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Updated: June 2, 2025
Since Nergal, as was shown in the previous chapter, was the local patron of Cuthah, it may be that the latter city was included in the Namar district.
Nergal tore away the ship's anchor, while Ninib directed the storm; the Anunnaki carried their lightning-torches and lit up the land with their brightness; the whirlwind of the Storm-god reached the heavens, and all light was turned into darkness. The storm raged the whole day, covering mountain and people with water.
As the consort of Nin-ib, the Assyrians recognized Gula. She is only occasionally invoked by the Assyrian rulers. A sanctuary to Gula, as the consort of Nin-ib, is erected by Ashurnasirbal, and a festival in honor of the goddess is referred to by Ashurbanabal. Nergal.
He is usually coupled with Nin, who likewise presides over battles and over hunting; but while Nin is at least his equal in the former sphere, Nergal has a decided pre-eminence in the latter. We have no distinct evidence that Nergal was worshipped in the primitive times. He is first mentioned by some of the early Assyrian kings, who regard him as their ancestor.
It is in this capacity that he already appears in the inscription of Singamil, who calls him 'king of the nether world. The "great dwelling-place," therefore, is clearly the dominion over which Nergal rules, and when we come to the cosmogony of the Babylonians, it will be found that this epithet for the nether world the great dwelling-place accords with their conception of the life after death.
Our own names of the planets, as handed down to us through the Greeks and Romans, are but the classical equivalents of the Babylonian deities. Jupiter is Marduk, the head of the Babylonian pantheon. Venus is the Babylonian Ishtar. Mars is Nergal, the god of war and pestilence. Mercury is Nabu, the god of wisdom and the messenger of the gods, and Saturn is Ninib.
Similarly, the fire-god receives the attributes belonging to Ninib, Nergal, and the various phases of the latter, such as Lugal-edinna, Lugal-gira, and Alamu.
Ramman with Nergal and Nanâ are also enumerated as the special gods of Namar a Babylonian district which caused the king considerable annoyance, and which may have been one of the strongholds whence the Cassitic kings continued their attacks upon Nebuchadnezzar.
With the tendency so characteristic of the Babylonian religion for great gods to absorb the rôles of minor ones, Nergal became the god of war par excellence, while Dibbarra, Ishum, and Sibi were chiefly viewed as powers responsible for such forms of violence as pestilence and distress.
Passing by such sanctuaries as E-shid-lam, sacred to Nergal at Cuthah, and coming to E-Sagila and E-Zida, the two great temples of Babylon and Borsippa, respectively, it is of course evident from the close connection between political development and religious supremacy, that Marduk's seat of worship occupies a unique position from the days of Hammurabi to the downfall of Babylonia.
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