Nippur

“ As the consort of En-lil, the goddess Nin-lil or Belit belongs to Nippur and her titles as “ruler of heaven and earth,” and “mother of the gods” are all due to her position as the wife of Bel. While recognized by a temple of her own in Nippur and honoured by rulers at various times by having votive offerings made in her honour and fortresses dedicated in her name, she, as all other goddesses in Babylonia and Assyria with the single exception of Ishtar, is overshadowed by her male consort. ”

“ An intermediate step between Anu viewed as the local deity of Erech (or some other centre) , Bel as the god of Nippur, and Ea as the god of Eridu is represented by the prominence which each one of the centres associated with the three deities in question must have acquired, and which led to each one absorbing the qualities of other gods so as to give them a controlling position in an organized pantheon. For Nippur we have the direct evidence that its chief deity, En-lil or Bel, was once regarded as the head of an extensive pantheon. ”

“ While the theology of Nippur concerned itself with the dead, that of Eridu was pre-eminently occupied with the living. Asari is invoked as the god who raised the dead to life, and the arts which make life pleasant were the gifts of Ea himself. It is perhaps not without reason that, while En-lil of Nippur appears as the destroyer of mankind, Ea is their creator and instructor. He not only created them, but he taught them how to live, and provided for them the spells and remedies which could heal the sick and ward off death. ”

“ The references to separate cities, which occur in the contemporary inscriptions of his reign, are not numerous. From the texts found at Nippur, we know that he rebuilt E-kur, the great temple of Enlil, and many of the bricks which formed his temple-platform and that of Narâm-Sin have been found in place. [56] The mace-head from Abû Habba [57] is an indication that, like his predecessors on the throne of Kish, he devoted himself [Pg 236] to enriching the great temple of the Sun-god in Northern Babylonia; while one of his date-formulæ supports the tradition of his building activity in Babylon. ”

“ We may regard it as typical of the great conqueror that he should pray for a supply of warriors "as numerous as the grass."
It is fortunate for our knowledge of early Sumerian history that the shrine of Enlil at Nippur should have been the depository for votive offerings, brought thither by the rulers of city-states to commemorate their victories. Of the inscribed objects of this class that were recovered at Nippur during the American excavations on that site, by far the most important are the vase-fragments of Lugal-zaggisi, which have already been described. ”

“ It was probably after his successful return from the long expedition in the north-west that Lugal-zaggisi deposited his vases as votive offerings within Enlil's shrine at Nippur, and engraved upon them the inscriptions from which we obtain our information concerning his reign. In the third column of his text he states that he has dedicated them to Enlil, after having made due offerings of loaves in Nippur and having poured out pure water as a libation. He then adds a prayer of dedication, in which he prays for life for himself, and peace for his land, and a large army. ”

“ The temple of Bel consisted of two large courts adjoining each other, the north-west court with the zikkurat and 'the house of Bel' representing the most holy place or the inner court, while the south-east (outer) court seems to have been studded with the shrines of all the different gods and goddesses worshipped at Nippur, including one for Bel himself. 6. Imgur-Marduk and Nimit-Marduk, mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions as the two walls of Nippur (dûru and Shalkhû) , cannot have surrounded the whole city. ”

“ Climatic conditions necessitated frequent repairs. The temple also suffered occasionally through political tumults, but with each century the religious importance of E-Kur was increased. Ur-Bau, we have seen, about 2700 B.C., erected a zikkurat in the temple area. Some centuries later we find Bur-Sin repairing the zikkurat and adding a shrine near the main structure. As the political fortunes of Nippur varied, so E-Kur had its ups and downs. Under the Cassitic rule, an attempt was made to recover for Nippur the position which it formerly occupied, but which had now passed over to Babylon. ”

“ A fresh and sounder line of research has recently been opened up. A detailed study has been undertaken of the proper names occurring on contract-tablets from Nippur, and it was remarked that some of the proper names found in documents belonging to the Nîsin and Larsa Dynasties are identical with those appearing on other Nippur tablets belonging to the First Dynasty of Babylon. [16] That they were borne by the same individuals is in many eases quite certain from the fact that the names of their fathers are also given. ”

