[The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria by George Rawlinson]@TWC D-Link bookThe Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria CHAPTER VIII 18/57
We should thus expect to find his emblem among those which the kings specially affected; and as all the other common emblems are assigned to distinct gods with tolerable certainty, the horned cap alone remaining doubtful, the most reasonable conjecture seems to be that it was Bel's symbol. It has been assumed in some quarters that the Bel of the Assyrians was identical with the Phoenician Dagon.
A word which reads _Da-gan_ is found in the native lists of divinities, and in one place the explanation attached seems to show that the term was among the titles of Bel.
But this verbal resemblance between the name Dagon and one of Bel's titles is probably a mere accident, and affords no ground for assuming any connection between the two gods, who have nothing in common one with the other.
The Bel of the Assyrians was certainly not their Fish-god; nor had his epithet Da-gaga any real connection with the word _dag,_ "a fish." To speak of "Bel-Dagon" is thus to mislead the ordinary reader, who naturally supposes from the term that he is to identify the great god Belus, the second deity of the first Triad, with the fish forms upon the sculptures. HEA, or HOA. Hen, or Hoa, the third god of the first Triad, was not a prominent object of worship in Assyria.
Asshur-izir-pal mentions him as having allotted to the four thousand deities of heaven and earth the senses of hearing, seeing, and understanding; and then, stating that the four thousand deities had transferred all these senses to himself, proceeds to take Hoa's titles, and, as it were, to identify himself with the god. His son, Shalmaneser II., the Black-Obelisk king gives Hoa his proper place in his opening invocation, mentioning him between Bel and Sin. Sargon puts one of the gates of his new city under Hoa's care, joining him with Bilat Ili--"the mistress of the gods"-- who is, perhaps, the Sun-goddess, Gula.
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