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Among gods appearing for the first time are Khusha , Nun-gal, and Zamama. Mentioned in connection with the gates of the temple where the judges held court, the association of Khusha with Marduk, Shamash, Sin, and Nin-mar points to a considerable degree of prominence enjoyed by this deity. Of his nature and origin, however, we know nothing.
But while the god disappears, the name survives. Nun-gal with the plural sign attached becomes a collective designation for a group of powerful demons.
Nun-gal signifies the 'great chief. His temple stood in Sippar, and from this we may conclude that he was one of the minor gods of the place whose original significance becomes obscured by the side of the all-powerful patron of Sippar the sun-god. A syllabary describes the god as a 'raging' deity, a description that suggests solar functions.
Nun-gal appears, therefore, to be the ideograph proper to a deity that symbolized, like Nergal, Ninib, and Â, some phase of the sun. The disappearance of the god would thus be naturally accounted for, in view of the tendency that we have found characteristic of the religion, whereby powerful gods absorb the functions of weaker ones whose attributes resemble their own.
There is a 'pantheon' of demons as well as of gods in the Babylonian theology. Nun-gal accordingly recovers some of his lost dignity by becoming an exceptionally powerful demon so powerful as to confer his name upon an entire class. The god Zamama appears in connection with a date attached to a legal document of the days of Hammurabi.
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