“ The excavations at Nippur were the first to reveal to us the extreme antiquity of Babylonian civilization, and, as already stated, they give us the best consecutive record of the development of that civilization, with a continuous occupancy from a period of unknown antiquity, long ante-dating 5000 B.C., onward to the middle ages. But while Nippur has been more fully explored than any other old Babylonian city, except Babylon and Lagash, still only a small part of the great ruins of the ancient site had been examined in 1909. ”

“ It has long been known that the early Babylonian king Sharru-kin, or Sargon of Akkad, had pressed up the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, and we now have information that he too was fired by a desire for precious wood and metal. One of the recently published Nippur inscriptions contains copies of a number of his texts, collected by an ancient scribe from his statues at Nippur, and from these we gather additional details of his campaigns. ”

“ According to our scheme of chronology, Sumu-la-ilum's capture of Dûr-Zakar at Nippur corresponds to the year of Ura-imitti's death and to the subsequent struggle for the throne of Nîsin.
[68] In addition to Dûr-Zakar of Nippur, these were Dûr-Padda, Dûr-Lagaba, Dûr-Iabugani, Dûr-Cula-dûru, and Dûr-uṣi-ana-Ura. On their reconstruction Samsu-iluna dedicated the first four to Ninmakh, Adad, Sin and Lugal-diri-tugab, and the last two to Nergal; cf. "Letters of Hammurabi," pp. 199 ff.
[69] To this he gave the name Tâmtum-khegallum, "the Ocean (gives) abundance." ”

“ Other temples were built up at various ancient centres, so that these cultural organizations might contribute to the welfare of the localities over which they held sway. At Nippur he thus honoured Enlil, at Eridu the god Ea, at Ur the god Sin, at Erech the god Anu and the goddess Nana (Ishtar) , at Kish the god Zamama and the goddess Ma-ma, at Cuthah the god Nergal, at Lagash the god Nin-Girsu, while at Adab and Akkad, "celebrated for its wide squares", and other centres he carried out religious and public works. ”

“ They were too much absorbed in commerce and trade and the practical pursuit of wealth, to have leisure for theories that concerned themselves with a doubtful future and an invisible world. The shadow of the old religion of Nippur, moreover, with its underground Hades of darkness and gloom, rested to the last on the mind of the Babylonian people. The brighter views which had emanated from Eridu never succeeded in overcoming it altogether. The gods of light ruled, indeed, over a world that had once belonged to the demons of night, but their victory never extended further. ”

“ As Ninip or Nirig, the son of Enlil, who was made in the likeness of Anu, he waged war against the earth spirits, and was furiously hostile towards the deities of alien peoples, as befitted a god of battle. Even his father feared him, and when he was advancing towards Nippur, sent out Nusku, messenger of the gods, to soothe the raging deity with soft words. Ninip was symbolized as a wild bull, was connected with stone worship, like the Indian destroying god Shiva, and was similarly a deity of Fate. ”

“ The Zu myth does not represent, as he supposes, an attack upon Marduk as the symbol of the early morning sun, but upon En-lil, the Bel of Nippur, as the one who, by virtue of having the tablets of fate in his possession, controls the laws of the universe and fixes the fate of the gods and of mankind. The annual rain-storm passing apparently beyond the control of the gods is viewed as a revolt against En-lil's authority. ”

“ Nippur continued to be a sacred city after it ceased to have any considerable political importance, while in addition the rise of the doctrine of a triad of gods symbolizing the three divisions—heavens, earth and water—assured to Bel, to whom the earth was assigned as his province, his place in the religious system. The disassociation from his local origin involved in this doctrine of the triad gave to Bel a rank independent of political changes, and we, accordingly, find Bel as a factor in the religion of Babylonia and Assyria to the latest days. ”

