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231 And Elohim came to Abimelech in a nighttime dream, saying to him: "Indeed thou shalt die on account of the woman whom thou hast taken, for she is a man's wife. "And Abimelech did not come near her," explaining to the Lord that he was innocent, for Abraham "did say to me, "She is my sister' and she too hath said, 'He is my brother'." So "Elohim said to him, in the dream," mat if so he would not be punished as long as he returned Sarah to Abraham untouched. Afterward, when Abimelech demanded an expla- nation from Abraham, Abraham explained that fearing for his life he did tell the truth but not the whole truth: "Indeed she is my sister, the daughter of my lather but not the daughter of my mother, so she could become my wife." By being his half sister Sarah assured that her son (Isaac), even if not the Firstborn, would be the successor. These rules of succession, emulating the customs of the Anunnaki themselves, prevailed throughout the ancient Near East (and were even copied by the Incas in Peru). The Philistines called their principal deity Dagon, a name or epithet that can be translated as "He of the Fishes"—the god of Pisces, an attribute of Ea/Enki. This identification. however, is not so clear-cut and certain, because when this deity appears elsewhere in the ancient Near East, his name is spelled Dagan, which could mean "He of the Grains"— a god of farming. Whatever his true identity, this god featured in several omen-dreams reported in the state archives of the kingdom of Mari, a city-state that flourished at the beginning of the second millennium B.C. until its destruction by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in 1759 B.c. One report from Mari pertains to a dream whose contents were deemed so significant that it was at once brought by messenger to the attention of Zimri-Lim, the last king of Mari. In the dream the man saw himself journeying with others. Arriving at a place called Terqa, he entered the temple to Dagan and prostrated himself. At that moment the god "opened his mouth" and asked the traveler whether a truce had been declared between the forces of Zimri-Lim and those Royal Dreams, Fateful Oracles