Oannes: The Fish-Man Who Rose From the Sea to Teach

A fish-bodied teacher who rose from the sea, taught the Babylonians writing and law by day, and went back into the water at night.

Oannes is the Greek form of Uanna, the first of the seven Mesopotamian sages. Berossus described him as a fish-bodied being who came from the sea and taught humans writing, law and farming.

Oannes is the Greek form of Uanna, the first of the seven Mesopotamian sages. His story comes from the Babylonian priest Berossus, whose history survives only in quotations. According to the excerpt made by Alexander Polyhistor, a creature called Oannes came up out of the Erythraean Sea, near Babylonia, in the first year of the world.

Cory's 1832 translation describes him: 'His whole body was that of a fish; that under the fish's head he had another head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man.' He spoke with a human voice. He 'took no food at that season', spent his days among people, and taught them 'letters and sciences, and arts of every kind', how to build cities and temples, make laws, measure land, and farm. At sunset he returned to the sea.

Berossus adds that other similar beings appeared after him in later reigns. In cuneiform texts these are the apkallu, and Assyrian palace reliefs show some of them as men wearing a fish-skin cloak, the fish head over their own. These figures often carry a cone and a small bucket and flank doorways, where they acted as protective spirits for the palace.

In 1976 Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery proposed that Oannes and similar figures recalled amphibious visitors from the Sirius system. That is speculation built on the text; the text itself describes a divine sage and culture-bringer. Other writers have compared him to Dagon, the Philistine god, though the idea that Dagon was a fish god is itself a medieval guess based on the Hebrew word for fish.