Who is Nergal?
Nergal the Protector & Destroyer
Nergal (also known as Erra and Irra) is the Mesopotamian god of death, war, and destruction. He began as a regional, probably agricultural, god of the Babylonian city of Kutha in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2900-2700 BCE). As his temple was known as E-meslam, he was known as Meslamtaea ('he who comes forth from Meslam'). He was still associated with death even at this early period as he represented the high summer sun which scorched the earth, and the afternoon sun of most intense heat, which hindered crop production.
Nergal, in Mesopotamian religion, secondary god of the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon. He was identified with Irra, the god of scorched earth and war, and with Meslamtaea, He Who Comes Forth from Meslam. ... Hymns depict him as a god of pestilence, hunger, and devastation.

Nergal represents a very particular aspect of death, one that is often and rightly interpreted as inflicted death, for Nergal is also the god of plague and pestilence as well as being closely associated with warfare. Nergal's warlike qualities identify him to a considerable extent with warrior gods such as Ninurta and Zababa (Van der Toorn et al. 1999: 622). In his aspect of a war god, Nergal accompanies the king into battle, delivering death to the enemy. Death brought on by Nergal also had a supernatural dimension, disease often being attributed to demonic agency in Mesopotamia. Indeed, Nergal controls a variety of demons and evil forces, most notoriously the ilū sebettu, the "Seven Gods" who are particularly prominent in the myth of Erra as agents of death and destruction (Foster 2005: 880-911). Nergal's association with demons and disease further enhances the apotropaic qualities attributed to him and his circle, although such qualities are often attributed to chthonic deities as a class. The Late Babylonian apotropaic figrines representing Nergal (Ellis 1968) or the use of the Erra epic as house amulets (Reiner 1960b) can be seen as a manifestation of this.

Nergal is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the deity of the city of Cuth (Cuthah): "And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal" (2 Kings, 17:30). According to the Talmudists, his emblem was a cockerel and Nergal means a "dunghill cock", although standard iconography pictured Nergal as a lion. He is a son of Enlil and Ninlil, along with Nanna and Ninurta.

In Mesopotamia, Nergal was most likely promoted during the Sargonic period (ca.
2300-2200 BCE) by the Assyrian king Naram-sin, Sargon´s grandson. Cuneiform
texts credit Nergal as the god behind Naram-sin’s conquests. Naram-sin created one
of the first empires of history and was the first Mesopotamian ruler to proclaim himself a god. Most likely, the feats of Naram-sin indirectly promoted the god Nergal.

In the third millennium BCE, Nergal was a warrior and death-inflicting god who had
nothing to do with the underworld, and who was not present in Sumer (south); during
that millennium, the identity of Nergal was different from that of Meslamtaea,
a god who might have had chthonian aspects. In fact, Sumer had the god Ninazu as a
prominent underworld god. Nergal, however, during the second millennium BCE
assimilated Meslamtaea and became an underworld god replacing Ninazu from the
Sumerian underworld pantheon. Later, the myth known as ‘Nergal and Ereshkigal’
explained that Nergal married the queen of the Netherworld implying that Nergal
seemed to reach the top of the Netherworld pantheon.

Gwendolyn Leick argues that Nergal was not from Sumer but seemed to be a
Babylonian god because the etymology of the name Nergal is not Sumerian but
Akkadian. Dina Katz presumes that Nergal evolved from a god of war to a
netherworld god, and contends that Nergal became a major netherworld god from the
Old Babylonian period onwards while his position as a heavenly god declined;
and also that by the Middle Babylonian period (1500-1000 BCE) Nergal was considered
the spouse of Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Netherworld. According to F. A. M.
Wiggermann, Nergal was associated first with the bull and later with the lion, and
was considered a god who inflicted death to all life, human and animal, either by
supernatural means such as plague or simply by supporting the king´s arms.

God of War, God of destruction, Nirgal, Nirgali

свернуть