Dagon has been supposed to have had the shape partly of a man, partly of a fish. But the supposition has arisen from a false etymology of the name, which connects it with the Hebrew _dâg_, ‘a fish.’ We now know from the cuneiform inscriptions that Dagon was really one of the primitive deities of Babylonia adored there in days when as yet the Semite had not become master of the land. Dagon was coupled with Anu, the god of the sky, and when the name and worship of Anu were carried to the West, the name and worship of Dagon were carried there too. Sargon ‘inscribed the laws’ of Harran ‘according to the wish of the gods Anu and Dagon,’ and a Phœnician seal in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has upon it the name of Baal-Dagon as well as representations of an ear of corn, a winged solar disk, a gazelle, and several stars. The ear of corn symbolises the fact that among the Phœnicians Dagon, the brother of El and Beth-el, was the god of agriculture and the inventor of bread-corn and the plough.[396] But this was because in the language of Canaan _dagan_ signified ‘corn.’ In passing to the West the god thus assumed new attributes, and became an agricultural deity who watched over the growing crops.[397] The power of the God of Israel was not shown only in the humiliation of the Philistine god. The plague broke out in Ashdod, accompanied by its usual symptom, hæmorrhoidal swellings. The inhabitants of the city were not slow in recognising in it the wrathful hand of Yahveh, and the ark was accordingly sent to their neighbours in Gath. But here, too, the plague followed it, and Ekron, to which it was sent next, fared no better. For seven months the sacred palladium of Israel remained in the hands of its captors. Then ‘the priests and the diviners’ advised that it should be sent back to the people of Yahveh along with offerings to mitigate the anger of the offended God. Five mice and five hæmorrhoids of gold were made and placed in a coffer by the side of the ark. They represented the five Philistine cities, and the mice were symbols of the wrathful Yahveh, the God of hosts and of battle, who had wreaked his vengeance on the worshippers of the peaceful god of agriculture. The mice which devoured the corn were the natural foes of Dagon.