This violent character of the god also leads to his being invoked by the Assyrian rulers as the one who, with Nergal, presides over the sports— hunting of lions, bulls, and stags—to which the Assyrians were devoted. Indeed, some of the Assyrian kings, notably Ashurnasirpal (B.C, 885- 860), are so devoted to Ninib that he becomes the god of war par excellence, and they fairly exhaust their vocabulary in extolling him as the strong
* English translation by Johns under the title, Lhe Oldest Code of Laws in the World (Edinburgh, 1903).
+ See above, p. 542»,
+See Rawlinson, i. 17, col. i. 1-17; Ninib as god of hunting with Nergal, Rawlinson, i. 28, col. i. 1,
544 RELIGION OF BABYLONIA
and powerful hero who overthrows all opponents, whose victory is assured, who holds the sceptre in his hands; the lord of lords, who drives along like a raging storm. There is but little trace, in such a description, of the solar deity, though phrases are interspersed here and there which show the solar origin of the god in question. It is natural that among the warlike Assyrians, where all the gods assume a fierce and more violent aspect, this side of the deity should have been particularly emphasized ; whereas, among the Babylonians, it is, on the whole, as an agricultural god that Ninib retains his position in the pantheon down to the latest period.*
The consort of Ninib is Gula, also designated as Nin-karrak, who, besides being very frequently associated with him, especially in the invocation of the gods at the close of the boundary inscriptions, appears in the magic tests chiefly as the ‘great physician’ who provides healing for the sick.
Les © the symbol of the great power of nature in its destructive phase, Nergal is consist- ently regarded as a violent deity, who alternately appears as a war-god and as a god of pestilence and fevers, dealing out death and suffering on every side. Dissociated from his originally local limitations as the god of Cuthah, he absorbs the role of other gods, who, likewise solar deities of the more violent type, were viewed as hostile to man. Such a figure was Jra (or Gira) ;}+ another was Ishwm, more specifically a god of fire; a third was Namtar, the plague-god par excellence; though, instead of being directly identified with Nergal, the latter is regarded as his servitor, in which role Iva, also, appears at times.
We have seen that Nergal is also associated with Ninib as the god of war; but the most im- portant function assigned to Nergal in the sys- tematized pantheon is as the chief of the gods who preside over the world of the dead. The Baby- lonian priests, in further development of the current popular views in regard to the condition of the dead in the nether world (upon which we shall dwell in a subsequent section), set up two pan- theons—one for the living, and one for the dead. In the course of time the differentiation between the two became so marked that it was commonly held that the gods, whom we have hitherto been considering, exercised control over the living only, who upon death passed out of their supervision. The dangers from hostile gods and demons, how- ever, did not cease with the approach of death, and it was necessary to secure protection from the spirits that infested the graves, and that followed the dead to their abode in the subter- ranean cave in which they were popularly supposed to be housed. Such protection could be gained only by an appeal to deities more powerful than the demons ; but the gods so addressed were quite different from those who protected the living. Nergal, as the god of fevers and pestilence—a prototype of the angel of death—was appropriately selected as the chief of this nether world pantheon. At his side was a consort, Hresh-kigal or Allatu. She is a kind of counterpart to Ishtar, and, origin- ally ruling independently in the lower world, is represented as accepting Nergal as her mate.
Grouped around Nergal and Eresh-kigal are a series of gods forming the court of.the Divine pair, who, besides doing their bidding, determine with them the condition of the dead. Besides Eresh-kigal, we encounter a consort, Laz, given to
*A temple to Ninib, dating from the days. of the New Babylonian period, has been unearthed by the German expedi- tion at Babylon (Mitthetl, d. Deutschen Orient. Ges., No. 10).
+ The former reading, Dibbarra, is to be abandoned. Although the correct reading is still uncertain, the probabilities are in favour of Jra, which is adopted by Zimmern, Keilinschriften u. d, Alte Testament, p. 587. :
RELIGION OF BABYLONIA
Nergal in his position as a member of the pan- theon of the living; and just as Nergal belongs to both pantheons, so there are other deities, like Nin-gish-zida, whom we encounter in the pantheon both of the upper and of the lower regions. Re- membering that this latter pantheon represents largely a doctrine of the schools, we need not be surprised to find gods who belong to both pan- theons; and, though there is no direct evidence for the fact, it seems likely that, as among the Greeks, most of the gods of the lower world were regarded as having their sojourn in that region for a part of the year only. In short, the popular element in this doctrine of a lower world pantheon is repre- sented by the nature myth, which symbolizes the change of seasons by transferring the abodes of certain gods—more particularly gods of vegetation and of life in general—to the nether world during the season of rain and storms, when Nature herself seems to have succumbed to the powerful Nergal and his consort.