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Updated: June 18, 2025
We have texts which resolve the deities of the popular faith into forms of one god; sometimes this is Anu of Erech, sometimes it is Merodach of Babylon. Babylonian worship necessitated a large hierarchy of priests. At the head was the high-priest, who in early times possessed temporal power and in many states was the predecessor of the king.
The bright house of the gods was not yet built on the bright place, No reed grew and no tree was formed, No brick was laid nor any brick edifice reared, No house erected, no city built, No city reared, no conglomeration formed. Nippur was not reared, E-Kur not erected. Erech was not reared, E-Anna not erected. The deep not formed, Eridu not reared.
At one time we may well suppose that the festival of En-lil at Nippur, which brought worshippers from all parts of Babylonia, was recognized as a 'New Year's Day, and we may some day find evidence that at a still earlier period the first day of a month sacred to some other god, Sin or Shamash or Nanâ-Ishtar of Erech, was recognized in some districts as the starting-point for the year; but to an agricultural community, the spring, when the seeds are sown, or the fall, after the harvest has been gathered, are the two most natural periods for reckoning the beginning of the year.
Possibly 186 years. This group of early kings of Erech is of exceptional interest. Apart from its inclusion of Gilgamesh and the gods Tammuz and Lugalbanda, its record of Meskingasher's reign possibly refers to one of the lost legends of Erech. Like him Melchizedek, who comes to us in a chapter of Genesis reflecting the troubled times of Babylon's First Dynasty, was priest as well as king.
The southern tetrarchy is composed of the four cities, Ur or Hur, Huruk, Nipur, and Larsa or Larancha, which are probably identified with the Scriptural "Ur of the Chaldees," Erech, Calneh, and Ellasar. The northern consists of Babel or Babylon, Borsippa, Cutha, and Sippara, of which all except Borsippa are mentioned in Scripture.
Probably it originated in the matrix of nations which the table-land of Asia was. But only in Chaldean myth, and subsequently in Hebrew legend, was the flood ascribed to sin. Gilgames' quest, meanwhile, could not have been wholly vain. In an archaic inscription it is stated that the city of Erech was built in olden times by the deified Gilgames.
See also Conder's account of the visit of His Majesty the King, when Prince of Wales, to the Haram at Hebron. See Baedeker's Palestine and Syria, p. 309; Rapoport's Erech Milin, p. 54; also a preliminary notice on the Necropolis of Maresha in P.E.F.Q.S., Oct., 1902, p. 393. The passage in A and all printed editions as to Shunem and Toron de Los Caballeros is corrupt.
The thought once introduced is not abandoned. The rest of the narrative, so far as preserved, is concerned with Marduk. Eridu alone is beyond his jurisdiction. Everything else, vegetation, mankind, rivers, animals, and all cities, including even Nippur and Erech, are Marduk's work.
Another important fact which strikes us after a scrutiny of the early royal names recovered is that, while two or three are Semitic, the great majority of those borne by the earliest rulers of Kish, Erech, and Ur are as obviously Sumerian. See Poebel, Historical Texts, pp. 73 ff. and Historical and Grammatical Texts, pl. ii-iv, Nos. 2-5.
From the fact that he styles himself King of Erech, we may conclude that he removed his capital from Ukush to that city, after having probably secured its submission by force of arms.
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