me violent
character as their vocation. Their favorite sport was hunting,
especially of lions, wild horses, elephants, stags, boars, and bulls.
They either proceeded to districts where these animals were to be found,
or they had large parks laid out near their residences, which were then
stocked with material for the chase. Ashurnasirbal does not shun a long
journey to distant mountainous regions to seek for sport, and it is
Nin-ib whom he invokes, together with Nergal. These two, he declares,
who, like Ashur and Ishtar, "love his priesthood," are the ones that
convey into his hands the hunting spoils. Tiglathpileser I. was
especially fond of lion and elephant hunting. He declares that on one
occasion he killed 10 elephants and 920 lions in various parts of
northwestern Mesopotamia; and he ascribes his success to Nin-ib, who
loves him, and who, again, in association with Nergal, and Ashur, has
placed in the king's hands the mighty weapons and the glorious bow.
After the days of Shamshi-Ramman we hear of Nin-ib chiefly in the formal
lists of gods which the later kings of Assyria, from Sargon[275] on, are
fond of placing at the beginning and end of their inscriptions. These
lists, again, copied the one from the other, are of value only as
indicating the chief gods of the pantheon, but warrant no conclusions as
to the activity reigning in the cults of the gods there mentioned.
Before leaving Nin-ib a few words need be said as to his relations to
the other gods. In the chapter on the pantheon before Hammurabi,[276]
the identity of Nin-ib with the chief god of Gudea's district,
Nin-girsu, has been pointed out. The solar character of the latter being
clear, it follows that Nin-ib, too, is originally a personification of
the sun, like Nin-gish-zida and Nin-shakh, whose roles are absorbed by
Nin-ib.[277] This has long been recognized, but it is the merit of
Jensen[278] to have demonstrated that it is the east sun and the morning
sun which is more especially represented by Nin-ib. On this supposition,
some of the titles given to him in the inscriptions of Ashurnasirbal and
Shamshi-Ramman become perfectly clear. Like Marduk, who, it will be
remembered, is also originally a phase of the solar deity, Nin-ib is
called the first-born of Ea; and as the rising sun he is appropriately
called the offspring of Ekur,--_i.e._, the earth,--in allusion to his
apparent ascent from a place below the earth. Ekur and Eshara being
employed as synon