BCE 883-859 priest holding the sacred “IꞋsis-Loop”

Dâg•ōnꞋ; דגון,דגן,Dagondiminutive of דָּג (not ”grain” etymology); e.g., “Fish•ling” — the Fish-god” (and probable origin of “Doggone it!”).

The first extant legendary fish-man apkallu is known in Sumerian as Oan/​Oannes and Akkadian as Uanna/​U-An. (On a few cuneiform inscriptions this first apkallu is also known as Adapa.)

Ca. BCE 2,500 — In a clay tablet letter to King ZiꞋmᵊr•i-Lim of Mari (in modern central Iraq), the governor of Biblical NâꞋkhōr (in modern southern Turkey) relates a dream in which King ZiꞋmᵊr•i-Lim has suffered a military defeat, which the governor of NâꞋkhōr blamed on a trespass, by the king, against which (in the dream) promised that when the king would make amends, “I will have the kings of the Yaminites cooked on a fisherman’s spit…”

Ca. BCE 16^th century — In Ta•na"khꞋ, Yᵊhō•shūꞋa 15.41 equates בֵּית-דָּגוֹן with NinꞋᵊweih (which means “Fish House” and dates from BCE 6,000)—i.e. an 8 millennium fish (not ”grain”!) association of דָּגוֹן origins in NinꞋᵊweih! The Jewish Encyclopedia corroborates this: “for דָּגוֹן is most probably a [diminutive] of דָּג, just as צִידוֹן is derived from צַיִד and שִׁמְשׁוֹן from שֶׁמֶשׁ.”

Ca. BCE The largest eruption in recorded history blows away most of the Aegean island capital, Kal•lisꞋtæ of the Minoan-Pᵊli•shᵊt•inꞋ “Sea People” marine traders, obliterating life there for at least decades. Having been orphaned from their entire country by the eruption, the Mycenaean-Minoan mariners sought refuge colonizing the western coasts of the Mediterranean. It is inconceivable that maritime traders serving the entire Mediterranean and Aegean seas would not be familiar with —as well as all of the gods from Ugarit to NinꞋᵊweih. It would seem likely that the Minoans, who had been disillusioned of their traditional goddess (which they would have blamed for allowing the eruption), would, at least initially, be attracted to a natural mariners’ god like .

When, a bit over a century later, it fell over in seeming subservience to the •rōnꞋ י‑‑ה (and having already been disappointed by a god once before), the Pᵊli•shᵊt•inꞋ may well have decided to adopt a more reliable replacement god—making a short-lived Pᵊli•shᵊt•inꞋ god.

Ca. BCE 721-05 — (Greek Oannes/​Adapa) merman; bas-relief, from palace of Assyrian king Sargon 2

Ca. BCE 1300 — While the theology of seems to have originated in NinꞋᵊweih long before ca. BCE 3000 (perhaps as early as its Hassuna inhabitants BCE 6000), already—a century before Shi•mᵊsh•ōnꞋ— had a large temple located clear across the continent to the west, in the Minoan-Phoenician Mediterranean port city of Ugarit, Syria. In its Ugarit temple, was listed third in the pantheon preceding his mythical Son, Hadad (cf., inter alia, Hadad Gate in NinꞋᵊweih).

While it is widely accepted that the Hellenic (Mycenaean) Minoan-Philistine theology centered around a principle Mother-goddess; what is less known is that it was a moon goddess—represented by a fish—who ruled the heavens (comparable to the Egyptian precursors, IꞋsis and (K)hãt-HōrꞋ—”examples which may have exercised influence on [Minoan-Philistine] Crete”). In fact, the original name of the island of Thera/Santorini was Kal•listꞋæ—“moon goddess”, their Minoan sequel to (K)hãt-HōrꞋ!

In the reverse direction, in Egypt, the moon-goddess (K)hãt-HōrꞋ has also been associated with the Egyptian fish goddess fem. counterpart of Dãg•ōnꞋ, i.e. (K)hãt--MëkhꞋit (Foremost of Fish), by others.