“ In the summer of 1888, the University of Pennsylvania fully equipped and sent out the first American expedition to the northern half of the plains of Babylonia to effect a thorough exploration of the ruins of Nippur—the modern Niffer, or, more correctly, Nuffar—on the border of the unwholesome swamps of the Affej, and to undertake extensive excavations. A few intelligent citizens of Philadelphia had met in the house of Ex-Provost Dr. ”

“ On the other hand, after the discovery of the Nippur Kings' List, it was possible to establish the succession of the earlier dynasties of Ur and Nîsin, and to conjecture their relation to the still more remote rulers of Akkad and other cities in the north and south. The two halves of the skeleton were each articulated satisfactorily enough, but the few bones were wanting which should enable us to fit them together. It is scarcely necessary to say that there was no lack of theories for filling in the gap. ”

“ That Nippur itself was held by him for a time is more than probable, especially as one of his building-inscriptions, still unpublished, is said to have been found there [18] ; and we know also, from a Neo-Babylonian copy of a similar text, that he claimed the title "King of Sumer and Akkad." [19] Under him, then, Babylon recovered a semblance of her former strength, but we may conjecture that the Sea-Country retained its hold on Larsa and the southern group of cities. ”

“ Still, while cheerfully acknowledged by Ea as his equal, it is evident that in older traditions Ea was far superior to Marduk, and the latter replaces Ea as he does Bel. The real creator of mankind, according to certain traditions, is Ea, just as in all probabilities a third tradition existed which arose in Nippur giving to Bel that distinction. ”

“ A factor that contributed largely to the growth of the sacred precinct in the large centers was the circumstance that the political importance of such centers as Nippur, Lagash, Ur, Babylon, and Nineveh led the rulers to group around the worship of the chief deity, the cult of the minor ones who constituted the family or the court of the chief god. The kings measured their importance by the number of the gods upon whose assistance they could rely. ”

“ Adar, the sun-god of Nippur, was in the same manner connected with the pig, which may have been the totem of the city he ruled over; and many other gods had attendant animals or birds, like the sun-god of Kis, whose symbol was the eagle.
Those monsters who had composed the host of Tiawath were supposed, after the defeat and destruction of their commandress, to have been hurled like Satan and his angels into the abyss beneath. We read of their confusion in four tablets of the creation epic. ”

“ True to his primeval character, En-lil of Nippur was the author of the Deluge. His ministers, Nin-ip, Nusku, and En-nugi, carry out his commands, while “the spirits [pg 440] of the earth lift up their torches.” But the poet of the Epic has spoilt the primitive symmetry of the picture by introducing the triad into it along with the storm-god Hadad of later times, and so making the destruction of mankind not the work of En-lil alone, but of the gods generally in common council. ”

“ To facilitate the reproduction of the statuettes, moulds were used,—another indication of the widespread use of these objects. Clay figures of gods and goddesses were also made in moulds or modelled by hand and served as votive offerings. At Nippur, the images represent chiefly Bel and Belit, [1522] either separately or in combination; but figurines of Ishtar have also been found. [1523] In some the goddess is represented as suckling a child. Often she is pictured as naked, clasping her breasts or her womb. ”

“ Most of them point to Eridu as the source from which they have been derived, though there are others the origin of which is probably to be sought at Nippur.
In these older incantations the gods of the official cult are absent, except where their names have been violently foisted in at a later date, and their place is taken by the spirits or ghosts of early Sumerian belief. The Zi or “spirit of the sky,” “the spirit of the earth,” “the spirit [pg 404] of Ansar and Kisar,” such are the superhuman powers that are invoked, and to whom the worshipper turns in his extremity. ”

“ This prominent landmark represents the temple-tower of Enlil's famous sanctuary, and even after excavation it is still the first object that the approaching traveller sees on the horizon. When he has climbed its summit he enjoys an uninterrupted view over desert and swamp.
The cause of Nippur's present desolation is to be traced to the change in the bed of the Euphrates, which now lies far to the west. But in antiquity the stream flowed through the centre of the city, along the dry bed of the Shatt en-Nîl, which divides the mounds into an eastern and a western group. ”