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Updated: June 18, 2025
Unfortunately, De Sarzec's excavations at Lagash at the point of the mound in question were interrupted, but he gives reasons for believing that other columns existed near the two large ones found by him. There is, therefore, every reason to conclude that at Lagash, as at Nippur and no doubt elsewhere, the two columns belonged to a great gateway leading into a large court of columns.
On the day in which destinies were fixed in heaven and earth, Enlil, the chief of the gods, and Ningirsu, the city-god of Lagash, held converse; and Enlil, turning to Ningirsu, described the sad condition of Southern Babylonia, and remarked that "the decrees of the temple Eninnû should be made glorious in heaven and upon earth", or, in other words, that Ningirsu's city-temple must be rebuilt.
Eannatum and Gudea of Lagash both place her immediately after Anu and Enlil, giving her precedence over Enki; and even in the Kassite Kudurru inscriptions of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries, where she is referred to, she takes rank after Enki and before the other gods.
That Girsu was once quite distinct from Lagash is also evident from the title of "king of Girsu," with which a certain Uru-kagina, who is to be placed somewhat before Gudea, contents himself. The other three quarters, all of which were originally independent cities, are Uru-azagga, Ninâ, and apparently Gish-galla.
After him the most famous king of that epoch was Gudea, of Lagash, the prince of whom we possess the greatest number of monuments. But in these records we have but the dust of history rather than history itself. The materials are scanty in the extreme and the framework also is wanting. VIII. The Temples and the Gods of Chaldæa
As long as the various districts of Babylonia were not formally united under one head, various local cults might rise to equally large proportions, while the gods worshipped as the special patrons of the great centers, as Lagash, Ur, Uruk, Nippur, and the like, would retain their prominence, even though the political status of the cities sacred to them suffered a decline.
The site of the city should perhaps be sought on the upper course of the stream, where it tends to approach Nippur. It would thus have lain in the neighbourhood of Bismâya, the site of Adab. Like Adab, Lagash, Shuruppak, and other early Sumerian cities, it was probably destroyed and deserted at a very early period, though it was reoccupied under its old name in Neo-Babylonian or Persian times.
A factor that contributed largely to the growth of the sacred precinct in the large centers was the circumstance that the political importance of such centers as Nippur, Lagash, Ur, Babylon, and Nineveh led the rulers to group around the worship of the chief deity, the cult of the minor ones who constituted the family or the court of the chief god.
The rulers of Lagash declare themselves to have been chosen for the high office by Nin-girsu, and as if to compensate themselves for the degradation implied in being merely patesis, or governors, serving under some powerful chief, they call themselves the patesis of Nin-girsu, implying that the god was the master to whom they owed allegiance.
In the earliest period which we are now considering, we can still distinguish a number of goddesses who afterwards became merged into this one great goddess. Ninni and Innanna are names that appear to have a common origin. Both embody the notion of 'ladyship. The worship of this goddess centers in the district of Lagash. For Gudea, Ninni is the "mistress of the world."
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