had some special
name for the goddess here. In a refrain which recurs at the end of each
melody the psalmists say that the god of Kes, that is probably Igidu,(417)
was made like Assirgi, or Ninurta, and that its goddess was made like
Nintud, hence the _special_ name of the mother goddess in this liturgy
cannot have been Nintud.

So far as the text of this important liturgy in eight melodies can be
established, it leads to the inference that, like all other Sumerian
choral compositions, the subject is the rehearsal of sorrows which befell
a city and its temple. Here the glories of Kes, its temple and its gods
are recorded in choral song, and the woes of this city are referred to as
symbolic of all human misfortunes. The name of the temple has not been
preserved in the text. But we know from other liturgies that the temple in
Kes bore the name Ursabba.(418) The queen of the temple Ursabba is called
the mother of Negun, also a title of Ninurta in Elam.(419) The close
connection between the goddess of Kes and Ninlil is again revealed, for
Negun is the son of Ninlil in the theological lists, CT. 24, 26, 112.
Therefore at Kes we have a reflection of the Innini-Tammuz cult or the
worship of mother and son, mother goddess Ninlil or Ninharsag, and Igidu
or Negun.(420)

Kes and Opis must have been closely associated with both Erech and
Suruppak, and of traditional veneration in Sumer. Kes is mentioned in a
list with Ur, Kullab (part of Erech) and Suruppak, SMITH, _Miscellaneous
Texts_ 26, 5. Gudea speaks of a part of the temple in Lagash which was
pure as Kes and Aratta (i. e. Suruppak).(421) The various mother goddesses
of Eridu, Kullab, Kesi, Lagas and Suruppak are invoked in an incantation,
CT. 16, 36, 1-9. The first melody of the Ashmolean Prism contains a
reference to the horse of Suruppak.

The textual history of this liturgy is interesting. The major text is
written upon a four-sided prism now in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford. The
object is eight inches high, four inches wide on each surface and is
pierced from top to bottom at the center by a small hole, so that the
liturgy could be turned on a spindle. The writer published a copy of this
prism or prayer wheel in his _Babylonian Liturgies_. The elucidation of
this exceedingly difficult text was lightened somewhat by the discovery of
a four column tablet in Constantinople, which originally contained the
entire text. It was afterwards published as No. 23 of my _Historica