Part 14

The history of the coffin of Osiris is another version of Noah's ark, and the period during which that Egyptian divinity is said to have been shut up in it, after it was set afloat upon the waters, was precisely the same as that during which Noah remained in the ark.

Dagon, also--sometimes called Odacon--the great fish-god of the Philistines and Babylonians, was another phase of Oannes. "Dag," in Hebrew, signifies "a male fish," and "Aun" and "Oan" were two of the names of Noah. "Dag-aun" or "Dag-oan" therefore means "the fish Noah." He was portrayed in two ways. The more ancient image of him was that of a man issuing from a fish, as described of Oannes by Berosus; but in later times it was varied to that of a man whose upper half was human, and the lower parts those of a fish. The image of Dagon which fell upon its face to the ground before "the ark of the God of Israel," was probably of this latter form, for we read that in its fall, "the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold: only the stump (in the margin, "the fishy part") of Dagon was left to him." This was evidently Milton's conception of him:

"Dagon his name; sea-monster, upward man And downward fish."

1 Samuel v. 4.

'Paradise Lost,' Book i. l. 462.

In some of the Nineveh sculptures of the fish-god, the head of the fish forms a kind of mitre on the head of the man, whilst the body of the fish appears as a cloak or cape over his shoulders and back. The fish varies in length; in some cases the tail almost touches the ground; in others it reaches but little below the man's waist.

After Calmet and Maurice.]

In one of his "avatars," or incarnations, the god Vishnu "the Preserver," is represented as issuing from the mouth of a fish. He is celebrated as having miraculously preserved one righteous family, and, also, the Vedas, the sacred records, when the world was drowned. Not only is this legend of the Indian god wrought up with the history of Noah, but Vishnu and Noah bear the same name--Vishnu being the Sanscrit form of "Ish-nuh," "the man Noah." The word "avatar" also means "out of the boat." In fact the whole mythology of Greece and Rome, as well as of Asia, is full of the history and deeds of Noah, which it is impossible to misunderstand. In all the representations of a deity having a combined human and piscine form, the original idea was that of a person coming out of a fish--not being part of one, but issuing from it, as Noah issued from the ark. In all of them the fish denoted "preservation," "fecundity," "plenty," and "diffusion of knowledge." As the image was not the effigy of a divine personage, but symbolized certain attributes of Divinity, its sex was comparatively unimportant, although it is possible that, combined with the fecundity of the fish, the idea of Noah's wife, as the second mother of all subsequent generations, according to the widely-spread and accepted traditions of the deluge, may have influenced the impersonation.

Some writers are of the opinion that the legend of Oannes contains an allusion to the rising and setting of the sun, and that his semi-piscine form was the expression of the idea that half his time was spent above ground, and half below the waves. The same commentators also regard all the "civilizing" gods and goddesses as, respectively, solar and lunar deities. The attributes symbolized in the worship of Noah and the sun are so nearly alike that the two interpretations are not incompatible.

Atergatis, the far-famed goddess of the Syrians, was also a fish-divinity. Her image, like that of Dagon, had at first a fish's body with human extremities protruding from it; but in the course of centuries it was gradually altered to that of a being the upper portion of whose body was that of a woman and the lower half that of a fish. Gatis was a powerful queen of Sidon, and mother of Semiramis. She received the title of "Ater," or "Ader," "the Great," for the benefits she conferred on her people; one of these benefits being a strict conservation of their fisheries, both from their own imprudent use, and from foreign interference. She issued an edict that no fish should be eaten without her consent, and that no one should take fish in the neighbouring sea without a licence from herself. It is not improbable that she and her celebrated daughter, who is said by Ovid and others to have been the builder of the walls of Babylon, were worshipped together; for that Atergatis was the same as the fish-goddess Ashteroth, or Ashtoreth, "the builder of the encompassing wall," we have, amongst other proofs, a remarkable one in Biblical history. In the first book of Maccabees v. 43, 44, we read that "all the heathen being discomfited before him (Judas Maccabeus) cast away their weapons, and fled unto the temple that was at Carnaim. But they took the city, and burned the temple with all that were therein. Thus was Carnaim subdued, neither could they stand any longer before Judas." In the second book of Maccabees xii. 26, we are told that "Maccabeus marched forth to Carnion, and to the temple of Atargatis, and there he slew five and twenty thousand persons." In Genesis xiv. 5, this city and temple are referred to as "Ashteroth Karnaim."

Fig. 7 is a representation of Atergatis on a medal coined at Marseilles. It shows that when the Phoenician colony from Syria, by whom that city was founded, settled there, they brought with them the worship of the gods of their country.

From a Phoenician coin.]