”Puradu- Apkallu” (mermen) Laver BCE 704-681 Temple of Ishtar in NinꞋᵊweih ()

Ca. BCE 1206 — (Shᵊmu•eilꞋ ÂlꞋëph 5.1-7) The Pᵊli•shᵊt•inꞋ captured the •rōnꞋ י‑‑ה, transported it to the city of Ashᵊdōd (city of Ashdoda, which they had colonized), where they set it in their בֵּית-דָּגוֹן temple, beside their idol of דָּגוֹן. (If we rule out supernatural voodoo, one or two angry Israelis sneaked in during the night, lassoed the idol and pulled it over.) The next morning, the Pᵊli•shᵊt•inꞋ found their דָּגוֹן idol, face down, before the •rōnꞋ י‑‑ה (probably with some faint cracks at the main impace points: wrists and face). So, the Pᵊli•shᵊt•inꞋ lifted their idol upright again. But the next morning, דָּגוֹן was, yet again, face down before the •rōnꞋ י‑‑ה. And, this time, the head and hands had broken off, “leaving only דָּגוֹן itself” (“fishling”, not a ”grain” of wheat)!

Ca. BCE 883 — Philistine Conflated With Sumerian Enki = Greek Oannes

Tâ•râphꞋ of or Adapa mer­man (origin of ikhꞋthūs/​pope’s miter)

”Perhaps the first recorded merman was the early Babylonian sea-god Ea, whose Sumerian [name was] Enki, and was known to the Greeks as Oannes [which] had a fish head and man's head beneath, and both a fish tail and man like legs” “The fish god of the Philistines, with a fish-tailed body, may derive its origins from these earlier Mesopotamian gods.”

A flimsy argument was posed in 1928 (by H. Schmökel) that was a ”grain”-god—not a fish-god—to undercut charges that the popular fish-god tᵊrâph•im′ were the obvious pattern for ikhꞋthūs and the pope’s miter. Yet, even those functionally unaware of this long merman/​fish-god tradition acknowledge that “once [it] became an important god of maritime Canaanite peoples like the Phoenicians, it was inevitable that [its] name would be referred to dag (fish), and that this etymology would influence representations of [it]. In discussing the Babylonian fish-god Schmökel deals only with Oannes, and has failed to consider Berossos’ [sic] Odakon, part man and part fish, who rose from the [Gulf of Aden], and whose name may be a garbled form of Dagon.”

The Jewish Encyclopedia remarks “it is probable that ‘Ō•dakōn’ (Ὠδάκων), by which the Chaldean Berosus [sic] designates a personification of Oannes, who is supposed to rise out of the Persian Gulf, is identical with ‘Dakon,’ probably changed into ‘Odakon’ through the similarity in sound to ‘Oannes… the figures of Dagon found on Babylonian gems, on an Assyrian cylinder, on a piece of sculpture from Khorsabad, on a similar piece from Nimrud, and on a Babylonian cylinder, combining in different ways the body of a man and of a fish, are simply different representations of the god Dakan-Dagan. … The same god would naturally be worshiped both near the Persian Gulf and on the Mediterranean Sea. The El-Amarna tab­lets  indicate an intercourse at an early period between the regions along the Euphrates and Tigris, and those of western Asia and Egypt,”

Claims that there were no universal merman fish-gods from Mesopotamia to the Aegean islands prior to the Common Era, or that the Minoan-Pᵊli•shᵊt•inꞋ mariner-colonists were ignorant of the ancient world’s most pre-eminent fish-god, is a contradiction of an overwhelming predominance of hard archeological evidence—and is agenda-driven (to dodge the likeness of the open-mouth fish-headdress, seen in tᵊrâph•im′ of that era, to the gentile Hellenist Roman Christian ikhꞋthūs origin of the pope’s miter hat).

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