Habachi, L. (1961). A Statue of a ‘Triton’ from Gaza. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 20(1), 49.
Introduction
The purpose of “A Statue of a ‘Triton’ from Gaza,” by Labib Habachi, was to explore, using close observation and consideration of historical sources, whether an artifact discovered in Gaza could be a representation of Dāgôn, the biblical deity of the early Iron Age (late second millennium BC) Philistines whose temple was mentioned in Judges 16:21-23. The object in question, a 65 cm (25.5 in.) high basalt statue of a bearded male form with a human torso and head, but with fish tails in place of human legs, was the only one of its kind ever to be “found either in Gaza or elsewhere in Palestine.” Confiscated from a private residence in Gaza in March 1953, the object, referred to in the article as the “Massâcîd statue” or the “triton of Massâcîd,” was originally discovered in a well in the village of Massâcîd, approximately 5 km (3.1 mi) south of Gaza.
The author’s hypothesis was that this statue, which was dated stylistically to the Hellenistic period, was somehow connected to Philistine Dāgôn, perhaps being a Greco-Roman “rendering” of “the power of the old Oriental god Dāgôn,” or having been “set up in a Hellenistic successor of the Philistine Dāgôn temple at Gaza.” The brief attempt was then made to support this hypothesis by invoking historical descriptions of Dāgôn and tying them, wherever possible, to the Massâcîd statue. Though the author performed a detailed, if cursory, close observation of the object, the article’s discussion of the statue’s possible status as a late representation of Philistine Dāgôn suffered from a lack of objectivity, instead being colored by an apparent desire on the part of the writer to make the available historical and archaeological evidence support his desired outcome.
Methodology
The method of close observation was used to describe the Massâcîd statue in detail, from the “four separate curls” on its beard, to the direction of the remaining piece of left arm, to the inlaid eyes. Three clearly labeled grayscale images of the statue - front, back, and three-quarter view - were presented along with the description. Following this, the author ventured into the realm of interpretation, beginning with the statement that, “The question arises whether this statue could represent the…principal god of the town, Dāgôn.”
In order to test this hypothesis, the author drew on select historical mentions of Dāgôn as a Gazan deity, all of which used the Bible (specifically, Judges 16:21-23 and I Samuel 5:2-7) as their sole original source for proof of Dāgôn’s existence in Palestine. Accepting, in the absence of extrabiblical evidence, that Dāgôn did in fact exist in the early Iron Age as a Philistine deity, the author then proceeded speculate whether the triton of Massâcîd represented that deity in much later form. The evidence called on to support such speculation came from a minority of scholars who, reading the deity’s name as the nominative form of the Hebrew root dāg, which means “fish,” held that Dāgôn was once portrayed in ichthyomorphic form.
Argument
As the author acknowledged, “there is almost no [existing] information as to how the god Dāgôn was shown,” as “no statue or other representation of him has yet been discovered.” Further, rather than being a rendering of the Hebrew term for fish, a much more straightforward look at the context surrounding Philistine Dāgôn suggests that, if indeed he existed, this deity was a West Semitic version of the North Mesopotamian deity called Dāgān (the ā > ô shift is common in the transition from Middle Euphrates to West Semitic pronunciation.) This god, whose name was a rendering of the Semitic term for “grain,” was known throughout the region from the early third millennium BC. Such evidence, the author wrote, made it “difficult to interpret the newly discovered statue as a rendering of Dāgôn himself.”
Additional evidence for the triton of Massâcîd being representative of something other than a former chief deity of the region was considered in the article. The statue’s pose, which was “not that which one would expect the cult statue of a major deity to be given,” suggested a “sea creature…forced to his knees by his opponent, his defeat closely mirrored in his face.” Further, despite the statue’s status as the only one of its kind ever found in Palestine, the author acknowledged that several iconographic parallels to the triton of Massâcîd in Greek statuary were known elsewhere in the Hellenistic world.
However, having presented a strong case against his own hypothesis, the author concluded by ignoring this evidence and continuing his attempt to force the Massâcîd statue into the clearly ill-fitting mold - whatever shape it may have been - of association with Dāgôn. This figure, the author wrote, “could have been adopted in Palestine during the syncretistic Greco-Roman period as a way of rendering the power of the old Oriental god Dāgôn.” He concluded, “Perhaps the triton of Massâcîd was originally set up in a Hellenistic successor of the Philistine Dāgôn temple at Gaza” - a temple for which no extrabiblical evidence is known to exist.
The fact that “no similar statue has ever been found either in Gaza or elsewhere in Palestine” made the close observation and photographs of the Massâcîd statue contained in the article a source of valuable new information to the study of Hellenistic iconography in the Ancient Near East. However, the author’s efforts to draw tenuous links between the Massâcîd statue and a Bronze and early Iron Age Semitic deity whose physical form is unknown, and whose very existence in Palestine is unattested outside of three biblical passages, was an unnecessary theoretical addition to the publication of an archaeological find. The author’s dedication of so much space within the article to a quest to force the Massâcîd statue into an ill-fitting mold was unfortunate, as this find was important in its own right due to its workmanship and its status as the only one of its kind ever found in Palestine.
Conclusion
The close observation performed in the article, combined with the author’s photographs, provided the reader with a clear picture of the Massâcîd statue. However, the author’s attempt to associate this object with the Philistine god Dāgôn was far short of convincing. In the absence of any extant statue or representation of Dāgôn, and of any extrabiblical evidence of this deity’s existence among the Philistines, attempting to associate any image with the supposed onetime chief deity of Gaza would have been a difficult undertaking. This fact, combined with the tenuous etymological evidence for Dāgôn’s ichthyomorphic nature and the admitted similarities between the triton of Massâcîd and Greek iconography known elsewhere in the Hellenistic world, suggest that a more objective look at the evidence would have resulted in a different conclusion had the author of this article not been so determined to associate an important find with an early Iron Age deity for whose very existence there is precious little evidence.
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