According to the Hebrew Bible, Dagan was also the national god of the Philistines, with temples at Ashdod and Gaza, but there is no extrabiblical evidence confirming this.

[12] Their children were Hadad (analogous to Ugaritic Baal)[13] and possibly Hebat,[14] who is attested alongside Dagan and Shalash in a mourning ritual from ancient Aleppo.

[13] While Wilfred G. Lambert proposed in 1980 that Ishara was sometimes regarded as the wife of Dagan,[16] and this theory is repeated as fact in older reference works such as Jeremy Black's and Anthony Green's Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia,[17] it is no longer considered the consensus.

[18] He additionally remarks that Lambert mistakenly assumed Ishara is one and the same as Haburitum, goddess of the river Habur, who also appears in Mesopotamian texts in association with Dagan.

[36] His connection to funerary offerings was most likely an extension of his role as a divine ancestor, and modern theories regarding him as an underworld god are most likely erroneous.

[41] Dagan's primary cult centers were Tuttul, where his clergy was likely involved in the traditional form of governance,[42] and Terqa (near Mari), where his temple E-kisiga ("the house, the silent place") was located.

[42] The worship of Dagan evidently spread over a large area from these cities, even though its principal centers were not a major political power in their own right, a situation which according to Alfonso Archi can be compared to that of Hadabal (a 3rd millennium BCE god of the upper Orontes valley[43]) and Hadad of Halab.

[44] In addition to Tuttul and Terqa, settlements in which Dagan possessed a temple or shrine include Mari, Subatūm (located in the proximity of the aforementioned city),[45] Urah (on the left bank of the Euphrates),[46] Hakkulân,[47] Šaggarātum, Zarri-amnān,[48] Dašrah, Ida-Maras (in the Habur triangle), Admatum (a village in the kingdom of Ašlakkā),[49] as well as Emar and various difficult to locate villages in its proximity.

[50] Representatives of the city of Nagar swore allegiance to the king of Ebla in the temple of Dagan in Tuttul,[52] which was viewed as a neutral third party.

[53] While certain other gods known from the Eblaite texts, such as Hadabal and Kura, disappear from records after the fall of the city, Dagan's cult continued and retained its prestige.

[55] In a letter Zimri-Lim's wife Šibtu enumerated Dagan, Shamash, Itūr-Mēr, Belet Ekalli and Addu as "the allies for me" and the deities who "go by my lord's side.

[57] A source from the period of his reign attests that to celebrate his coronation, a weapon was sent from Hadad's temple in Aleppo to Dagan's in Terqa, likely to legitimize his rule.

[64] The precise meaning of the term kissu remains uncertain, making the nature of these celebrations, and roles of specific deities in them, difficult to ascertain.

"[66] Due to the scarcity of sources, the later history of Dagan's cult remains unclear; however, it is evident that he was no longer the head god of the upper Euphrates area in later times.

[67] Mesopotamian rulers saw Dagan as the lord of the western lands (e.g., ancient Syria) and thanked him for enabling their conquests in that area.

[68] Inscriptions credit Dagan with granting Sargon of Akkad rule over the "Upper Land" and the cities of Ebla, Mari and Yarmuti in particular, as well as over areas as distant as the "cedar forest and silver mountains.

[70] An inscription from the reign of Naram-Sin describes inhabitants of the western frontier of his empire "as far as (the city of) Ulišum" as "people whom the god Dagan had given to him.

"[50] In the Ur III period, marriages between rulers of Syrian and Mesopotamian politites likely contributed to the spread of the worship of Dagan, as well other western deities like Ishara and Haburitum, in the south of Mesopotamia.

[82] The fragmentary myth Uraš and Marduk (here the male god from Dilbat, not the earth goddess) mentions Dagan, similarly most likely fully equated in this context with Enlil.

"[87] In the poem Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh he is referred to as "Dagan of Tuttul," possibly indicating that he was viewed as a foreign god by Ugaritic scribes.

Daniel Schwemer proposes that the epithet "Son of Dagan" applied to Baal in Ugaritic texts was influenced by Syrian and Hurrian tradition.

She suggests that therefore it is not necessarily contradictory that two separate gods were regarded as Baal's fathers, though she assumes both in Ugarit and in Phoenician beliefs Dagan/Dagon was merely an element introduced from the culture of inland Syria and played no significant role himself.

[97] Aaron Tugendhaft considers Baal an outsider who is not a member of the family of El and Athirat in the beginning of the narrative and thus not their son by birth, but merely a brother of their children in the sense known from Bronze Age diplomatic texts.

[100] According to Philo of Byblos, Sanchuniathon reportedly made Dagon the brother of Cronus, both sons of the Sky (Uranus) and Earth (Gaia), but not Hadad's biological father.

They set the image upright, but again on the morning of the following day they found it prostrate before the ark, but this time with head and hands severed, lying on the miptān translated as "threshold" or "podium".

The account continues with the puzzling words raq dāgōn nišʾar ʿālāyw, which means literally "only Dagon was left to him."

[117] According to Taco Terpstra, Marnas' origins are "nebulous,"[118] and while his name can be plausibly assumed to be Aramaic, his iconography follows Hellenistic conventions.

Regardless of the variety of depictions, the abundance of them on coins indicates that the inhabitants of Gaza held him in high esteem and associated this god with their city.

"[119] An indirect reference to Marnas occurs in an inscription from Roman Portus from the reign of Gordian III (238-244 CE), which relays that the city of Gaza honored this ruler "at the prompting of its ancestral god.

"[120] Marnas is mentioned in the works of the fourth century scholar and theologian Jerome, in several stories from his Life of St. Hilarion, written around 390 CE, in which he condemns his adherents as idolatrous and as "enemies of God."