Hi Canaan,
There are many unanswered questions in respect to who is depicted on the coins of Arados. This is a very complex and difficult subject to tackle and one which perhaps will never be solved.
Your
FORVM name suggests that you are familiar with Hebrew, have you read “The Conflict between El and Ba´al in Canaanite Religion or the Ugaritic Ba´al Cycle ?
Dagôn was indeed associated with being the god of grain in the middle Euphrates and old
Babylonia. It´s only when the Phoenicians & Palestinians adopted Dagôn as one of their own gods that certain scholars, possibly incorrectly, translated the diminutive form of Hebrew to that of
fish ( דג ). I believe when translated, this would give us the name of Dagôn, meaning “little
fish” or “what belongs to the
fish”, thus translates as “fish-stump” (
fish like body) ?
There are other options such as Yamm (Yam), an ancient god from the semitic word meaning sea. He was worshipped by the semitic religions including
Phoenicia and the Canaanites. Perhaps Dagôn is an adaptation of Yamm, this was common practice in the ancient world i.e Ba´al =
Zeus ?
As i mentioned earlier, this subject is very sketchy and will most likely never be solved.
P.S All coins of this
type depicting a marine deity hold in each hand a
fish (
dolphin). The majority of coins i am aware of show only one
fish, the second is almost always of
flan or just partially visible (see image below for
fish in both
hands).
Image credit
CNG.