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The future additions to the list, it is safe to assert, will increase the second class and only slightly modify, if at all, the first class. Bearing in mind this distinction we may put down as active forces in Assyria the following: Anu, Ashur, Bel, Belit, Gula, Dagan, Ea, Khani, Ishtar, Marduk, Nabu, Nergal, Ninib, Nusku, Ramman, Sin, Shala, Shamash, Tashmitum.
Belit-ekalli i.e., Belit of the palace appears as the consort of Ninib, the epithet 'ekalli' being added to specify what Belit is meant, and to avoid confusion with the consort of Bel. Ninib's consort, as we know from other sources, was Gula.
In regard to Ninib and Nergal it is of some importance to bear in mind that, like Marduk, they are at their origin solar deities, Ninib representing in the perfected theological system the morning sun, Marduk the sun of the early spring, and Nergal the mid-day sun and summer solstice.
Aruru, upon hearing this, forms a man of Anu. Aruru washes her hands, takes a bit of clay, and throws it on the ground. She creates Eabani, a hero, a lofty offspring, the possession of Ninib. This creature Eabani is described as having a body covered with hair. He has long flowing locks and lives with the animals about him.
No one was to survive the destruction. Ninib reveals the fact of Ea's interference: Ninib opened his mouth and spoke, spoke to the belligerent Bel: "Who but Ea could have done this? For is it not Ea who knows all arts?"
In this sense, we have seen that Marduk, the god of spring, was also addressed as 'the restorer to life. But while the revivification of nature controls the conception of gods of healing, like Nin-azu, Ninib, and Gula, the extension of the idea would lead, naturally, to the association of these gods with the ruler of the nether world, at a time when it was still believed that this ruler could be moved by appeals to loosen her hold upon those whom she was about to drag to her kingdom.
From the same list we learn that there was a temple to Marduk in Ashur in which the cult of the Shamash, Sarpanitum, Ramman, Ninib, Anunit was also carried on; similarly, in the temples of Ashur, of Gula, and of Ninib, other gods were worshipped.
He is a solar deity identified in the theological system of the Babylonians with Nergal, but originally distinct and in all probability one of the numerous local solar deities of Babylonia like Nin-girsu and Nin-gishzida, Ishum and others, whose rôles are absorbed by one or the other of the four great solar deities, Shamash, Marduk, Ninib, and Nergal.
With Ninib the solar deity coming into prominence as the god of war, all three names, Nin-girsu, Nin-gish-zida, and Nin-shakh, would be regarded by a later age as merely descriptive of one and the same god. Dun-shagga.
The latter bears the significant name E-ur-imin-an-ki, i.e., 'the house of the seven directions of heaven and earth. The 'seven directions' were interpreted by the Babylonian theologians as a reference to the seven great celestial bodies, the sun and moon and the five planets Ishtar, Marduk, Ninib, Nergal, and Nabu.
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