has been rather fancifully supposed to be the same as Noah, altered by transposition; and Dagon has been resolved into Dag-aun, or Dag-Oannes, the ship (fish?) of Noah.* The resemblance of the name Dagon to Odacon, by which the last of these traditionary fish-men was distinguished, is remarkable, and has been noticed by Selden. In the Phoenician system Dagon was the brother of Astarte.

In an elaborate sculpture of the later Assyrian period occurs a scene which we shall describe hereafter. It is an expedition against some maritime place of strength appa

DAGON.

rently on

the Syrian

coast. Among other tutelary divinities, the expedition is accompanied by Dagon, who is drawn more than once among the ships, just in the form described above. To the body and tail of

a fish, extended horizontally in the sea, are affixed the perpendicular trunk and fore parts of a man, invested with the sacred cap, and elevating his right hand. Similar figures occur on cylinders.

Shemir, or Husi, "who presides over the heavens and the earth," seems to have been considered the tutelary divinity of the Armenian highlands; for in the Obelisk inscriptions, Temen-bar records his having crossed the upper Euphrates, and ascended to the tribes who worshipped the god Husi." And the

Taylor's Calmet; arts. DAGON, and DELUGE.

The

enumeration of geographical names, found on the Khorsabad slabs, supposed by Col. Rawlinson to mark the limits of the empire, commences thus; "From Yetnán, a land sacred to the god Husi, as far as Misr and Mesek (or Lower and Upper Egypt);" whence we may conclude Yetnán to be the north-western, as Egypt was the south-western boundary. The word Shemir, with which Husi is a synonym, forms an element in the name of Shemirhem, one of the Assyrian sovereigns, which reminds us of the Semir-amis of the Greek writers. use of the names of their gods in composition, we know to have been a custom among the Chaldees in forming human names, as it was among the Hebrews. Thus we have the element Nebo in Nebuzaradan, Nebushasban, Nebuchadnezzar, Nabonassar, Nabopalasar, &c.; Baal or Bel, in Baladan, Belshazzar, Belteshazzar, &c. And among the Assyrians themselves we have the name of Assar in Sardanapalus, (Assar-adan-pal,) Detarasar, Shalmaneser, Esarhaddon, as well as in several of the Babylonian names just enumerated. Col. Rawlinson considers Shemir to be the sun, while Dr. Hincks thinks it undoubtedly to be the moon.

The god Hem, whom Temen-bar, in the Obelisk inscription, associates with Assarac and Nebo as the three objects of his worship at Calah, is "a wellknown Assyrian deity, who, as his figure is usually accompanied on the cylinders by a symbol representing 'flame,' may be supposed to be connected with the Baal Haman of the Phoenician cippi (see also Cant. viii. 11), and the Hamânim or 'sun-images' on the altars

of Baal, mentioned so frequently in Scripture, (as 2 Chron. xxxiv. 4; &c.). The name may also have some affinity with that of Chemosh "the abomination of the Moabites, (1 Kings xi. 7, 33; Jer. xlviii. passim), and the god of the children of Ammon, (Judg. xi. 24).

Bel or Baal, already several times alluded to, signifies Lord, the former being the Chaldee, the latter the Hebrew form. No idol is more frequently mentioned in Holy Scripture than this, and to the worship of none were the people of Israel more incorrigibly attached. He appears to have been worshipped by all the western Asiatics, but especially by the Phoenicians and the Babylonians. A magnificent temple was devoted to him at Babylon, which was plundered by Xerxes.

We have already intimated that Baal originally signified the sun, the source of light and heat to the natural world; or rather, perhaps, the deity supposed to animate and inhabit the sun. Sanchoniathon tells us that the Phoenicians worshipped the sun as the only Lord of heaven, called Beelsamen,

and that this Beelsamen was the Greek (בעלשמין)

Zeus. In the Septuagint, Baal is sometimes rendered Hercules ('Hpaxλs), called in the Phoenician language Or-cul, i.e., Light of all. By mythologists he has been identified also with Jupiter, with Saturn, with Mars; sometimes he represented the male type of the moon, and was figured, like Astarte, with crescent horns, and with a bovine head. worship, too, was accompanied with abominable lasciviousness, as that Moabitish Baal-Peor, to whom

His

Israel joined themselves so fatally in the plains of Shittim; and, if he was the same as Moloch, with most unnatural cruelties, parents offering their infant offspring to him through the fire.

Some have supposed Baal-Peor to have been identical with Chemosh, the Moabitish abomination, to whom Solomon was seduced to erect a temple. Thus Milton says:

66 -Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moab's sons,

Peor his other name, when he enticed

Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,

To do him wanton rites which cost them woe."

The later names in the list gathered from Col. Rawlinson's readings, are chiefly interesting because they occur in the Sacred Scriptures, for the most part in connexion with Babylon at the time of its approaching ruin. As we believe, however, that there is some doubt upon their recognition, and as we have nothing of importance to say upon them, we dismiss them with this slight notice.

Direct representations of idols are not common in the Assyrian sculptures. The most remarkable is one assigned to a late period, in which Assyrian warriors are carrying images in procession. The solemn ceremonial manner in which they are borne seems to forbid the notion that has been suggested, that these are the idols of a conquered people borne in triumph by the victors; since we know from Scripture that it was the Assyrian custom to destroy with contempt the gods of their conquered enemies.

Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods

but the work of men's hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them. 2 Kings xix. 17, 18.

And in a bas-relief from Khorsabad, representing the plunder of an Armenian town, Assyrian warriors are seen engaged in chopping, limb from limb, a human

THE DESTRUCTION OF AN IDOL.

figure, which appears intended for an idol. We should suppose the figures in the procession, therefore, to be the gods worshipped by those on whose shoulders they are carried, especially as Holy Scripture alludes to such a mode of carrying the idols, in immediate connexion with the Babylonian Bel and Nebo, and in contrast with the degrading manner in which they were to be transported into captivity.

*The soldiers of Alexander tore limb from limb the statues that they found in the sack of Persepolis; but that was the result of brutal violence mingling with a cupidity that envied the possession of the precious metals of which they were composed. (See Q. Curt. v. 6.) The incident depicted on the bas-relief was an orderly division of the object, as appears from the scales in which the parts were to be weighed. The marks near the neck of the prostrate figure do not represent blood, but merely indicate that the stone of the bas-relief has suffered injury there.