r these services the god
in fish form instructed Manu regarding the approaching flood, and
afterwards piloted his ship through the weltering waters until it
rested on a mountain top.[32]

If this Indian myth is of Babylonian origin, as appears probable, it
may be that the spirit of the river Euphrates, "the soul of the land",
was identified with a migrating fish. The growth of the fish suggests
the growth of the river rising in flood. In Celtic folk tales high
tides and valley floods are accounted for by the presence of a "great
beast" in sea, loch, or river. In a class of legends, "specially
connected with the worship of Atargatis", wrote Professor Robertson
Smith, "the divine life of the waters resides in the sacred fish that
inhabit them. Atargatis and her son, according to a legend common to
Hierapolis and Ascalon, plunged into the waters--in the first case the
Euphrates, in the second the sacred pool at the temple near the
town--and were changed into fishes". The idea is that "where a god
dies, that is, ceases to exist in human form, his life passes into the
waters where he is buried; and this again is merely a theory to bring
the divine water or the divine fish into harmony with anthropomorphic
ideas. The same thing was sometimes effected in another way by saying
that the anthropomorphic deity was born from the water, as Aphrodite
sprang from sea foam, or as Atargatis, in another form of the
Euphrates legend, ... was born of an egg which the sacred fishes found
in the Euphrates and pushed ashore."[33]

As "Shar Apsi", Ea was the "King of the Watery Deep". The reference,
however, according to Jastrow, "is not to the salt ocean, but the
sweet waters flowing under the earth which feed the streams, and
through streams and canals irrigate the fields".[34] As Babylonia was
fertilized by its rivers, Ea, the fish god, was a fertilizing deity.
In Egypt the "Mother of Mendes" is depicted carrying a fish upon her
head; she links with Isis and Hathor; her husband is Ba-neb-Tettu, a
form of Ptah, Osiris, and Ra, and as a god of fertility he is
symbolized by the ram. Another Egyptian fish deity was the god Rem,
whose name signifies "to weep"; he wept fertilizing tears, and corn
was sown and reaped amidst lamentations. He may be identical with
Remi, who was a phase of Sebek, the crocodile god, a developed
attribute of Nu, the vague primitive Egyptian deity who symbolized the
primordial deep. The connection between a fish god a