. In the texts of the port city of Ugarit in ancient Syria a temple in his honor stood in this ancient place.
It seems the ancient Dagon was a big part of the life of the ancient Philistines, Assyrians and Babylonians and other Canaanites.
He is mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible.
In the Hebrew Bible, Dagon is particularly the god of the Philistines with temples at Beth-dagon in the territory of the tribe of Asher (Joshua 19.27), and in Gaza (see Judges 16.23, which tells soon after how the temple is destroyed by Samson as his last act).
Dagon symbolism permeates Catholicism
Snapshot
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