be considered both in relation to the allusions and in contrast to the other characters. King Ahab (Old Testament) Ahab is named for the biblical story of Ahab in the Books of Kings 16:28–22:40, the evil idol-worshipping ruler. This association prompts Ishmael to ask, after first hearing Ahab's name: "When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?" He is rebuked by one of Ahab's colleagues, who points out that "He did not name himself." For Melville's allegory the single most important thing was that Ahab "did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him" in 16:30–31. The biblical Ahab foreshadows the tragic end of Captain Ahab and the essential duality of his character. Both Ahabs are shrewd in their secular associations. The captain is successful in whaling, with a record of forty years. "The very evidence of this success," Nathalia Wright observes, "is fantastically like that in King Ahab's story: Captain Ahab, too, lives in an ivory house, 'the ivory Pequod as it is often called, tricked out in trophies of whale bones and teeth from profitable voyages." The ship's last voyage, however, is not entirely commercial: from the moment Ahab attaches the golden doubloon on the mast, it becomes a pursuit of a perceived enemy, under a captain unable to compromise. King Ahab, an able politician but a patron of foreign gods, offended Jehovah by introducing Baal as a god. Jehovah tolerated no other gods and contrived with false prophets to destroy King Ahab. Like his eponym, Captain Ahab worships pagan gods, particularly the spirit of fire. Fedallah the Parsee, his harpooner, is a fire-worshipping Zoroastrian. Fedallah makes three prophecies regarding Ahab's death: That before he dies, he must see two hearses, one not made by human hands and one built from American wood That Fedallah will die before him and serve as his pilot into death That only hemp can kill him Ahab interprets these prophecies to mean that he cannot die on land or sea, but they prove to be accurate if cryptic predictions of his death. Fedallah is swept off Ahab's whaleboat during the final three-day chase, and Ahab later sees his corpse bound to Moby Dick with a harpoon line. The whale proves to be the first of the two hearses; the Pequod becomes the second when it sinks with the loss of all