Dagon
Dagon or Dagan was a god worshipped in ancient Syria, across the middle of the Euphrates, with primary temples located in Tuttul and Terqa, though many attestations of his cult come from cities such as Mari and Emar as well. In settlements situated in the upper Euphrates area, he was regarded as the "father of gods" similar to Mesopotamian Enlil or Hurrian Kumarbi, as well as a lord of the land, a god of prosperity, and a source of royal legitimacy. A large number of theophoric names, both masculine and feminine, attests that he was a popular deity. He was also worshiped further east, in Mesopotamia, where many rulers regarded him as the god capable of granting them kingship over the western areas.
Attestations of Dagan from coastal areas are much less frequent and come mostly from the northern city of Ugarit, where Dagan's cult had a limited scope. According to the Hebrew Bible, Dagan was also the national god of the Philistines, with temples at Ashdod and Gaza, but there is no extrabiblical evidence confirming this. The extrasolar object designated Fomalhaut b is named after Dagon.
Etymology
Multiple origins have been proposed for Dagan's name.According to Philo of Byblos, the Phoenician author Sanchuniathon explained Dagon as a word for "grain". Historian Manfred Hutter considers it possible that the god's name derives from the root *dgn, which he interprets as a sign that he was originally a weather god. However, the notion of Dagan being a weather god is rejected by most researchers of this deity.
Lluís Feliu in his monograph The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria rejects both of these theories and concludes that Dagan's name originated in a pre-Semitic language spoken in inland Syria. This theory is supported by Alfonso Archi as well. Multiple other ancient Syrian deities are regarded as originating in such a substratum, including Aštabi, Ishara and Kubaba.
The association with a Hebrew word for "fish" in medieval exegesis has led to an incorrect interpretation of Dagan as a water deity with fish-like features.
Divine genealogy and syncretism
No known text deals with the parentage or creation of Dagan. His wife was Shalash; while well attested in Tuttul and elsewhere, she is seemingly absent in sources pertaining to Dagan's cult in Terqa. Their children were Hadad and possibly Hebat, who is attested alongside Dagan and Shalash in a mourning ritual from ancient Aleppo. Daniel Schwemer considers it possible that Dagan, while always viewed as a "father of gods," only became the father of the weather god under Hurrian influence.While Wilfred G. Lambert proposed in 1980 that Ishara was sometimes regarded as the wife of Dagan, and this theory is repeated as fact in older reference works such as Jeremy Black's and Anthony Green's Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, it is no longer considered the consensus. Lluís Feliu in his study of Dagan concludes that the association between these two deities was limited to sharing temples in Mesopotamia, and was most likely based on their origin in the western region and shared status as foreign deities in the eyes of Mesopotamian theologians. He also points out that there is no indication that they were closely connected outside of Babylonia, especially in parts of Syria where they were most commonly worshiped. He additionally remarks that Lambert mistakenly assumed Ishara is one and the same as Haburitum, goddess of the river Habur, who also appears in Mesopotamian texts in association with Dagan. Both Feliu and Alfonso Archi point out that Haburitum and Ishara could appear side by side in the same documents, and therefore cannot be two names of the same deity. Archi considers it more likely that Haburitum was analogous to Belet Nagar. Like Feliu, he considers it implausible that Dagan was ever regarded as Ishara's husband. He points out that the latter's character was similar to Ishtar's.
Dagan, Enlil and Kumarbi
In Mesopotamia, Dagan was equated with Enlil due to their shared role as "fathers of gods." This equation was eventually codified by the god list An = Anum, which additionally equated their spouses with each other. However, which of the two parts of this equation was viewed as the primary god varied. In Mari, it was Dagan who received Enlil's epithets, and in Emar the logographic writing dKUR, a shortened version of Enlil's epithet dKur-gal, stood for Dagan's name in the late Bronze Age. It is unclear if this equation was responsible for the logographic writing of the name of Emar's city god as dNIN.URTA, as the god of Emar is unlikely to be Dagan's primary son Hadad, and in Hurrian sources from Syria dNIN.URTA is the war god Aštabi rather than a weather god.In Hurrian tradition, Dagan was equated with Kumarbi, though only because of shared senior position in the respective pantheons. Kumarbi was nonetheless called "the Dagan of the Hurrians," and Shalash was viewed as his spouse due to this syncretic process. However, she is absent from Hurrian myths about Kumarbi.
