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Updated: June 18, 2025
The occasion of the dream in this case was not a coming deluge but a great dearth of water in the rivers, in consequence of which the crops had suffered and the country was threatened with famine. This occurred in the reign of Gudea, patesi of Lagash, who lived some centuries before our Sumerian document was inscribed.
It is interesting to note that Gudea mentions a hall of judgment in the temple to Nin-girsu at Lagash. The number of such buildings attached to the temple precinct varied, of course, according to the needs and growth of each place. In Nippur, the numbers appear to have been very large.
In keeping with this we find the mention of the goddess limited to the rulers of Lagash. Several of them En-anna-tuma, Entemena, and Gudea declare themselves to have been chosen by her. She is said to regard Gudea with special favor. She determines destinies. Another king, Ur-Ninâ, embodies the name of the goddess in his own, and devotes himself to the enlargement of her temple.
For these also shrines were built within or near the sacred precinct. Gudea sets the example for his successors by parading a large pantheon at the close of his inscriptions, and a list of temples in Lagash, recently published by Scheil, shows that most, if not all, of the gods invoked by the ruler had a sanctuary erected in his or her honor.
There was another side, however, to his nature, besides the belligerent one. As the patron of Lagash, he also presided over the agricultural prosperity of the district.
Professor Davis, taking up this idea of Amiaud, has quite recently maintained that the family idea must form our starting-point for an understanding of the pantheon of Lagash. The theory, however, does not admit of consistent application.
In the second list, the position of Nin-girsu at the head is due to the fact that the inscription commemorates the dedication of a sanctuary to that god. But Nin-girsu, despite his rank as the chief god of Lagash, belongs to a second class of deities.
Like Nin-girsu, Nin-si-a was a god of war, and his worship, imported perhaps from some ancient site to Lagash, falls into desuetude, as the attribute accorded to him becomes the distinguishing trait of the chief deity of the place. Gal-alim. Among the various deities to whom Gudea gives praise for the position and glory which he attains is Gal-alim.
The former, the local deity of Girsu, would naturally be called by the kings 'the lord of the true sceptre, while the subordination of Girsu as a quarter of Lagash finds its reflection in the relationship of master and servant pictured as existing between En-lil and Nin-girsu.
That its beginnings were modest, and that its importance, if not its origin, was of recent date in comparison with such places as Eridu, Nippur, Lagash, Ur, and the like, is proved by the absence of the god Marduk in any of the inscriptions that we have been considering up to this point.
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