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Updated: June 20, 2025
Similarly, E-gish-shir-gal, 'the house of the great luminary, was an appropriate name for the temple to the moon-god at Ur.
The members of the Isin dynasty pride themselves upon their control over Uruk, and naturally appear as special devotees to Nanâ, whose chosen "consort" they declare themselves to be, wielding the sceptre, as it were, in union with her. Already at this period, Nanâ is brought into connection with the moon-god, being called by Kudur-Mabuk the daughter of Sin.
A member of the dynasty ruling in Isin, En-anna-tuma, earlier even than Nur-Rammân, invokes Nin-gal in an inscription found in the ancient capital, Ur. Here, too, the goddess appears in association with Nannar; but, curiously enough, she is designated as the mother of Shamash. It will be borne in mind that in the city of Ur, the sun-god occupied a secondary place at the side of the moon-god.
The reference is to the formal lamentations on the occasion of the death of any one. The moon-god, having disappeared, is bewailed as though dead. I.e., under all conditions and at all times. The reading Nâru is not altogether certain, but probable. See Tallqvist, Assyr. Beschwör. pp. 131, 132, whose suggestion, however, that Nâru may be a female deity, is not acceptable.
It has been satisfactorily shown that Marduk was originally a solar deity. His association with Babylon, therefore, must be viewed in the same light as the association of Sin, the moon-god, with the city of Ur, and the association of Shamash, the sun-god, with Larsa and Sippar.
Marduk's ship was appropriately known as Ma-ku-a, 'the ship of the dwelling. Similarly, a ship of the god Sin was called 'ship of light, reminding one of the name of the great temple to the moon-god at Ur, 'the house of the great luminary. The ship of Nin-gal, the consort of Sin, was called 'the lesser light. Bau's ship was described by an epithet of the goddess as 'the ship of the brilliant offspring, the reference being to the descent of the goddess from father Anu.
Inwardly, however, there was a corrupt moral condition, which was hastening the nations to decay and to a ruin such as amazes all the world to this day. Ur of the Chaldees, the birth place and home of Abraham, was the seat of the great temple of the moon-god, and this sanctuary became so famous that the moon-god was known throughout all northern Syria as the Baal or Lord of Haran.
In Ur itself, Shamash was also worshipped in early days by the side of the moon-god. The titles given to Shamash by the early rulers are sufficiently definite to show in what relation he stood to his worshippers, and what the conceptions were that were formed of him. He is, alternately, the king and the shepherd.
His great temple at Ur was begun by Urukh, and finished by his son Ilgi the two most ancient of all the monarchs. Later in the series we find him in such honor that every king's name during some centuries comprise the name of the moon-god in it. On the restoration of the Chaldaean power he is again in high repute.
Nor, indeed, is this surprising: Babylonian influence in the West belonged to an age long anterior to that of the Exodus, and even the mountain whereon the oracles of God were revealed to the Hebrew lawgiver was Sinai, the mountain of Sin. The worship of Sin, the Babylonian Moon-god, must therefore have made its way thus far into the deserts of Arabia.
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