Deity · Canaanite · c. 2500 BCE
Dagon
Also called Dagan
A major grain deity of Syria and Philistia. A Hebrew pun on *dag*, 'fish', turned him into a fish-god in medieval illustration, and de Plancy finished the job by making him a demon.
Well sourced
Dagon was a grain god of the middle Euphrates and Syria long before the Philistines, and the fish is a mistake with a traceable history. The Hebrew dag means fish, the resemblance to his name is accidental, and medieval commentators built a merman out of the coincidence; de Plancy's engraving finished the job by filing the result under demons. The Bible itself describes no fish at all — only an image at Ashdod that falls before the ark and breaks, leaving the head and hands on the threshold, which is a story about a statue rather than about a shape. This corpus carries both the god and the error, because the error is the better documented of the two.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Ashdod and Gaza among the Philistines — the two temples the Bible has something happen in — and long before either, Terqa and Mari on the middle Euphrates, where his temple was old already in the second millennium.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon · c. 900–100 BCE
- Rank
- Grain God
- Pantheon
- Canaanite
- Order
- West Semitic pantheon
- Base of operations
- Ashdod and Gaza among the Philistines — the two temples the Bible has something happen in — and long before either, Terqa and Mari on the middle Euphrates, where his temple was old already in the second millennium.
- Era
- c. 2500 BCE
- Traditions
- Folk & Demonological, Canaanite & Ugaritic
Traits
- Domain
- Grain, agriculture, kingship
- Traditional form
- Enthroned; the fish-tailed image is a medieval misreading of dag, 'fish'
Stats
Known connections
Chain of command
Identified with
3 sites
Where was it worshipped?
Attested cult sites, located against the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world where it reaches and against Wikidata everywhere else. An absence here is not evidence that no cult existed: a good number of figures never had one, and the entry above says so where that is the case.
now Tel Ashdod
Where 1 Samuel puts the ark in Dagon's temple and finds the statue face-down in the morning.
31.756, 34.658 · Pleiades 687838
The other Philistine temple of Dagon, and the one Judges has Samson pull down on himself.
31.520, 34.452 · Pleiades 687902
now Tell Ashara
Dagan's temple on the middle Euphrates, ancient long before the Philistines had a god of that name to lose.
34.922, 40.568 · Pleiades 894158
1 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 1 offices attributed to Dagon, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- material1
3 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 3 texts that names Dagon, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
3 texts spanning roughly 2,313 years
Where the texts differ
- Rank: given as God of the Philistines; Baker of hell
His image falls before the ark at Ashdod and is broken.
Reassigned as a demon, with the fish-tailed iconography now standard.
“Dagon, démon de second ordre, boulanger et grand panetier de la cour infernale. On le trouve figurant dans la possession d’Auxonne.”Dagon, a demon of the second order, baker and chief pantler of the infernal court. He is found figuring in the possession at Auxonne. — translated for ColossiansOne
“A Philistine deity. It is commonly admitted that the name Dagon is a diminutive form, hence a term of endearment, derived from the Semitic root dag, and means, accordingly, "little fish".”
Connections
What is it connected to?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Dagon?
Is Dagon the same as El?
What rank is Dagon?
How else is Dagon spelled?
What is Dagon said to do?
How old is Dagon?
Nearest in the corpus
If Dagon is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Anat
Warrior Goddess · Canaanite
Baal's sister and avenger. She grinds Death himself to pieces and sows him in a field, which makes her the most violent figure in the Ugaritic corpus.
Astarte
Goddess of Love and War · Canaanite
The West Semitic goddess of love and war, cognate with Ishtar — and the direct ancestor of the Goetic duke Astaroth, who kept the name and lost the gender.
Baal Hadad
Storm God · Canaanite
The Canaanite storm and fertility god who defeats Sea and Death — and whose title, *baal* ('lord'), the Hebrew Bible turns into a generic term for false gods.
Chemosh
God of Moab · Canaanite
National god of Moab, known from the Bible and from the Mesha Stele — where a Moabite king describes his own history in language almost identical to Israel's.
El
Father of the Gods · Canaanite
The aged high god who presides over the assembly at Ugarit — and whose name is one of the Hebrew Bible's own words for God.
Lotan
Chaos Serpent · Canaanite
The seven-headed sea-serpent slain in the Baal Cycle, described in language Isaiah reuses almost verbatim for Leviathan.
The books behind Dagon
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon
Various · c. 900–100 BCE · Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek
Read Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon in full ↗Cover: Public domain · see en:Aleppo Codex; scanned by · Wikimedia file page
Dictionnaire Infernal
Jacques Collin de Plancy · 1818; illustrated ed. 1863 · French
Read Dictionnaire Infernal in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Collin de Plancy · Wikimedia file page
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)
Various; ed. Charles Herbermann · 1913 · English
Read The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Herbermann, Charles George, 1840-1916 · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.