The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

Upon reaching so late a period as the days of Nabubaliddin (c. 850 B.C.), it becomes doubtful whether we are justified in including the additional deities occurring in his inscription among the Babylonian pantheon of the second period. The occurrence of some of these gods in the religious literature is a presumption in favor of regarding them as ancient creations, rather than due to later influences. Certainly this appears to be the case with Malik and Bunene, who, with Shamash, form a triad that constitutes the chief object of worship in the great temple E-babbara at Sippar, to whose restored cult Nabubaliddin devotes himself. Both names, moreover, occur as parts of proper names in the age of Hammurabi. Malik—i.e., ruler—is one of the names frequently assigned to Shamash, just as the god's consort was known as Malkatu, but for all that Malik is not the same as Shamash. Accompanying the inscription of Nabubaliddin is a design[210] representing the sun-god seated in his shrine. Before him on a table rests a wheel, and attached to the wheel are cords held by two figures, who are evidently directing the course of the wheel. These two figures are Malik and Bunene, a species of attendants, therefore, on the sun-god, who drive the fiery chariot that symbolized the great orb. Bunene, through association with Malik, becomes the latter's consort, and it is interesting to observe the extent to which the tendency of the Babylonian religion to conceive the gods in pairs goes.

Bunene is not the only instance of an originally male deity becoming through various circumstances the female consort to another. Originally, Malik may have been a name under which the sun-god was worshipped at some place, for the conception that makes him the chariot-driver to Shamash appears to be late. The absorption by the greater sun-cults (at Sippar and Larsa more particularly) of the lesser ones leads to the complete transfer of the names of minor sun-deities to the great Shamash, but in some instances the minor deities continue to lead a shadowy existence in some rôle of service to the greater ones.