Identifier: mythslegendsofba00spenuoft (find matches)
Title: Myths and legends of Babylonia & Assyria
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Spence, Lewis, 1874-1955
Subjects: Assyro-Babylonian religion Mythology, Assyro-Babylonian Legends Cults
Publisher: London : Harrap
Contributing Library: Kelly - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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sen in his Kosmologie points out that Ninibrepresents the eastern sun and the morning sun.If this is so, it is strange to find a god representingthe sun of morning in the status of a war-god. It isusually when the sun-god reaches the zenith of theheavens that he slays his thousands and his tens ofthousands. As a variant of Nin-girsu he would ofcourse be identified with Tammuz. His consort wasGula, to whom Assur-nazir-pal erected a sanctuary. Dagan Dagan the fish-god, who, we saw, was the same asCannes or Ea, strangely enough rose to high rankin Assyria. Some authorities consider him of Philis-tian or Aramean origin, and do not compare himwith Ea, who rose from the waters of the Per-sian Gulf to enlighten his people, and it is evidentthat the Mesopotamian-Palestinian region containedseveral versions of the origin of this god, ascribingit to various places. In the Assyrian pantheon heis associated with Anu, who rules the heavens, Dagansupervising the earth. It is strange to observe a216
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Tiglath-Pileser I directed by Ninib 2IO Evelyn Paul ANU deity, whose sphere must originally have been thesea, presiding over the terrestrial plane, and thistransference it was which cost Dagan his popularityin Assyria, for later he became identified with Beland disappeared almost entirely from the Assyrianpantheon. Anu Anu in Assyria did not differ materially from Anu inBabylon, but he suffered, as did other southern deities,from the all-pervading worship of Asshur. He had atemple in Asshurs own city, which was rebuilt byTiglath-pileser 1641 years, after its original foundation.He was regarded in Assyria as lord of the Igigi andAnunnaki, or spirits of heaven <^id earth, probablythe old animistic spirits, and to this circumstance,as well as to the fact that he belonged to the oldtriad along with Bel and Ea, he probably owed theprolongation of his cult. As an elemental and funda-mental god opposition could not possibly displacehim, and as ruler of the spirits of air and earth hewould

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