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O supreme mistress of the E-anna, may thy heart be at rest. O supreme mistress of the land of Erech, may thy liver be pacified. O supreme mistress of the shining Erech, may thy heart be at rest. O supreme mistress of the mountain of the universe, may thy liver be pacified. O supreme mistress, queen of E-tur-kalama, may thy heart be at rest.
Tradition appears to have credited Meskingasher's son and successor, Enmerkar, with the building of Erech as a city around the first settlement Eanna, which had already given its name to the "kingdom". If so, Sumerian tradition confirms the assumption of modern research that the great cities of Babylonia arose around the still more ancient cult-centres of the land.
The cities here enumerated may not perhaps, in all cases, have existed in the Chaldaean period. The evidence hitherto obtained connects distinctly with that period only the following Babylon, Ur or Hur, Larrak or Larsa, Erech or Huruk, Calneh or Nopher, Sippara, Dur-Kurri-galzu, Chilmad, and the places now called Abu Shahrein and Tel-Sifr.
The kingdom of Ur passed to Awan. In Awan . . . Cf. Hist. of Bab., p. 159 f. Gen. xiv. 18. The restoration of Erech here, in place of Eanna, is based on the absence of the latter name in the summary; after the building of Erech by Enmerkar, the kingdom was probably reckoned as that of Erech.
The conception would then be similar to the view expressed in Genesis, where the dry land appears in consequence of the waters being 'gathered' into one place. The temple at Eridu is regarded as synonymous with the city, as the temples E-Kur and E-Anna are synonymous with Nippur and Erech respectively.
In the first two dynasties, which had their seats at the cities of Kish and Erech, we see gods mingling with men upon the earth. Tammuz, the god of vegetation, for whose annual death Ezekiel saw women weeping beside the Temple at Jerusalem, is here an earthly monarch. He appears to be described as "a hunter", a phrase which recalls the death of Adonis in Greek mythology.
After Babylon came the old sanctuaries in the ancient religious centers of the south, the temples to Shamash and his consort at Sippar and Larsa, the temples to Sin at Ur and Harran, to the old Ishtar or Anunit at Agade, to Nanâ in Erech.
Again, examples of women as exorcisers and as furnishing oracles may be instanced in Babylonia as well as in Assyria, and we have also references to female musicians as late as the days of Ashurbanabal. A specially significant rôle was played by the priestesses in Ishtar's temple at Erech, and probably at other places where the cult of the great mother goddess was carried on.
These three classes of sacred prostitutes have already been dwelt upon. With more material at our disposal regarding the cult of Ishtar or Nanâ of Erech, we would be in a position to specify the character of the rites performed at this temple. The statements of Herodotus and of other writers suffice, however, to show that the three terms represent classes of priestesses attached to the temple.
That in the ceremonies of initiation at Erech, and perhaps elsewhere, some rites were observed that on the surface appeared obscene is eminently likely; but there is no evidence that obscene rites, as instanced by Herodotus, formed part of the regular cult of the goddess.
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