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Updated: May 25, 2025
As for Shukamuna, the fact that Agumkakrimi, who places his title, 'king of Cassite land, before that of Akkad and Babylon, opens his inscription with the declaration that he is the glorious offspring of Shukamuna, fixes the character of this god beyond all doubt; and Delitzsch has shown that this god was regarded by the Babylonian schoolmen as the equivalent of their own Nergal.
The manner in which Agumkakrimi introduces Anu is no less characteristic for the age of Hammurabi and his successors. At the beginning of his long inscription, he enumerates the chief gods under whose protection he places himself. As a Cassitic ruler, he assigns the first place to the chief Cassite deity, Shukamuna, a god of war whom the Babylonian scholars identified with their own Nergal.
Shukamuna, accordingly, was the Cassite god of war, who, like Nergal, symbolized the mid-day sun, that is, the raging and destructive power. Shumalia is the consort of Shukamuna , and is invoked as the 'lady of the shining mountains. Nin-dim-su is a title of Ea, as the patron of arts.
Nin-dim-su, Ba-kad, Pap-u, Belit-ekalli, Shumalia, and Shukamuna occur at the close of the inscription of Melishikhu, among the gods asked to curse the transgressors of the royal decree. That some of these are Cassite deities imported into Babylonia, and whose position in the pantheon was therefore of a temporary character, there seems little reason to question.
Some of the deities in this list, which is far from being exhaustive, are foreign, so e.g., Shukamuna and Shumalia, who belong to the Cassitic pantheon; others are of purely local significance, as Shir and Shubu. As for Sin, Ninib, and Ishtar, the worship of none of these deities assumes any great degree of prominence during this period.
From the inscriptions of his successors we are permitted to add the following: Nin-khar-sag, Nergal, and Lugal-mit-tu, furnished by Samsu-iluna; Shukamuna, by Agumkakrimi; and passing down to the period of the Cassite dynasty, we have in addition Nin-dim-su, Ba-kad, Pap-u, Belit-ekalli, Shumalia.
Shukamuna is followed by the triad Anu, Bel, and Ea. Marduk occupies a fifth place, after which comes a second triad, Sin, Shamash "the mighty hero," and Ishtar "the strong one among the gods." The inscription is devoted to the king's successful capture of the statues of Marduk and Sarpanitum out of the hands of the Khani, and the restoration of the shrines of these deities at Babylon.
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