The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

The wife of the famous Gudea, Gin-Shul-pa-uddu, bears a name in which one of the elements is a deity, the phonetic reading of whose name is still uncertain.[92] The elements comprising it, namely, 'lord' (?), 'sceptre,' and 'radiant,' leave little doubt as to the solar character of the god. Besides Gudea's wife, a ruler, Ur-Shul-pa-uddu,[93] belonging apparently to a somewhat earlier period, embodies this deity in his name. The worship of the deity, therefore, belongs to a very early epoch, and appears at one time to have enjoyed considerable popularity within a certain district of Babylonia. To what region of Babylonia he belongs has not yet been ascertained. Judging from analogous instances, he represented some phase of the sun worshipped in a particular locality, whose cult, with the disappearance of the place from the surface of political affairs, yielded to the tendency to concentrate sun-worship in two or three deities,—Shamash and Ninib more especially. In the astronomy of the Babylonians the name survived as a designation of Marduk-Jupiter.[94]