Pagan priests as half-fish sprinkling holy water. Stone relief on temple laver from Assyria, in the Pergamum Museum of Berlin. Here we see how each priest is wearing a fish-head mitre. One of the names of this god  in Babylon and Phylistia was Dagon (dag=fish, on=sun). The most common ways of depicting Dagon are described by the archaeologist Layard, "The Head of the fish formed the mitre above that of a man, while its scaly, fish-like tail fell as a cloak behind, leaving the human limbs and feet exposed." Layard's Babylon & Nineveh, p.343 [previous document] [back to Index] [next document] [Approaching the End] .