Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

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DURING i9?B CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 467
know yet how the Semitic inhabitants of ancient Nippur
generally disposed of their dead.
From the difficult passage 1
preceding Gudea's account of
his restoration of Ningirsu's temple at Lagash, I am inclined
to infer that originally a vast fire-necropolis surrounded
the sanctuary of Tello also, and that Gudea did the
same for Shir-pur-la as Sargon I (or some other monarch
of that general period) had done for Nippur. He stopped
cremating and burying the dead in
temple of Ningirsu, and levelled
cemetery around it,
the environments of the
the ground of the ancient
with due regard to the numerous burial
urns and coffins previously deposited there. In other words,
" he cleaned the city " and " made the temple of Ningirsu a
pure place like Eridu," the sacred city of Ea, where, apparently,
in the earliest days, burials were not allowed.
the same inscription we learn another important fact.
states expressly, that " he restored
From
Gudea
Eninnu-imgig{gu)barbara
[Ningirsu's temple] and constructed his [i. e. the god's]
beloved tomb (gigunu) of cedar wood in it." 2 It cannot be
ascertained precisely where the god's funeral chapel was,
in the extensive household 3 provided for him by Gudea.
From another passage (Gudea, Statue D, ii, 7-iii, 1), however,
it would seem that it formed part of the temple proper,
which stood at the side 4
of the ziggurrat, while the room on
the summit of the stage-tower (called Epa) was the one
chamber above all others in which Ningirsu and his consort,
Ban, were supposed to reside, and where, accordingly,
1
Statue B, iii, 1 2-v, 1 1
2
Comp. Gudea, Statue B, v, 15-19 ; Statue D, ii, 7-iii, 1.
3
Comp. Thureau-Dangin's translation and brief" treatment of Gudea's two
large cylinders (A and B) in Comptes Rendus, 1901, pp.
I 12 seqq. (Le so?ige
ae Gudea, Cyl. A), Revue d'/usto/re et de literature religieuses, vol. vi
(1901), no. 6, pp. 481, seqq. (La famille et la cour d'u/i dieu chaldeen,
Cyl. B.), and Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, vol. xvi (1902), pp. 344,
seqq. (Le ey/i/idre A de Gudea).
4
Comp. pp. 469, seqq., below.