Dagan

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DAGAN

DAGAN (Dagān) was a West Semitic god, well known in ancient Syria and ancient Palestine. He is mentioned in texts from Ebla (Tell Mardīḫ, in Northern Syria) dating to the mid-third millennium bce, in which his name occurs as part of theophoric anthroponyms with the element Da-gan or Da-ga-an. The logographic abbreviation BE (for bēlum/ba˓alum; lord) also occurs in texts from Ebla—both as part of personal names and independently as a deity present in diverse Syrian and Northern Mesopotamian towns. This BE has frequently been identified with Dagan. However, BE is most likely a divine epithet, which refers to Dagan only in some specific cases, primarily the BE of Tuttul (i.e., "the Lord of Tuttul" refers to Dagan), modern Tell Bī˓a, on the Balīḫ River. Outside Ebla, and also during the second half of the third millennium, Dagan is attested in texts from Mari (Tell Ḥarīri, Southern Syria), which had a temple devoted to this god, probably built toward the end of the third millennium, and Tell Beydar in the region of the upper Ḫābūr River. The mentions of the "King" of Terqa in early Mari documents also refer to Dagan (^dlugal Terqa, with the divine determinative ^d refers to DINGIR preceding the Sumerian word for king, lugal ). In all these pre-Sargonic Syro-Mesopotamian texts (i.e., prior to c. 2340 bce), the only clear attestations of Dagan are in personal names.

Sargonic and Ur III Periods

During the Sargonic (c. 2340–2113 bce) and Ur III periods (c. 2113–2004 bce), Dagan appears in royal inscriptions of Mesopotamian kings, but always in a Syrian context and especially in personal names, as in previous periods. The only autochthonous Syrian mention of Dagan during these periods comes from a Mari inscription, in which he appears along with two properly Mesopotamian deities, Ishtar and Enki. In the Old Babylonian period (first half of the second millennium bce), the figure of Dagan emerges as the most important deity in the pantheon of the Middle Euphrates region, and his name is abundantly attested in letters from Old Babylonian Mari, as well as documents from Terqa and Tuttul. Both at Mari and at Aleppo, Dagan appears as the recipient of funerary offerings. Moreover, he plays a role in prophecies and divination, especially extispicy (observation of the entrails of sacrificial animals). As in previous periods, Dagan is widely attested in theophoric personal names from the Middle and Upper Euphrates regions, as well as the Ḫābūr area.

Middle Babylonian Period

In the Middle Babylonian period (second half of the second millennium bce), Dagan is particularly well represented in texts from two Late Bronze sites: Emar (modern Tell Meskene), on the Middle Euphrates, and Ugarit (Ras Shamra) on the Syrian Mediterranean coast. In texts from Emar and smaller neighboring towns including Ekalte and Azu, along with the customary syllabic spelling of the name (Da-gan ), one finds the logogram ^dKUR, the determinative for divine names followed by the logogram KUR (mountain; land). This spelling may be an abbreviation of the epithet ^dkur-gal (The Great Mountain), but it may also point to a chthonic nature of Dagan. The latter might be associated with a possible Indo-European etymology and with Dagan's funerary offerings. The most important religious festival in Late Bronze Emar, the zukru festival (related to the Semitic root *zkr ; to call, recall) was devoted to Dagan. Dagan also played an important role in most Emar rituals, as his temple seems to have been the epicenter of religious life in that city. An important corpus of mythological and epic narratives exists from Ugarit, in which Dagan is attested only in epithets of other gods (e.g, Ba⊂lu is "the son of Dagan") and in oblique references with no active role. On the other hand, in the ritual texts from Ugarit, Dagan is frequently mentioned and plays an important role.

Etymology

In all these third and second millennium texts, Dagan appears as father of the gods and, along with his consort, Shalash, he belongs to the earliest generation of gods in the Syrian pantheon. In the first millennium, Dagan's name occurs as Dagon (Dāgôn) in the biblical historical narratives (with an expected ā to ō shift), in which he is designated a Philistine deity, with temples dedicated to him in Ashdod, Gaza, and probably Beth-Shan (1 Sm. 5:1–7; Jgs. 16:23; 1 Chr. 10:10; 1 Mac. 10: 83–84, 11:4).

Traditionally, three different Semitic etymologies of this theonym have been proposed: (1) the root *dg (fish), which appeared already in Saint Jerome, the Talmud, and elsewhere, but which is now regarded as a folk etymology by most scholars; (2) the root *dgn (grain; dāgān ), with the expected fertility implications, but which works only in West Semitic and is likely to also be a folk etymology; and (3) the root *dgn (cloudy, rainy), also bearing somehow a fertility connotation.

The latter possibility is not immediately evident, because the Semitic root in question (*dgn ) would seem to mean "cloudy, rainy" only in Arabic. Nonetheless, there is a related root in Syriac (a Christian Aramaic dialect) that occurs in a verb meaning "to be blind, to have blurry eyes" (dgen, with intransitive vocalization) and in nouns referring to ophthalmic maladies and blindness. The Arabic verb dajana means primarily "to be dusky, gloomy," as in dujna/dujunna (darkness) and adjan (dark). Nonetheless, Arabic exhibits occurrences of this root referring to rain or rainy conditions (dajn ; heavy rain) and the Syriac cognate (degnā, degānā ) has a distinctive secondary but frequent meaning concerning snow (packed snow).

Based on the problems posed by the aforementioned Semitic etymologies and the association of Dagan to the earth, an Indo-European etymology has been proposed for this theonym: *d^he^hom (earth), as in Sanskrit kam, Greek khthōn (with metathesis), Latin humus (and probably also homo ; terrestrial, human being), Tocharian tkaṃ, Hittite tegan (genitive taknaš ), and perhaps even part of the name of the goddess Demeter (Dēmētēr *Gdan-mátēr, with *gd *g^hd^h *d^he^h ). As in most etymologies of proper names, tentative and speculative by nature, it is difficult to rule out this Indo-European hypothesis. Such an etymology would also match the possible linguistic identity of the Philistines.

Bibliography

On Dagan in general, see Lluís Feliu, The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria (Leiden, 2003) and Bradley L. Crowell, "The Development of Dagan: A Sketch," Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 1 (2001): 32–83. On Dagan at Ebla, see Francesco Pomponio and Paolo Xella, Les dieux d'Ebla (Münster, 1997). For Dagan at Tuttul, see Manfred Krebernik, Ausgrabungen in Tall Biʿa/Tuttul, II: Die altorientalischen Schriftfunde (Saarbrücken, Germany, 2001). On Dagan at Late Bronze Emar, see Daniel E. Fleming, Time at Emar (Winona Lake, Ind., 2000). On Dagan in Ugaritic rituals, see G. del Olmo Lete, Canaanite Religion (Bethesda, Md., 1999) and Dennis Pardee, Les textes rituels, I–II (Ras Shamra-Ougarit XII) (Paris, 2000). On the etymology of Dagan, see Fred Renfroe, Arabic-Ugaritic Lexical Studies, pp. 91–94 (Münster, Germany, 1992) and Itamar Singer, "Semitic dagān and Indo-European *d^he^hom : Related Words?" in The Asia Minor Connexion, edited by Yoël L. Arbeitman, pp. 221–232 (Louvain, 2000).