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Ur-Bau, when erecting a sanctuary to Ea at Girsu, significantly calls the god 'the king of Eridu. The sanctuary is not, in this case, the dwelling-place of the god. We are justified, therefore, in going back many centuries, before reaching the period when Ea was, merely, the local god of Eridu.
As a consequence, we find her in close association with Nin-girsu, the god of Girsu.
This character as a spirit of the watery elements is shared by others of the goddesses appearing in the old Babylonian inscriptions. En-ki or Ea. This god, who, as we shall see, becomes most prominent in the developed form of Babylonian theology, does not occupy the place one should expect in the early Babylonian inscriptions. Ur-Bau erects a sanctuary to Ea, at Girsu.
The man he appointed for this high office was named Hi, and he had up to that time been priest in Ninâb. Entemena summoned him to his presence, and, after marching in a triumphal procession from Girsu in the neighbourhood of Shirpurla to the conquered city, proceeded to invest him with the office of patesi of Gishkhu.
The purely local character of the deity is, furthermore, emphasized by the reference to his temple in Girsu, on a brick and on a cone containing dedicatory inscriptions, inscribed by Gudea in honor of the god. The wife of the famous Gudea, Gin-Shul-pa-uddu, bears a name in which one of the elements is a deity, the phonetic reading of whose name is still uncertain.
A goddess of this name reading of the first sign doubtful is mentioned by Ur-Bau, who builds a temple to her in Girsu. If Amiaud is correct in his reading of the first sign, the goddess was identified at one time by the Babylonians with the consort of Ramman the storm-god. This would accord with the description that Ur-Bau gives of the goddess.
We have already come across several instances; thus Nin-girsu, the lord of Girsu, has been shown to be a form of Ninib, itself an ideogram, the reading of which, it will be recalled, is still uncertain; and again, Nin-khar-sag has been referred to, as one of the titles of the great goddess Belit.
The temple sacred to him at Girsu was called E-ninnu, and also by a longer name that described the god as the one 'who changes darkness into light, the reference being to the solar character of the god Nin-ib with whom Nin-girsu is identified.
Ur-Bau declares himself to be the darling of this deity, and in the town of Girsu he erects a temple to him. Girsu, however, was not the patron city of the god, for Ur-Bau gives Dumuzi-zu-aba, the appellation of 'the lord of Kinunira, a place the actual situation of which is unknown.
Again, the warlike character of the patron deity of Girsu would lead to an identification with Nin-shakh of Uruk, possessing the same traits; and the incorporation of Uruk as a part of the same empire which included Lagash and its quarters, would be the last link bringing about the full equation between the three.
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