The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

The intimate association of Nabu with Marduk in the city of Babylon leads as a natural consequence to a similar association in Assyria, when once the Marduk cult had for political reasons become established in the north. The kings invoke the favor of Bel (meaning Marduk) and Nabu, especially when dealing with the affairs of Babylonia,[304] as they invoke Ashur and Ishtar. Just as we have certain kings devoted to Nin-ib and Shamash by the side of Ashur, so there are others whose special favorite is Nabu. In the days of Ramman-nirari III. (812-783 B.C.) the Nabu cult reached its highest point of popularity in Assyria. From the manner in which the king speaks of the god, one might draw the conclusion that he attempted to concentrate the whole Assyrian cult upon that god alone. He erects a temple to the god at Calah, and overwhelms the deity with a great array of titles. The dedicatory inscription which the king places on a statue of Nebo closes with the significant words, 'O Posterity! trust in Nabu. Trust in no other god.'[305] Still we must not press such phrases too hard. Ramman-nirari III. had no intention of suppressing Ashur worship, for he mentions the god elsewhere, and assigns to him the same rank as the other kings do, but so much we are justified in concluding, that next to Ashur and Ishtar he feels most strongly attached to Nabu.

That the Babylonian Nabu is meant, is clear from such designations as 'the offspring of E-sagila, the favorite of Bel,' 'he who dwells at E-zida,' which appear among the epithets bestowed upon the god; and the temple in Calah, which one of the last kings of Assyria, Ashuretililani,[306] is engaged in improving, bears the same name E-zida, as Nabu's great temple at Borsippa. We have already set forth the reasons[307] for the popularity of the Nabu cult in Assyria. Suffice it to recall that the peculiar character of the god as the patron of wisdom placed him beyond the reach of any jealousy on the part of the other members of the pantheon. So Ramman-nirari III. extols Nabu as the protector of the arts, the all-wise who guides the stylus of the scribe, and the possessor of wisdom in general. He is not merely the originator of writing, but the source of all wisdom, and for this reason he is spoken of as the son of Ea. Attributes of mere brutal force are rarely assigned to Nabu, but as befits a god of wisdom, mercy, nobility, and majesty constitute his chief attractions. By virtue of his wisdom, Sargon calls him 'the clear seer who guides all the gods,' and when the last king of Assyria—Saracus, as the Greek writers called him—invokes Nabu as the 'leader of forces,' he appears to have in mind the heavenly troops rather than earthly armies. Such patrons of learning as Sargon and Ashurbanabal were naturally fond of parading their devotion to Nabu.

The former significantly calls him the 'writer of everything,' and as for Ashurbanabal, almost every tablet in the great literary collection that he made at Nineveh closes with a solemn invocation to Nabu and his consort Tashmitum, to whom he offers thanks for having opened his ears to receive wisdom, and who persuaded him to make the vast literary treasures of the past accessible to his subjects.