Dagan and weather gods
Due to the similarity between the names of Dagan's wife Shalash and Shala, wife of Adad in Mesopotamia, some researches conclude that the two goddesses were the same and that Dagan was possibly a weather god himself. However, there is no clear proof that Dagan fulfilled such a function or that he was conflated with any weather gods.Dagan and Nisaba
In some documents from Syrian cities, for example Halab and Ugarit, the logogram dNISABA designates Dagan. As noted by Alphonso Archi, in Western Semitic languages such as Ugaritic Dagan's name was homophonous with the word for grain, and the logographic writing of his name as dNISABA was likely a form of wordplay popular among scribes, relying on the fact that the name of Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of writing, could simply be understood as "grain" too.Character
Dagan's character is difficult to study in comparison to that of gods who held a comparable position in Mesopotamia due to the lack of mythical narratives or hymns about him and a comparatively small number of other document; nonetheless, researchers were able to determine some of his functions.Sources from Emar, Aleppo and Mari attest that Dagan was an archetypal "father of gods" and a creator figure. This aspect of his character was likely exemplified by the epithet "lord of the offspring" connected to the zukru festival from Emar. His connection to funerary offerings was most likely an extension of his role as a divine ancestor, and modern theories regarding him as an underworld god are most likely erroneous.
One of Dagan's best documented functions was guaranteeing abundant harvests of grain. However, he was not an agricultural god but rather the source of prosperity in general.
In the 3rd millennium BCE, Tuttul Dagan was the god believed to bestow kingship upon rulers. He had a similar role in Mari. There is also some evidence that he could be invoked as a divine witness of oaths.
According to texts from Ebla, Dagan's attributes were a chariot and a mace.
Worship
Dagan's primary cult centers were Tuttul, where his clergy was likely involved in the traditional form of governance, and Terqa, where his temple E-kisiga was located. The worship of Dagan evidently spread over a large area from these cities, even though its principal centers were not a major political power in their own right, a situation which according to Alfonso Archi can be compared to that of Hadabal and Hadad of Halab. In addition to Tuttul and Terqa, settlements in which Dagan possessed a temple or shrine include Mari, Subatūm, Urah, Hakkulân, Šaggarātum, Zarri-amnān, Dašrah, Ida-Maras, Admatum, as well as Emar and various difficult to locate villages in its proximity.In Ebla, Dagan was usually referred to with titles such as "lord of Tuttul" or "lord of the country", but a phonetic spelling can be found in personal names. References to him as Bel Terqa – "Lord of Terqa" – are known from Eblaite sources too. Shalash was already regarded as his wife in this period. Representatives of the city of Nagar swore allegiance to the king of Ebla in the temple of Dagan in Tuttul, which was viewed as a neutral third party. While certain other gods known from the Eblaite texts, such as Hadabal and Kura, disappear from records after the fall of the city, Dagan's cult continued and retained its prestige.
In Mari, Dagan and Addu were protectors of the king and played a role in enthronement ceremony. Multiple kings of Mari regarded Dagan as the source of their authority. During the reign of Zimri-Lim, Dagan was one of the gods who received the most offerings during festivals, with other deities comparably celebrated in official offering lists including the local dynasty's tutelary deity Itūr-Mēr, Annunitum, Nergal, Shamash, Ea, Ninhursag, Addu and Belet Ekalli. In a letter Zimri-Lim's wife Šibtu enumerated Dagan, Shamash, Itūr-Mēr, Belet Ekalli and Addu as "the allies for me" and the deities who "go by my lord's side." The Terqa temple was closely associated with Zimri-Lim. A source from the period of his reign attests that to celebrate his coronation, a weapon was sent from Hadad's temple in Aleppo to Dagan's in Terqa, likely to legitimize his rule. It is possible that this ritual object represented the mace wielded by the weather god in his battle with the sea. Despite the close connection between the clergy of Dagan from Terqa and Zimri-Lim, he was viewed unfavorably by the population of Tuttul and the presence of his officials was in at least one case regarded as a disturbance of Dagan's rites.
In Emar, Dagan was the most senior god in offering lists, preceding the weather god and the city god, whose name was written logographically as NIN.URTA. An important celebration dedicated to him in this location was so-called erēb Dagan, "entry of Dagan." It took the form of a cultic journey of a statue, similar to celebrations of deities such as Lagamal or Belet Nagar attested in the same region. He was also celebrated during the zukru festival. Another festival dedicated to him known from documents from Emar was kissu, which most likely took place in Šatappi, a city possibly located further south. The precise meaning of the term kissu remains uncertain, making the nature of these celebrations, and roles of specific deities in them, difficult to ascertain. It has been proposed that the presence of underworld deities – Shuwala and Ugur – indicates that it represented the periodic death and return to life of a deity, possibly Dagan's spouse, but this remains speculative.
Ḫammu-rāpi, who, around 1400 BCE, ruled the area comprising the former independent Kingdom of Khana, used the title "governor of Ilaba and Dagan."
Due to the scarcity of sources, the later history of Dagan's cult remains unclear; however, it is evident that he was no longer the head god of the upper Euphrates area in later times. The head of the Aramean pantheon known from sources from the first millennium BCE was Hadad.