class="t0">The Anunaki call to thee: O lord give rest!

..... calleth to thee: O lord give rest!

Ningal calleth to thee: O lord give rest!

May the bar of Ur, the enclosure of E-gišširgal and the building of Ezida be established!

The gods of heaven and earth call to thee: O lord give rest!

The lifting up of the hand. 48 lines on the tablet to Nannar.

Mighty one. Lord of strength.

Like its original, copied and revised.

Tablet of Ištar-šuma-ereš, the chief scribe.

Of Ašurbânipal, king of legions, king of Assyria,

Son of Nabu-zer-lištešir, chief penman.”

IV R. 9.

This Ašurbânipal hymn may be considered as remarkable for its advanced ideas. In the first part of the hymn there is introduced the mythological idea of the bullock’s head in the moon with horns and the face with flowing hazel-colored beard, so that strength and brilliancy are pointed out. But the hymn advances into literal speech by which the most varied and greatest of divine attributes are attached to the god Nannar. He is named as sovereign god, a self-created god, a merciful god, the begetter of all life, the maintainer of the life of the world, the bestower of gifts to men, the establisher of dwellings; he fixes destinies, pronounces judgment, gives water to man and supplies him with vegetable food. He holds a unique and exalted position in heaven and on earth above all other beings. To him the angels of heaven and spirits of earth bow, and at his command the forces of nature perform their marvellous functions.

3. Adad

The storm-god is known by the Sumerian ideogram Im. The sign IMMU in the El-Amarna tablets (1500 B. C.) has the reading Adad, a name connected with the Syrian Hadad. Oppert thinks Adad is the god’s oldest name. It seems evidently a foreign equivalent for Im. The Assyrian name Ramman is a provisional name meaning “thunderer”, and probably only an epithet. The sign IMMU has also the value Mer. This is, no doubt, the original and real name of the god, which appears as well in the form Immer. The primary idea in the name is that of wind, then, that of rain and finally of thunder and lightning. The god is not an object like Nannar, but a force; then the force is personified and he is spoken of as a person. Ḥammurabi puts him in the second triad of gods. He is the third person of that triad, Sin being the first person and Šamaš the second. Generally Ištar has the third place in the second triad. In that case Ramman falls outside of that triad and takes position among all the gods as seventh in importance. The order is as follows: Anu, Bêl, Ea, Sin, Šamaš, Ištar, Adad (Ramman). As a Babylonian god we find Ramman’s name appears in Ḥammurabi’s time as a common name in literature. He is invoked in Ḥammurabi’s Code, like other gods, of course in his sphere as a storm-god. Thus: “If a man will pay no attention to my words, may Adad, the lord of abundance, the regent of heaven and earth, my helper, deprive him of the rain from heaven and the water-floods from the springs! May he bring his land to destruction through want and hunger! May he break loose furiously over his city and turn his land into a heap left by a whirlwind!”[24] With the kings of the Cassite dynasty Ramman seems to be popular. His name appears by the side of that of Šamaš and he is called the divine lord of justice. In the Babylonian dynasty of kings, Nebuchadnezzar I. addresses Ramman as the great lord of heaven, the lord of the subterranean waters and rain, whose curse is invoked against the one who sets aside the decrees of Nebuchadnezzar or defaces his monument.

Ramman is thought to be more truly an Assyrian than a Babylonian god. He is almost as dear to the Assyrian as the god Ašur. Historical data, however, do not furnish very early mention of his name in Assyria. We find that he had a seat of worship in Damascus, and his cult had vogue in the plain of Jezreel, his name appearing in Hebrew, written by mistake, after the text was Masoretically vocalized, “Rimmon” which is exactly the same in form as the Hebrew word for pomegranate. In Assyria we can trace his history back to some extent by means of inscriptions in which his name appears as an element in the compound names of kings. For example, we find his name in the name of the ancient Assyrian king Šamaš-Ramman, and from an inscription of Tiglath-pileser I. we learn also that Šamaš-Ramman built a temple to the god Ramman. So we have historical evidence that the cult of Ramman is older in Assyria than this king, who was reigning in 1820 B. C. How much older it may be we do not know. Jastrow thinks that the cult is indigenous to Assyrian soil.

Between the time of Šamaš-Ramman and the time of Tiglath-pileser I. the service of Ramman must have declined somewhat, for the temple of Ramman in the city of Aššur seems not to have been repaired from the days of Šamaš-Ramman till Tiglath-pileser himself rebuilt it. Tiglath-pileser says that from the time of the founding it was in decay six hundred and forty years. Then king Ašurdan tore it down entirely. Sixty years after the entire destruction, Tiglath-pileser builds the temple anew. He says that in the beginning of his government the great gods Anu and Adad demanded for him the restoration of their sacred dwelling. “I made bricks and cleared its ground until I reached the artificial flat terrace upon which the old temple had been built. I laid its foundation upon the solid rock and the whole place incased with bricks like a fire-place, overlaid on it a layer of fifty bricks in depth and built upon this the foundations of the temple of Anu and Adad of large square stones. I built it up from foundation to roof, larger and grander than before, and erected also two great temple towers ... fitting ornaments of their great divinities.”[25] From Tiglath-pileser on, temples of Ramman do not seem to be often mentioned, but the god himself is frequently spoken of in inscriptions of the kings. Sargon II. has one of the eastern gates of his temple named “Ramman the producer of abundance”. Ašurbânipal enumerates thirteen gods whom he honors as the great gods, and places Ramman fifth in the list.

Ramman’s most esteemed service was that of bestowing blessing. The rains in the right proportion were a boon to the land, filling the canals and watering the soil. Ḥammurabi calls Ramman the lord of abundance and his helper. Tiglath-pileser I. prays for the blessings of prosperity, as he prays to Adad: “May Anu and Adad turn to me truly and accept graciously the lifting up of my hand, hearken unto my devout prayers, grant me and my reign abundance of rain, years of prosperity and fruitfulness in plenty.”[26] Ašurbânipal describes the blessings he receives by the favor of this god: “Ramman let loose his showers and Ea has opened his springs, the grain has grown to a height of five yards and the ears have been five sixths of a yard long, the produce of the land has been abundant and the fruit trees have borne fruit richly.”[27] The mention of Anu and Ea with