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The ancient
Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...
n myth beginning Lugal-e ud me-lám-bi nir-ğál, also known as ''
Ninurta Ninurta (: , possible meaning "Lord fBarley"), also known as Ninĝirsu (: , meaning "Lord fGirsu"), is an List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian god associated with farming, healing, hunting, law, scribes, and war who was f ...
's Exploits'' is a great epic telling of the warrior-god and god of spring thundershowers and floods, his deeds, waging war against his mountain rival á-sàg (“Disorder”; Akkadian: '' Asakku''), destroying cities and crushing skulls, restoration of the flow of the river
Tigris The Tigris ( ; see #Etymology, below) is the eastern of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian Desert, Syrian and Arabia ...
, returning from war in his “beloved barge” ''Ma-kar-nunta-ea'' and afterward judging his defeated enemies, determining the character and use of 49 stones, in 231 lines of the text. Its origins probably lie in the late third millennium BCe. It is actually named for the first word of the composition (lugal-e “king,” in the
ergative case In grammar, the ergative case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that identifies a nominal phrase as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages. Characteristics In such languages, the ergative case is typically m ...
) in two first-millennium copies, although earlier (Old Babylonian) copies begin simply with lugal, omitting the case ending. A subscript identifies it as a “širsud of Ninurta” (a širsud meaning perhaps “lasting song”) or “zami (praise) of Ninurta” depending on the reading of the cuneiform characters. With 728 lines and arranged on up to 13 tablets, Lugal-e is a poem in which the author (the god Ea according to a '' Catalogue of Texts and Authors'') apparently combined perhaps three disparate myths in one literary composition. There are more than 80 extant exemplars but these show considerable textual variance.


The myth

The tale opens with a feast of Ninurta with the gods, where his wife conveys the word of the (human) king. The divine weapon Šar’ur reports to Ninurta that the á-sàg demon, who has been appointed by the plants, has raided the border cities with his warriors, the rebellious stones who have tired of Ninurta's NAMTAR (Akkadian: ''šīmtu'', "allocating tasks"). The demon "tore the flesh of the Earth and covered her with painful wounds." This causes Ninurta impetuously to set out to preempt further attack. He is temporarily thwarted by a dust storm, until
Enlil Enlil, later known as Elil and Ellil, is an List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms. He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon, but he was later worshipped by t ...
provides relief with a rainstorm, thus enabling Ninurta to overcome á-sàg and release the waters which have been trapped in mountain ice, preventing its irrigation of the Mesopotamian plains, and replenish the diminished flows of the river Tigris. He then placates the concerns of his mother,
Ninlil Ninlil ( D NIN.LÍL; meaning uncertain) was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as the wife of Enlil. She shared many of his functions, especially the responsibility for declaring destinies, and like him was regarded as a senior deity and head of th ...
or Ninmaḫ (depending on text), before exercising judgement over the stones who have collaborated with Azag. Finally he returns to
Nippur Nippur (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Nibru'', often logogram, logographically recorded as , EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"I. E. S. Edwards, C. J. Gadd, N. G. L. Hammond, ''The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory'': Vol. 1, Part 1, Ca ...
to receive the praise of his father and the gods. Ninurta assigns various fates to the minerals that have been conquered in his cosmic battle. The ''kurgarrānum''-stone is destined to be raw material for funerary figurines, “May you be made beautiful at he festivalof ghosts, ��fornine aysmay the young men in a semi-circle make for you a doorway,” whereas the unfortunate ''šagara''-stone is doomed to be discarded, "You will be thrown onto your bed", where no one will miss it and none will complain of its loss. In Ninurta’s blessing of the (diorite) ''esi''-stone, the material of statues: “When the king who “sets” his name for long days (to come) fashions those statues for future days, when he places them at the libation place in the Eninnu, the house filled with rejoicing, may you (=the diorite) then be present for that purpose as befits you,” the king being recalled may be an explicit allusion to
Gudea Gudea ( Sumerian: , ''Gu3-de2-a''; died 2124 BC) was a Sumerian ruler ('' ensi'') of the state of Lagash in Southern Mesopotamia, who ruled –2060 BC ( short chronology) or 2144–2124 BC ( middle chronology). He probably did not come from the ...
. The parallels with many of Gudea’s inscriptions have suggested that the work mythically retells his campaigns against
Anšan Anshan (Elamite cuneiform: ; , ) modern Tall-e Malyan (), also Tall-i Malyan, was an Elamite and ancient Persian city. It was located in the Zagros Mountains in southwestern Iran, approximately north of Shiraz and west of Persepolis in the ...
and
Elam Elam () was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of modern-day southern Iraq. The modern name ''Elam'' stems fr ...
. The work may have been composed during or shortly after his reign (ca. 2150 BC) to honor Ningirsu, the titulary deity of Lagaš, and then transferred to Nippur when subsumed by Ninurta. The intended purpose of the composition, whether didactic or cultic, is uncertain although it may have been sung or recited following that of its sister work,
Angim The work known by its incipit, Angim, "The Return of Ninurta to Nippur", is a 210-line mythological praise poem for the ancient Mesopotamian warrior-god Ninurta, describing his return to Nippur from an expedition to the mountains (KUR), where he ...
, in performance of a temple ritual. There are ''sâlu'' and ''mukallimtu'' commentaries on the work listed in late
Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...
n library catalogues. Its survival into the first millennium was due to the importance of Ninurta to the
Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...
n cult.


References


External links

Ninurta's exploits: a šir-sud (?) to Ninurta a
ETSCL
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lugale 3rd-millennium BC literature Mesopotamian myths Sumerian literature