Dagon

Dagon, the national god of the Philistines, half-man, half-fish, is mentioned in the Old Testament as having temples at Gaza and Ashdod. Several names of places prove that the worship of Dagon existed also in other parts of Palestine. It seems to have come to Canaan from Babylonia, the Assyrian monuments presenting a figure with the body of a man and the tail of a fish, and the cuneiform inscriptions containing the name of a god Dakan or Dagan, which is probably identical with Dagon. Bandissin favours the old derivation of the name from dag ('fish'), with the formative syllable -on. Dagon and the fish-goddess Derketo or Atargatis probably answered to each other as male and female water-deities.