Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 26, 2025
We must not be misled by an epithet bestowed upon several gods, Marduk, Ninib, and Gula, of 'the restorer of the dead to life, into the belief that the dead could be brought back from Aralû. These epithets appear chiefly in incantations and hymns addressed to the gods for some specific purpose, such as deliverance of a sufferer from disease.
The four succeeding months are parceled out among deities closely connected with one another, Ninib, Nin-gishzida, Ishtar, and Shamash. Of these, Ninib and Nin-gishzida are solar deities. Ninib, as the morning sun, symbolizes the approach of the summer season, while Nin-gishzida, another solar deity, represents an advance in this season.
Festivals in honor of Ninib were celebrated in Calah in the months of Elul the sixth month and Shabat the eleventh month. The sixth month, it will be recalled, is sacred to Ishtar. Ninib being a solar deity, his festival in Elul was evidently of a solar character.
But, in addition, our investigations have shown that we are justified in adding the following as forming part of the Babylonian pantheon during this entire period: Sarpanitum, Belit, Tashmitum, Sin, Ninib, Ishtar, Nergal, Nin-khar-sag, and the two other members of the triad, Anu and Ea, with their consorts, Anatum and Damkina.
Upon the first appearance of dawn, There arose from the horizon dark clouds, Within which Ramman caused his thunder to resound. Nabu and Sharru marched at the front, The destroyers passed across mountains and land, Dibbarra lets loose the.... Ninib advances in furious hostility.
We have already come across several instances; thus Nin-girsu, the lord of Girsu, has been shown to be a form of Ninib, itself an ideogram, the reading of which, it will be recalled, is still uncertain; and again, Nin-khar-sag has been referred to, as one of the titles of the great goddess Belit.
Judging from analogous instances, he represented some phase of the sun worshipped in a particular locality, whose cult, with the disappearance of the place from the surface of political affairs, yielded to the tendency to concentrate sun-worship in two or three deities, Shamash and Ninib more especially. In the astronomy of the Babylonians the name survived as a designation of Marduk-Jupiter.
From these two examples we may conclude that the process which resulted in the identification of Saturn with Ninib, Mars with Nergal, Mercury with Nabu rested similarly on an association of ideas, derived from certain conceptions held of the gods involved.
From syllabaries, we learn that he was a form of the sun-god, worshipped in the city of Kish in northern Babylonia, and it also appears that he was identified at one period with Ninib. The temple to Zamama perhaps only a shrine stood in the city of Kish, which was remodeled by Hammurabi.
From its original meaning, the word became a poetical term in Hebrew for 'worthless, 'useless, and the like, e.g., in the well-known phrase "Sons of Belial." See p. 482. See p. 537. See above, p. 523. IIR. 59; reverse 33-35. See above, p. 175. IIR. 57, 51a, a star, Nin-azu, is entered as one of the names of the planet Ninib. See above, p. 565.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking