Kish Ker
Saul. Abner;
but the following seems better to reconcile the passages on the subject: Abiel
Ner
I
Abner. Kish
Saul. See Abiel; Kish; Saul. Nerd. See Spikenard.
NEREIDS
950
NERGAL
ITereids (vijpiiStg) was the name of the Greek sea- nymphs. They were fifty in number, and were daugh- ters «jf Xereus, the okl man of the sea. They were gen- erally represented as very beautiful maidens, and some- times as half woman and half fish. The Nereids were regarded as favorable to sailors. They were worshipped in several parts of Greece, but more especially in sea- port towns.
Figure of a Nereid.
Nereus (Gr. 'Nrjptvg), a marine divinity in classic mythology, was represented as a wise and prophetic old man, and was believed to dwell at the bottom of the sea with his beantifid daughters the Xej-eid<. He was regarded as ruling principally over the Aigcan Sea, and was believed occasionally to appear to men in different shapes, predicting what should befall them in the fut- nre. The poets feigned that he could assume various forms like Proteus, and would only reveal the future when, having exhausted his powers of transformation, he was reduced to his original shape. Nereus yielded his place to Poseidon, and gave him his daughter Am- phitrite. His attribute was the trident. He frcqueutl)' ap])ears in ancient works of art.
Ne'reus (N?jofi)c), a Christian at Kome to whom, witli his sister, the apostle Paul sent his salutation (Kom. xvi, 15). A.D. 55. "The name may be of He- brew origin, "I3 or '^"'.D ; or it may be, as (Jrotius sug- gests, from the Sabine Nei-io, a word, according to Au- lus Gellius, signifying ' virtus et fortitudo' (.V. A . xiii, 22), and with which jXej-o and Nei'ienes, the wife of Mars, stand allied" (Kitto). "Origen conjectures that he belonged to the household of Philologus and Julia. Estius suggests that he may be idenlilied with a Ne- reus who is said to have been baptized at Kome by St. Peter. A legendary account of him is given in Hol- land, Acta Sanctorum, May 12; from which, in the opinion of Tillemont (//. E. ii, 139), may be gathered the fact that he was beheaded at Terracina, probably in the reign of Nerva. His ashes are said to be deposited in tlie ancient church of SS. Nereo ed Archilleo at Kome. There is a reference to his legendary history in bishop .Jeremy Taylor's sermon, Tlie aM arriage-rinr/, pt. i" (Smith ).
Nereus, St., a martyr of the early Christian Church, was a eunuch and servant of St. Domitilla {i\. v.). Re- fusing to abjure his faith, he was, with his mistress, banished by Domitian into a little isle on the coast of Terracina, called Pontia. Afterwards, amid the perse- cutions under Trajan, Nereus suftercd martyrdom with his mistress. The ancient Church kept a festival in memory of these faithful ones, and St. (Jregory tlie Great thus alludes to the great solemnity : " These saints, before whose tomb we are assembled, despised the world and trampled it under their feet, when peace, plenly, riches, and health gave it charms." St. Nereus is eonnnemorated in the Church of Kome Jlay 12. See Butler, Lives of the Saints, ii, 31 1, 312.
Ner'gal (Heb. NergaV, >5"',3 [in pause bj-ij]; Sept. 'Epyt\ V. r. N/;pyf\; Yulg. Nerr/el), one of the chief Assyrian and Babylonian deities (2 Kings xvii,
30), seems to have corresponded closely to the classical Mars. He was of Habylonian origin, and various deri- vations of the name have been suggested. Fiirst traces it to 5^2, to break in pieces, with h added ; Gesenius identifies it with the Sabian Xerig, the / being append- ed as the mark of a diminutive, which was a sign of endearment; Von Bolilen compares the Sanscrit ,V/iV/(//, viun-destroyer, spoken of a tierce warrior, and corre- sponding to Merodach ; and Kawlinson says the name '• is evidently compounded of the two Hamitic roots — air, a man, and yula, great ; so that he is the great man, or the great hero" (Ancient Monarchies, i, 171 ; ii, 256). '•His monumental titles are — 'the storm-ruler, 'the king of l)attle,' 'the champion of the gods,' 'the male principle' (or ' the strong begetter'), ' the tutelar god of Habylonia,' and ' the god of the chase.' Of this last he is the god pre-eminently; another deity, Xin, disputing with him the ])residency over war and battles. It is conjectured that he may represent the deified Nimrod — •the mighty liunter before the Lord' — from whom the kings both of Babylon and Nineveh were likely to claim descent. See Ni.mkod. The city peculiarly ded- icated to his worship is found in the inscriptions to be Cutha or Tiggaba, which is in Arabian tradition the special city of Nimrod. The only express mention of Nergal contained in sacred Scripture is in the above passage, where ' the men of Cutha,' placed in the cities of Samaria by a king of Assj'ria (Esar-haddon ?), are said to have ' made Nergal their god' when transplanted to their new country — a fact in close accordance with the frequent notices in the inscriptions, which mark him as the tutelar god of that city. Nergal's name oc- curs as the initial element in AVr^«/-shar-ezar (Jer. xxxix, 3 and 13) ; and is also found, under a contracted form, in the name of a comparatively late king — the Abeivieriqiis of Josephus (.1?;^ xx, 2,1). Nergal ap- pears to have been worshipped under the symbol of the ' Man-Lion.' The Slicinitic name for the god of Cutha was Aria, a word which signitics 'lion' both in Hebrew and Syriac. Xir, the first clement of the god's name, is capable of the same signification. Perhaps the habits of the lion as a hunter of beasts were known, and he was thus regarded as the most fitting symbol of the god who presided over the chase. It is in connection with their hunting excursions that the Assyrian kings make most freipient mention of this deity. As early as B.C. 1150, Tiglath-pileser I speaks of him as furnishing the arrows with Avhich he slaughtered the wild animals. Assur-dani-pal (Sardanapalus), the son and successor of Esar-haddon, never fails to invoke his aid, and ascribes all his hunting achievements to his influence. Pul sac- rificed to him in Cutha, and Sennacherib built him a temple in the city of Tarbisa, near Nineveh ; but in general he was not much worshipped either by the ear- lier or the later kings (see the L'ssag of Sir H. Kawlin- son in Kawlinson's Herodotus, i, (531-034)" (Smith). The rabbinical commentators believe that this iilol was in the form of a cock, since the somewhat similar word, ?i;2"iri, tar- negol, in the Talmud, means a cock ( Scl- den, Dii Syr. ii, 8, p. 317 sq. ; Sehwarx. Palest, p. «0). In curious coincidence with this tradition Layard gives two figures of a cock on Haiiylonian remains, showing its ancient worship by that ]K'o- Engraved Gem pie {Xineveh and Jialnjion, p. 158). Nor- from Babylon, berg, Cicsenius, and other inquirers into the astrclatry of the Assyrians and Chald:eans, conclude that Nergal is the same as the Sabian name for the planet Mars. Both among the Sabians and Arabians it means iU-luck, inis- fortune ; and it was by no means peculiar to the mythol- ogy of the West to make it the symbol of bloodshed and war. The Sabian Mars was typified as a man holding in one hand a drawn sword, and in the otlier a Iniman liead just cut off; his garments were also red. no doubt from the hue which the body of the planet presents to the