And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim and they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. Judg. ii. 11-13.

And the burning incense to Baal, and the offering of cakes to the Queen of heaven were the solemn accusations over and over again brought by Jehovah against His people by the mouth of His prophets, when the King of Babylon was now even at their gates.

Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. Jer. vii. 17, 18.

For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto Baal. Jer. xi. 13.

And the Chaldeans that fight against this city, shall come and set fire on this city, and burn it, with the houses, upon whose roofs they have offered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink-offerings unto other gods to provoke me to anger. Jer. xxxii. 29.

Ashtoreth is specially called the goddess of the Zidonians in 1 Kings xi. 5, and 2 Kings xxiii. 13, to whom Solomon built a temple on the mount of Olives. Her worship was accompanied with rites and customs of abominable uncleanness, and was often celebrated in groves, which on that account participated in the idolatrous veneration with which the goddess was regarded, and became the objects of divine denunciation. Jezebel, the wicked wife of

Ahab, herself a Zidonian, maintained four hundred prophets of the groves, when Baal's prophets were four hundred and fifty men. (1 Kings xviii. 19.) It is thought, however, by some, that the word, rendered "groves," may, at least in some cases, have been only another name for Ashteroth, as in Judges iii. 7; denoting especially her relation to the planet Venus. For Baal and Astarte, among the Phoenicians, originally considered as representatives of the sun and moon, came in after times to be identified with the planets Jupiter and Venus, as the stars of good fortune. A star was the common emblem of the latter, but Sanchoniathon says that she adopted the head of a bull as her symbol: hence she became Ashtaroth Karnaim, or "the two-horned;" the diverging and upturning horns denoting her relationship to the moon:—

66 Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns."

Perhaps the Chiun* spoken of by Amos (v. 26,) which, under the symbol of a star, the Israelites are accused of worshipping even in the wilderness, was but another form of the same obscene divinity, especially as associated with the bloody worship of Moloch, which, as appears likely from Jer. xxxii. 35, was the Ammonite title of Baal.† Sir W. Jones supposes the name to be the same as the Chiven of the Hindoo mythology, which represents the power of reproduction, in this respect agreeing with Ashta

Selden, however, (De Diis Syriis) considers Chiun to be the same as Saturn or Kronos, on the authority of Aben Ezra.

The identity of Baal and Moloch has been inferred from an ancient Tyrian inscription found at Malta. (See Penn. Cycl.; art. BAAL.)

roth. The LXX render the name by the word, Rhaiphan (Papáv); which Stephen (Acts vii. 43,) alters to Remphan ('Ρεμφάν).

It is interesting to find the name of Dagon among the gods which Col. Rawlinson has identified. This was the favourite god of the Philistines, a maritime nation, who represented him by a monstrous combination of a human head, arms, and chest, united to the belly and tail of a fish. The temple at Gaza dedicated to this idol was the scene of Samson's last and greatest exploit; and in another at Ashdod, Dagon himself was humbled before the captive ark of Jehovah.

And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again. And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump (or, the fishy part, marg.) of Dagon was left to him. Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon's house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day. 1 Sam. v. 1-5.

Whether any connexion existed between the name of this god, who, as we have seen, was worshipped in common by the inhabitants of Assyria, and by the Philistines of the Mediterranean shore, and the seamonsters, half man, half fish, whom Chaldean tradition declared to have appeared on the southern confines of Babylonia, we cannot tell. The name Oannes, applied to the first of these fabulous beings,

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