The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria.

AuthorBeckman, Gary
PositionThe God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria: Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, vol. 19 - Book Review

The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria. By LLUIS FELIU. Translated by WILFRED G. E. WATSON. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, vol. 19. Leiden: BRILL, 2003. Pp. xii + 356. $106.

The author of this useful monograph, the revision of a dissertation defended at the University of Barcelona in November 2000, characterizes his subject as one of the "unexplained" deities of the ancient Near East (pp. lf.). That is, unlike the Sun-god, for example, whose personality and role in the universe are clearly set forth in mythological narratives and hymns. Dagan remains little more than a name in the ancient sources. Although his worshippers in Syria of the third and second millennia B.C.E. could most likely have described Dagan and his place in the cosmos without difficulty, the modern scholar is hard put to give a face to this god despite hundreds of attestations in the cuneiform texts. This is literally true, for we possess no certain depictions of Dagan in sculpture, glyptic, or any other medium (cf. p. 283).

Rejecting various Semitic etymologies for the name Dagan (pp. 278-87), Feliu suggests that it belongs to a language spoken in inland Syria before the arrival of the Amorites. In our ignorance of this tongue, we can learn nothing of Dagan's nature from etymology. The author therefore seeks to establish the character of the deity by means of a thorough and philologically competent marshalling of the textual evidence, organized by period and site of recovery. Beginning with the Ebla tablets, he proceeds to consider the scattered Mesopotamian sources of the Sargonic and Ur III periods before studying the great body of material from the Mari archives supplemented by those of Terqa and Alalakh (level VII). Finally, he presents the texts from Late Bronze Ugarit and the Middle Euphrates region.

For each corpus the author translates the relevant passages and provides a transcription of the original text in a note. Primarily on the basis of epithets and the close association of Dagan with monarchs (see esp. pp. 157-70), he concludes that the god was a "father-creator" (pp. 304f.) with a particular connection with kingship. He aptly labels Dagan the "Syrian Enlil" (p. 298) because of these attributes shared with the Mesopotamian deity.

In addition, Feliu gathers from the major textual corpora the theophoric personal names featuring Dagan and subjects them to onomastic analysis. Situating the bearers of these names geographically as far as possible, he...

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