REVIEWS Lluís Feliu's the God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria Is

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REVIEWS

Lluís Feliu, The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria, trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson. Culture & History of the Ancient Near East 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2003). Pp. xii + 356. €96/$134. ISBN 90-04-13158-2.

Lluís Feliu’s The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria is the first book-length work on this deity in seventy-five years. Since H. Schmökel’s 1928 publication of his doctoral thesis, our understanding of Bronze Age Syria has progressed considerably. Schmökel’s work appeared before the important archives at Ugarit, Ebla and Emar were discovered, and the finds at Mari were only beginning to come to light. So the publication of Feliu’s revised and translated University of Barce- lona dissertation represents a major advance in our understanding both of the individual god Dagan and of Bronze Age Syrian reli- gion in general. In addition to providing a translation and translit- eration of nearly every ancient Near Eastern text as well as relevant personal names in which the name of Dagan occurs, Feliu offers an analysis of the important problems that have arisen over the last century of scholarship regarding this god. Feliu begins his discussion of Dagan in chapter 1 with a brief introduction to the previous secondary literature, the major Bronze Age Syrian archives and a statement of his methodology. He reviews the struggles that previous scholars have encountered when attempt- ing to define Dagan: the dearth of references to him in Mesopotamian literature, the tendency to understand him through the lens of bib- lical and classical studies, and the failed attempts to define him with etymological explanations of his name. While none of the available archives cover the span of the entire Bronze Age, Feliu proposes that the various archives from different periods can be integrated into an analysis that arrives at a clear portrait of Dagan whose origin can be situated along the Euphrates River in eastern Syria where he remained the dominant high god throughout the late third and second millennia BCE. The remainder of the book is organized according to the Mesopotamian historic periods in which the relevant texts from the major relevant archives can be found.

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Dagan first appears in Syria in the documentation from Ebla during the Pre-Sargonic period. As Feliu demonstrates in chapter 2, the references to Dagan during this period at Mari and Tell Beydar are limited to personal names and the probable reference to Dagan as Lugal Terqa in two offering lists from Mari. The bulk of the second chapter is devoted to Dagan at Ebla largely because it is the most significant archive in Syria during the late third mil- lennium BCE, but also due to the influence of Pettinato’s thesis that every occurrence of (d)BE in the Ebla texts is actually a reference to Dagan. This leads Feliu on a lengthy excursion to collect and translate every text that mentions (d)BE. This is a helpful discussion of the issue, but Feliu ultimately rejects Pettinato’s argu- ment that Dagan is the high god of the Ebla pantheon. Feliu correctly understands (d)BE to be a generic epithet that could be applied to different gods. The only secure references to Dagan at Ebla are the few instances in which (d)BE is connected with the city of Tuttul where Dagan is clearly the dominant god in later periods. The sparse archives limit the evidence of Dagan in Syria during the Pre-Sargonic period, so Feliu perhaps overstates his conclusion that the “popular cult of Dagan had spread throughout the whole of Syria” (p. 41). While (d)BE Tuttul and Lugal Terqa probably do refer to Dagan, these few texts along with the one personal name from Tell Beydar in the upper Habur region (Ina-Dagan) do not support such a sweeping conclusion. The god Dagan was certainly known in these areas but at both Ebla and Mari he was under- stood as a local high god from the regions of Tuttul and Terqa. Feliu proceeds to the Sargonic and Ur III periods in chapter 3. The primary data for both of these periods comes predominantly from Mesopotamia with just a few relevant texts from the Mari “akkanakkum period. For the Sargonic period he discusses the royal inscriptions of Sargon and Naràm-Sîn in which Dagan is under- stood as the high god of the upper Euphrates region. Both kings cite the permission of Dagan as legitimation for their northwestern conquests. The information concerning Dagan from this period is sparse, but his status in eastern Syria is apparent from these references. During the subsequent Ur III period, the lists of offerings to the gods from Drehem provide most of the information about Dagan. Several of the texts mention offerings by members of the royal family of ”ù-Sîn. Feliu joins other scholars in concluding that this is probably due to the marriage of Taràm-Uram, daughter of the king of Mari, to ”ulgi. From the Syrian homeland of Dagan,