Atergatis was worshipped by the Greeks as Derceto and Astarte. Lucian writes:--"In Phoenicia I saw the image of Derceto, a strange sight, truly! For she had the half of a woman, and from the thighs downwards a fish's tail." Diodorus Siculus describes (lib. ii.) the same deity, as represented at Ascalon, as "having the face of a woman, but all the rest of the body a fish's." And this very same image at Ascalon, which Diodorus calls Derceto, or Atergatis, is denominated by Herodotus "the celestial Aphrodite," who was identical with the Cyprian and Roman Venus. Of all the sacred buildings erected to the goddess, this temple was by far the most ancient; and the Cyprians themselves acknowledged that their temple was built after the model of it by certain Phoenicians who came from that part of Syria.

'Opera Omnia,' tom. ii. p. 884, edit. Bened. de Dea. Syr.

Lib. i. cap. cv.

After Calmet.]

Thus the worship of Noah, as the second father of mankind, the repopulator of the earth, passed through various phases and transformations till it merged in that of Venus, who rose from the sea, and was regarded as the representative of the reproductive power of Nature--the goddess whom Lucretius thus addressed:

"Blest Venus! Thou the sea and fruitful earth Peoplest amain; to thee whatever lives Its being owes, and that it sees the sun:"

and to whom refers the passage in the Orphic hymn:

"From thee are all things--all things thou producest Which are in heaven, or in the fertile earth, Or in the sea, or in the great abyss."

Under this latter phase--the impersonation of Venus--the fish portion of the body was discarded, and the cast-off form was allotted in popular credence to the Tritons--minor deities, who acknowledged the supremacy of the goddess, and were ready to render her homage and service by bearing her in their arms, drawing her chariot, etc., but who still possessed considerable power as sea-gods, and could calm the waves and rule the storm, at pleasure.

FIG. 9. FIG. 10.

VENUS DRAWN IN HER CHARIOT BY TRITONS. From two Corinthian coins.]

Figs. 9 and 10 are from two Corinthian medals, each shewing Venus in a car or chariot drawn by Tritons, one male, the other female. On the obverse of Fig. 9, is the head of Nero, and on that of Fig. 10, the head of his grandmother Agrippina.

It is worthy of note that the fish was also adopted as an emblem by the early Christians, and was frequently sculptured on their tombs as a private mark or sign of the faith in which the person there interred had died. It alluded to the letters which composed the Greek word [Greek: Ichthys] ("a fish") forming an anagram, the initials of words which conveyed the following sentiment: [Greek: Iesous], Jesus; [Greek: Christos], Christ; [Greek: Theou], of God; [Greek: gios], Son; [Greek: Soter], Saviour. But it doubtless bore, also, the older meaning of "preservation" and "reproduction," of which the fish was the symbol, and betokened a belief in a future resurrection, as Noah was preserved to dwell in, and populate, a new world. In 'Sea Monsters Unmasked,' page 55, I gave a figure, copied by permission from the Illustrated London News, of a rough sculpture in the Roman catacombs, of Jonah being disgorged by a sea-monster. Near to it was found, on another Christian tomb, one of these designs of the "fish;" and it is not a little curious that, whereas the animal depicted as casting forth Jonah is not a whale, but a sea-serpent, or dragon, the ichtheus in this instance is apparently not a fish, but a seal.

The article referred to appeared in the Illustrated London News of February 3rd, 1872, and the woodcut (fig. 11), an electrotype of which was most kindly presented to me by the proprietors of that paper, was one of the sketches that accompanied it.

From the very earliest period of history, then, the conjoined human and fish form was known to every generation of men. It was presented to their sight in childhood by sculptures and pictures, and was a conspicuous object in their religious worship. By the lapse of time its original import was lost and debased; and, from being an emblem and symbol, it came to be accepted as the corporeal shape and structure of actually-existent sea-deities, who might present themselves to the view of the mariner, in visible and tangible form, at any moment. Thus were men trained and prepared to believe in mermen and mermaids, to expect to meet with them at sea, and to recognise as one of them any animal the appearance and movements of which could possibly be brought into conformity with their pre-conceived ideas.

Accordingly, and very naturally, we find that from north to south this belief has been entertained. Megasthenes, who was a contemporary of Aristotle, but his junior, and whose geographical work was probably written at about the period of the great philosopher's death, reported that the sea which surrounded Taprobana, the ancient Ceylon, was inhabited by creatures having the appearance of women. AElian stated that there were "whales," or "great fishes," having the form of satyrs. The early Portuguese settlers in India asserted that true mermen were found in the Eastern seas, and old Norse legends tell of submarine beings of conjoined human and piscine form, who dwell in a wide territory far below the region of the fishes, over which the sea, like the cloudy canopy of our sky, loftily rolls, and some of whom have, from time to time, landed on Scandinavian shores, exchanged their fishy extremities for human limbs, and acquired amphibious habits. Not only have poets sung of the wondrous and seductive beauty of the maidens of these aquatic tribes, but many a Jack tar has come home from sea prepared to affirm on oath that he has seen a mermaid. To the best of his belief he has told the truth. He has seen some living being which looked wonderfully human, and his imagination, aided by an inherited superstition, has supplied the rest.