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The name Nergal (or Nirgal or Nirgali) refers to a deity in Babylonia with the main seat of his cult at Cuthah (or Kutha) represented by the mound of
Tell-Ibrahim.
Nergal actually seems to be in part a solar deity, sometimes identified with Shamash, but a representative of a certain phase only of the sun. Portrayed in hymns and myths as a god of war and
pestilence, Nergal seems to represent the sun of noontime and of the summer solstice which brings destruction to mankind, high
summer being the dead season in the Mesopotamian annual cycle. Nergal was also the deity who presides over the nether-world, and
who stands at the head of the special pantheon assigned to the government of the
dead (supposed to be gathered in a large subterranean cave known as Aralu or Irkalla). In this capacity he has associated with
him a goddess Allatu or Ereshkigal, though at one time Allatu may have functioned as the sole mistress of
Aralu, ruling in her own person. In some texts the god Ninazu is the son of Nergal by Allatu/Ereshkigal.
Ordinarily Nergal pairs with his consort Laz. Standard iconography pictured Nergal as a
lion, and boundary-stone monuments symbolise him with a mace surmounted by the head of a lion.
Nergal's fiery aspect appears in names or epithets such as Lugalgira, Sharrapu ("the burner," perhaps a mere
epithet), Erra, Gibil (though this name more properly belongs to Nusku), and Sibitti. A
certain confusion exists in cuneiform literature between
Ninurta and Nergal. Nergal has epithets such as the "raging king," the "furious one," and the like. A play upon his
name – separated into three elements as Ne-uru-gal (lord of the great dwelling) – expresses his
position at the head of the nether-world pantheon.
In the astral-theological system Nergal becomes the planet Mars,
while in ecclesiastical art the great lion-headed colossi serving as guardians to the temples and palaces seem to symbolise
Nergal, just as the bull-headed colossi probably typify Ninurta.
Nergal's chief temple at Cuthah bore the name Meslam, from which the god receives the designation of
Meslamtaeda or Meslamtaea, "the one that rises up from Meslam". The name Meslamtaeda/Meslamtaea indeed is found
as early as the list of gods from Fara while the name Nergal only begins to appear in the Akkadian period.
The cult of Nergal does not appear to have spread as widely as that of Ninurta. Hymns
and votive and other inscriptions of Babylonian and Assyrian rulers frequently invoke
him, but we do not learn of many temples to him outside of Cuthah. Sennacherib speaks of one at Tarbisu to the north of Nineveh, but
significantly, although Nebuchadnezzar II
(606 BC–586 BC), the great temple-builder of the neo-Babylonian monarchy,
alludes to his operations at Meslam in Cuthah, he makes no mention of a sanctuary to Nergal in Babylon. Local associations with his original seat – Kutha – and the conception formed of
him as a god of the dead acted in making him feared rather than actively worshipped.
Text adapted from the 1911
Encyclopędia Britannica.
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