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

468 EXPLORATIONS IX BIBLE LANDS
"the wedding presents of Bau " were deposited. Here,
then, for the first time, we meet with the idea that a Babylonian
god has his tomb. Startling as this statement may
seem at first, it is in entire accord with the character of the
principal god of Lagash, as a god of vegetation and as a sungod.
For Ningirsu, " the powerful champion" and "the
beloved son " of En-lil of Nippur, 1 originally the god
of agriculture, was later identified with Ninib, " the
son of
Ekur" the god of the rising sun, " who holds the link of
heaven and earth 2 and governs everything." According
to the Babylonian conception, he suffers death in the same
way as Tammuz 4 (Ez. 8 :
14), the god of the spring vegetation
and of the lower regions, with whom Ningirsu is
practicallv identical; 5 or as Shamash, the sun-god himself,
who descends into the apsu, the terrestrial and subterranean
ocean, every evening, and rises out of it again in the morning
; who in the spring of every year commences his course
with youthful vigor, but gradually grows weaker and weaker
until he dies during the winter. The sun dwelling in " the
nether world " for half a year, the sun-god himself naturally
is
considered as dead during this period/' and Shamash consequently
has his tomb in Larsa, and Ai, his wife, at Sippara,
7 as Ningirsu in Lagash. More than this, the ziggurrat
1
Comp. Gudea, Cyl. A, ii, 12, where it is even said that "Ningirsu
is lord or prince (nirgal) at Nippur."
2
See i R. 29, 3, seq., markas shame u irsiti, the Assyrian translation of
the Sumerian Duranki, which, as we saw above, was the name of the ziggurrat
of Ekur.
8
Comp. Jensen, Kosmologie, Index.
4
Who dies in the month sacred to him.
6
Comp. Jensen, /. c. , pp. 197, seqq.
6
Comp. Winckler, ArabischSemitisch-Orientalisch in Mitteilungen der
Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, ^rWn, 1901, no. 5, pp. 93, seqq.
7
Comp. Scheil, Code des Lois de Hammurabi (D. Morgan's Memoir es,
vol. iv) Paris, 1902, col. ii, 26-28, — a passage which I owe to Hommel,
I not vet having seen the book recently published.