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She is the one who deluges the land with water belonging therefore to the same order as Bau. In a list of deities enumerated by a ruler of Erech, Lugal-zaggisi, are found a local goddess, Umu, designated as the 'priestess of Uruk, and occupying an inferior rank to a goddess, Nin-akha-kuddu,
Lugal-zaggisi, as the king of Uruk, assigns to the goddess a first place. Her origin must, therefore, be sought in this region. In later days the name of the goddess is used to describe the fertility of the soil in general. So Ashurbanabal, describing the prosperity existing in his days, says that grain was abundant through the 'increase of Nisaba.
In a dream which the gods send to Gudea, he sees among other things, a goddess, whose name may be read Nisaba or Nidaba. Ninâ, who interprets the dream to the ruler of Shirpurla, declares that Nisaba is her sister. In a text belonging to a still earlier age, the deity is mentioned as the begetter of a king whose name is read Lugal-zaggisi.
They have become common property, in part through the sanctity attached to the places where the gods were worshipped, in part through the antiquity of these places, and in part, no doubt, as the result of a political development lying behind the period under consideration. The prominence given by Lugal-zaggisi to Nisaba is rather surprising. He calls himself and also his father, 'hero' of Nisaba.
We are in a position now to institute this comparison for a period which is certainly some centuries earlier than Gudea. The date of the reign of Lugal-zaggisi, king of Uruk, who has been several times referred to in a previous chapter, is fixed by Hilprecht at c. 4500 B.C., but it is doubtful whether so high an age will be accepted by scholars.
At the same time, the loyalty of the rulers to the gods, peculiar to their own district, is manifested by the prominent place assigned in the several cases to gods who otherwise play an insignificant rôle, and who eventually are absorbed by others; and lastly, as between Lugal-zaggisi and Gudea, the observation may be made of the disposition to emphasize local gods, less for their own sake, than because of the éclat furnished by the enumeration of a large pantheon, which shall be coequal in extent and dignity to the district claimed by the rulers and to the rank assumed by them.
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