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Updated: June 3, 2025
The second class of triads, Sin, Shamash, and Ramman, follow, and then the other great gods, Nin-ib, Marduk, Nergal, Nusku, and Gibil; and finally the chief goddesses are added, notably Ishtar, Nin-karrak, or Gula, and Bau. But besides the chief deities, an exceedingly large number of minor ones are found interspersed through the incantation texts.
The annals of this king, instead of beginning, as is customary, with an invocation of all or many of the gods, starts out with an address to Nin-ib, in which the king fairly exhausts the vocabulary of the language in his desire to secure the favor of this powerful deity. Almost all the attributes he assigns to him have reference to the god's powers in war.
Ekur and Eshara being employed as synonyms, Shamshi-Ramman replaces Ekur by Eshara, and since Bel is the lord of Ekur-Eshara, Nin-ib also becomes the first-born son of Bel.
Nin-girsu is frequently termed the warrior of Bel, the one who in the service of the 'lord of the lower world, appears in the thick of the fight, to aid the subjects of Bel. In this rôle, he is identical with a solar deity who enjoys especial prominence among the warlike Assyrians, whose name is provisionally read Nin-ib, but whose real name may turn out to be Adar.
The great temple of Nin-ib stood in Calah, which Ashurnasirbal chose as his official residence, and it was in this temple that the king deposited a long inscription commemorating his deeds. In the temple, he also places a colossal statue of the god. Upon the completion of the edifice, he dedicates it with prayer and sacrifices.
But at the close of one of his building inscriptions he invokes some twenty deities, adding to these eight, Nusku, Khani, Gaga, Sherua, Nin-gal, a god Azag-sir, and Nin-ib under three different forms; but it is evident that most of these are added to give effect and solemnity. They do not form part of the active pantheon. His successor, Esarhaddon, sets up various groups.
The special festivals of the god are fixed for the months of Shabat and Ulul, the eleventh and sixth months, and provision is made for the regular maintenance of the cult. It must, of course, not be supposed that, because Nin-ib appears to be a favorite of the king, the latter concentrates his attentions upon this god.
Again, Gula, the consort of Nin-ib, while occasionally mentioned in the historical texts of the second and third period, and under the form Ma-ma, as an element in a proper name belonging to the oldest period, is more frequently invoked in incantations as the healer of disease.
After the days of Shamshi-Ramman we hear of Nin-ib chiefly in the formal lists of gods which the later kings of Assyria, from Sargon on, are fond of placing at the beginning and end of their inscriptions.
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