Canaanite

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Canaanite

Dagon

The Lord of the Grain

Domain: Grain, Harvest & Plenty
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Element: Earth
Relics of Power: Sheaf of Grain

Speak with Dagon

The full Codex

5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Canaanites & Phoenicians

Region

Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Israel)

Period

c. 3000 – 300 BC

The Canaanite gods were worshipped by the peoples of the Levant, including the Phoenicians, great navigators and traders of the Mediterranean. Headed by El and the storm god Baal, they were honored in cities such as Ugarit, Tyre, and Carthage. Their myths, rediscovered on the Ugarit tablets, closely echo the biblical traditions.

Worship followed Baal's agricultural cycle, with autumn festivals calling for the rains and laments for his descent into the world of the dead. The faithful worshipped at the "high places" (bamot) and in city temples, with stone steles, incense, and animal sacrifices.

At a glance

Dagan is a god attested in Mesopotamian and Syrian sources of the third and second millennia BCE; Dagon is the form the name takes in the Hebrew Bible, where it designates the god of the Philistines at Ashdod and Gaza. The relation between these witnesses is widely accepted, but each belongs to its own period, language and genre. An inscription attributed to Sargon of Akkad says that Dagan granted him the “Upper Land” after he bowed down at Tuttul; a text from Ugarit calls Baal the “Son of Dagan”; the books of Samuel and Judges place Dagon at the center of Philistine scenes; and a late account, transmitted by Eusebius from Philo of Byblos, links Dagon to grain and the plow. These texts do not form a continuous biography. In royal inscriptions Dagan works as a source of political legitimacy; in Ugaritic poetry he barely acts; in the Bible he is the god of a neighboring people as seen by Israelite narrators; in Philo he is a figure in a Hellenized genealogy. The idea that Dagon had the body of a fish grew out of a later reading of the name and has no support in any ancient source. This entry keeps the forms Dagan, Dgn and Dagon apart and treats each witness within the limits of what it says.

16 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The ear of wheat, the plow, the sickle and the granary

Family

Parents

Uranus (Ouranos), in the theogony of Philo of Byblos: Dagon is one of the four sons of Uranus and Ge. No earlier ancient text deals with the parentage of Dagan.Ge (Earth), sister and wife of Uranus in the same late account.

Siblings

ElBaetylus, a brother in Philo of Byblos's accountAtlas

Dagon

Unions

Shala (Shalash), wife of Dagan, well attested at Tuttul, according to the scholarly synthesis consulted

Children

Baal

Genealogy according to Ciclo de Baal, KTU 1.2 I; Filão de Biblos em Eusébio, Preparação Evangélica I.10 (trad. E. H. Gifford, 1903); síntese de Wikipedia, “Dagon”, baseada em Feliu (2003) e Archi; Healey (1999); Smith (1994); Singer (1992). Fontes não abertas diretamente: Feliu, Healey, Smith, Singer.

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Royal inscriptions of Akkad (Sargon and Naram-Sin), Copies from Nippur and others, catalogued in RIME 2. translation: Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) database; text checked in secondary citations. read
Ilimilku of Ugarit (scribe), Baal Cycle, KTU 1.2 I. translation: Modern translation in synopsis (oocities.org/soho/lofts/2938); critical edition: Mark S. Smith (1994). read
Biblical scribes, 1 Samuel 5; Judges 16; Joshua 15 and 19; Genesis 27. translation: Hebrew text and translation of the Jewish Publication Society, Mechon Mamre. read
Philo of Byblos, Phoenician History (in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel I.10). translation: Translation by E. H. Gifford (1903). read
John Milton, Paradise Lost, livro I. translation: Text from Project Gutenberg. read

Studies

Feliu, Lluís, The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Healey, John F., Dagon. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD), Leiden: Brill, 1999. open
Smith, Mark S., The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, vol. I. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
Singer, Itamar, Towards the Image of Dagon, the God of the Philistines. Syria 69, pp. 431–450, 1992.
Emanuel, Jeffrey P., “Dagon Our God”: Iron I Philistine Cult in Text and Archaeology. Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 16 (1), pp. 22–66, 2016.
Wikipedia, Dagon (encyclopedic entry used as a synthesis of Feliu, Archi, Schwemer and others). Wikimedia Foundation, 2026. open

Name and epithets

The cuneiform form is written with the divine determinative, dda-gan, and the Ugaritic form is dgn. The origin of the name is disputed.

In the ancient sources

Inscription of Sargon of Akkad (Nippur copies), catalogued in RIME 2, Third millennium BCE; transmitted in later copies..

The myths

Sargon at Tuttul: the Grant of the Upper Land. An inscription attributed to Sargon of Akkad, known from copies found at Nippur, presents Dagan as the god who grants dominion over the west.

Worship and archaeology

The evidence for the worship of Dagan is uneven by region and period. According to the scholarly syntheses consulted (Feliu 2003; Archi), his main centers lay on the middle Euphrates: Tuttul, where the clergy seem to ha…

How the god was depicted

The texts consulted do not describe the appearance of Dagan. In 1 Samuel 5 the cult image of Dagon falls and its head and hands lie cut off at the threshold; the text gives no material, size or form, and nothing in it i…

What scholars debate

Dagan, Dgn and Dagon: one deity?. The form Dagan appears in Mesopotamian sources, Ugaritic writing records Dgn and the Hebrew Bible has Dagon.

After antiquity

The biblical tradition represents Dagon in episodes of conflict: the image at Ashdod falls before the ark in 1 Samuel, and the lords of Gaza credit Dagon with the capture of Samson in Judges.

Did you know?

In 1 Samuel 5:5, the narrative explains why the priests of Dagon, and anyone entering the house of Dagon, do not tread on the threshold, by the fall of the image.

Codex relic

Sheaf of Grain. The bundle of wheat that symbolizes the abundance of the harvest and the sustenance he grants the peoples.

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