ll that was needful, and he
executed faithfully all the words from the mouth of Ningirsu." The
dedication of these edifices was accompanied with solemn festivals, in
which the whole population took an active part. "During seven years no
grain was ground, and the maidservant was the equal of her mistress, the
slave walked beside his master, and in my town the weak rested by
the side of the strong." Henceforward Gudea watched scrupulously lest
anything impure should enter and mar the sanctity of the place.

[Illustration: 145.jpg THE GOD NINGIBSU, PATRON OF LAGASH.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. The attribution
of this figure to Ningirsu is very probable, but not wholly
certain.

Those we have enumerated were the ancient Sumerian divinities, but the
characteristics of most of them would have been lost to us, had we
not learned, by means of other documents, to what gods the Semites
assimilated them, gods who are better known and who are represented
under a less barbarous aspect. Ningirsu, the lord of the division of
Lagash which was called Girsu, was identified with Ninib; Inlil is Bel,
Ninursag is Beltis, Inzu is Sin, Inanna is Ishtar, and so on with the
rest. The cultus of each, too, was not a local cultus, confined to some
obscure corner of the country; they all were rulers over the whole of
Chaldaea, in the north as in the south, at Uruk, at Urn, at Larsam, at
Nipur, even in Babylon itself. Inlil was the ruler of the earth and of
Hades, Babbar was the sun, Inzu the moon, Inanna-Antmit the morning and
evening star and the goddess or love, at a time when two distinct
religious and two rival groups of gods existed side by side on the banks
of the Euphrates. The Sumerian language is for us, at the present day,
but a collection of strange names, of whose meaning and pronunciation we
are often ignorant. We may well ask what beings and beliefs were
originally hidden under these barbaric combinations of syllables which
are constantly recurring in the inscriptions of the oldest dynasties,
such as Pasag, Dunshagana, Dumuzi-. Zuaba, and a score of others. The
priests of subsequent times claimed to define exactly the attributes of
each of them, and probably their statements are, in the main, correct.
But it is impossible for us to gauge the motives which determined the
assimilation of some of these divinities, the fashion in which it was
carried out, the mutual concessions which Semite and Sumerian