n of its inhabitants,
the impossibility of an escape or a return to this world, necessarily
suggested to the Babylonians that the gods worshipped by the living had
no control over the fate of the dead. The gods, to be sure, were at
times wrathful, but, on the whole, they were well disposed towards
mankind. When angry, they could be pacified, and it was impossible to
believe that they should deliberately consign their creatures to such a
sad lot as awaited those who went down to Aralu. The gods who ruled the
dead must be different from those who directed the fate of the living. A
special pantheon for the nether world was thus developed. Such deities
as Marduk, Ea, Nabu, Shamash, or Ashur, who acted, each in his way, as
protectors of mankind, could find no place in this pantheon; but a god
like Nergal, who symbolized the midday sun, and the sun of the summer
solstice that brought misery and fever to the inhabitants of the
Euphrates Valley; Nergal, who became the god of violent destruction in
general, and, more particularly, the god of war, the god whose emblem
was the lion, who was cruel and of forbidding aspect,--such a god was
admirably adapted to rule those who could only look forward to a
miserable imprisonment in a region filled with horror. Nergal,
therefore, became the chief god of the pantheon of the lower world.

In the religious texts, the cruel aspects of this god are almost
exclusively emphasized. He is the one god towards whom no love is felt,
for he is a god without mercy. The fierce aspects of the solar Nergal
are accentuated in Nergal, the chief of the pantheon of Aralu. He
becomes even more ferocious than he already was, as a god of war. His
battle is with all mankind. He is greedy for victims to be forever
enclosed in his great and gloomy domain. Destruction is his one and
single object; nothing can withstand his attack. Armed with a sword, his
favorite time for stalking about is at night, when he strikes his
unerring blows. Horrible demons of pestilence and of all manner of
disease constitute his train, who are sent out by him on missions of
death. The favorite titles by which he is known appear in a hymn[1207]
addressed to him, as god of the lower world. He is invoked as the

Warrior, strong whirlwind, sweeping the hostile land,[1208]
Warrior, ruler of Aralu.

Another hymn[1209] describes him as a

Great warrior who is firm as the earth.
Superior as heaven and earth art thou,

...